Its name rolls on the tongue like music and invokes very warm and special feelings. It makes us think of deep woods and mountain streams; sitting on front porches picking a banjo or strumming a guitar; sipping lemonade on a warm evening, listening to the crickets (cvrčky) sing.
    Tennessee is one of the southern US states. It is situated west of the Appalachian range, north of Georgia and Alabama, south of Kentucky, west of North Carolina. Its land is mountainous in the eastern part. The Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee are a spectacular range of low, wooded mountains that are also a National Park. The central part of Tennessee is hilly and the western part lies in the flat valley of the Mississippi River. The western border of Tennessee is formed by the Mississippi River itself. The climate is warm here, with long, hot summers, short, mild winters and beautiful springs and autumns. The capital of Tennessee is Nashville, a city of about 1 million people on the Cumberland River in central Tennessee. The largest city is Memphis, a large port on the Mississippi River.
    More than 200 years ago, Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek Indians lived in this land. They had been there for almost ten thousand years, hunting in the rich forests and occasionally building villages. A few whites came over the mountains to find furs and to trade, but the mountains were too difficult for many whites to cross. Then about the year 1765, a famous explorer named Daniel Boone found an easy way through the mountains from the East. Many whites wanted to come to Tennessee and Kentucky and find cheap land for farms and pastures for their sheep and cattle. In the 1770's and 1780's, many settlers came from North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia and began to build farms, roads and towns. These were the first pioneers - new settlers living in a wild area. They had to work hard to clear the woods and forests for their fields. They planted cotton, tobacco, and corn, and raised cattle, sheep, and pigs. Their neighbors, the Cherokee Indians were friendly and helpful. The Cherokees knew a lot about farming and showed the new settlers new crops and farming techniques. Whites called the Cherokee a "civilized" tribe because they lived in villages and farmed the land.
    Other Indians, such as the Choctaw and Creek, hated the whites. The white settlers were taking over their valuable hunting grounds. They often attacked white settlements and killed the settlers. People asked the army to protect them. Soldiers came and made war on the Creek and Choctaw. The Indians were eventually killed or pushed west.
    More and more settlers came as the Indian threat (hrozba) became smaller. Settlers built bigger farms and brought African slaves to work the land. By 1796 Tennessee had enough people to become a state. In was the 16th state in the United States. Over the next fifty years, Tennessee grew very quickly. Railroads, schools, universities, farms, and towns were built. Two presidents were elected from Tennessee. Andrew Jackson of Nashville was elected the seventh President of the USA in 1828. James K. Polk, also from Nashville, was elected President in 1844.
    But progress had a bad side as well. In 1838 the peaceful Cherokee Indians were forced to leave their ancestral lands and move hundreds of miles to the west to Oklahoma. Many Cherokee died in this difficult trek and they called their journey the Trail of Tears.
    The Cherokee Indians were often treated very badly by whites, but they also learned from them. A Cherokee named Sequoyah became famous among his people and around the world creating a system of writing for his native language. In 1821 Sequoyah succeeded in creating an alphabet for the Cherokee language. Cherokee was the first Indian language to have a system of writing. Sequoyah taught thousands of his people to read and write. Soon the Cherokee were reading newspapers, books and even the Bible in their own language.
    War came to Tennessee in 1861. The slave states of the South tried to leave the United States. They were afraid that the new US President, Abraham Lincoln, would ban (zakáže) slavery in their territory as it had been banned in the North. The southern states believed that they needed slaves to work on their farms, and they didn't want politicians in Washington telling them what to do. During the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Tennessee played an important role, although it was the last state to leave. More than 450 battles were fought on the territory of Tennessee, including the Battle of Franklin, the Battle of Stones River, the Battle of Chattanooga and the Battle of Shiloh. The War cost Tennessee and all of the South a tremendous price of lives and money.
    The south was defeated in the War and was nearly destroyed. But after the War, the North helped the South to recover. With Northern help, Tennessee recovered quickly and even tried to help the newly-freed slaves. In 1866, the first university for blacks, called Fisk University, was founded in Nashville. At Fisk, black scholars were free to study and to develop their own culture. The Fisk University Choir, called the Jubilee Singers, performed Negro folk songs and spirituals and became famous all over America and in Europe.
    In he twentieth century, Tennessee developed diverse industries and agriculture. During the Great Depression in the 1930's, Tennessee received money from the government to build dams on some of its rivers. This system of dams was a very successful project known as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The dams kept the rivers from flooding and destroying crops, and at the same time they generated a lot of electricity, which could then be sold cheaply to farmers in the area. The TVA helped Tennessee out of the Depression and is still an important part of Tennessee's economy today.

TENNESSEE MUSIC

    One of the most important aspects of life in Tennessee has always been music. In the twentieth century two forms of music developed in Tennessee that have had a great impact on American cultural life and world music.
    In the early part of the twentieth century, Memphis became well-known for its musicians and musical life. Jazz was very popular at this time, and Memphis jazz musicians created their own style of jazz called the Blues. Blues music spoke about sadness and misery. Blues music seemed to come right out of the soul and it became very popular in Memphis. The very first blues song was called "Memphis Blues", written by a trumpet player named W. C. Handy. Blues music traveled north from Memphis along the Mississippi River to cities like St. Louis and Chicago, and then eventually all over the world.
    Today blues has its own category on music charts: Rhythm and Blues or R & B. This music style has had a great influence on other musical styles, including Rock and Roll. One famous musician who lived in Memphis was strongly influenced by R & B. His mane was Elvis Presley. Elvis became the most popular and most famous Rock and Roll singer in the world. Many people said he sang like a black bluesman. One of Elvis' first hits was an old Blues tune called "Hound Dog".
    While Memphis was the home of the Blues, Nashville became famous as the center of another musical style called Country and Western. This musical style developed from the folk music of the farmers and country people of central and eastern Tennessee, the "hillbilly" music that had been sung and played around fireplaces and dinner tables for generations. This music became popular among country people from Texas all the way to Carolinas because it reminded them of the songs and ballads their grandparents used to sing. Country music was sometimes sad, and talked about men whose wives had left them, about their loneliness and despair. Other times, country songs talked about the joy of country life, the beauty of the land, the simple pleasures of family and childhood.
    Many of the early country musicians came from Tennessee. They went to Nashville to make records. Nashville became the center of the Country music industry in the 1930's when country musicians started playing regular concerts at an auditorium in Nashville called the Grand Ole Opry (Opry = Opera). These concerts were broadcast by radio throughout the South. The Grand Ole Opry became a household word and even today, some of the best country musicians perform every day at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. It's no wonder that Nashville is also known as Music City USA.

  
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