ABSTRACT
In this paper we will address the blues, since it is assumed that West African slaves would have brought them to the Americas. (Moore 2002: 2). It is a well-known fact that the lyrics of the blues are written by slaves, who elaborated their lives under the agency of slavery. A famous phrase says that history is written by the conquerors or by the masters. However, in the case of 'the blues', the history is written by the slaves. The blues reflects the socio-political scenario, as do the ghazals of Bahadur Shah Zafar. Further research on Indian traditional music brought us to an interesting article written by Peter Manuel, who addressed the alha, birha and Ramayan songs brought by indentured labourers to the Caribbean. (Manuel, 2012). From these three music styles, we chose to keep our focus on the birha. If we want to dig out the history from poetry, we may discover some facts which history probably could not register.
