Recently, I attended a lecture and concert by
Mr.Ray Kamalay at Warwick,RI public library. The subject was about the connection between slavery and American music. The writing below are some excerpts from his lecture and what I read about it further. I thought of sharing it with you here.
The slave trade brought Africans to the Americas to work in the plantations.
In some states in the U.S., early European settlers and slaves shared some
of their musical traditions and influenced each other’s world.The
banjo, now central in American folk music, is an instrument brought over
to the Americas by African slaves. In other states, the music of African
slaves was banned unless it accompanied an approved religious activity.
Drums
were banned because they were seen as especially dangerous since drum sounds
were linked to language and gave slaves a way to communicate that could not
be controlled or understood by slave owners.To compensate for a lack of
instruments, people who were enslaved relied on other forms of musical expression. “Hambone,” a
style of body percussion, was used as a substitute for drums, as it served
a rhythmic function for music. To play hambone, a person uses his or her
hands to hit the chest and thighs to create different slapping sounds. Playing
household objects also became necessary. Just as instruments were made in
Africa from natural materials that were available to people when they were
free, enslaved Africans used the resources available to them in their environments.
An example of this is the playing of spoons, another type of body percussion.
Vocal traditions also flourished among African people under slavery. Songs
were used to soothe the heart and send messages of possible escape routes.
Current music forms such as the Blues, Soul and Gospel grew out of the strong
vocal traditions of early African Americans.
Music expression in Africa varied
from one cultural group to the other, but most traditions commonly shared
certain characteristics. African songs were intended to accompany religious
ceremonies and dancing, to inspire hunters, to coordinate work, and to celebrate
events such as the birth of a child. Music was woven into the culture, forming
part of ordinary living, almost as commonplace as speech. In the Americas,
enslaved Africans used music and dance for:
| Purpose: |
Diffusion Resulted in: |
| a) Easing pain of work |
Works songs, the Blues |
| b) Worship |
Gospel traditions |
| c) Communication |
Drums and songs used to pass secrets messages |
| d) Entertainment |
Minstrels |
Jazz
Jazz is one of the musical traditions that developed out of the interchange
between Africa and European musical traditions in the Americas. Jazz is a
musical genre created mainly by Africans living in the Americas who amalgamated
elements drawn from African music and European-American music traditions.
It developed in three stages:
- First, the development in the 18th and 19th century of an indigenous
black folk music from African and European –American elements.
- Second, the rise of instrumental music in urban areas after the abolition
of slavery from other African-American traditions, notably plantation and
minstrel songs, ragtime, and blues. Black Americans were becoming well
versed on instruments that were brought from Europe, such as the piano
and horns, applying an African rhythmic sensibility, percussiveness, and
need for improvisation to the playing of these instruments.
- Third, the appearance of jazz itself, merging blues, ragtime and mainstream
popular music.
The attraction to jazz lies in its particular combination of rhythm, melody,
harmony, and instrumental sound. Jazz is often referred as the combination
of Ragtime, marching brass bands, and blues, with structural space for improvisation.
In the process of diffusion and the development of jazz, different styles
emerged such as Swing, Bebop, Funk, Cool Jazz and Fusion. Jazz is a style
of music that has traveled back to Africa along with the influence of American
artists like Herbie Hancock, Don Cherry, and Louis Armstrong. African jazz
and funk artists such as Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti, and Abdullah Ibrahim have
all been influenced by American jazz.
Blues
Just after the civil war in the United States, a popular musical tradition
known as The Blues developed out of field hollers and prison songs. Though
African Americans were legally free at this time, the work that was available
to them was hard, heavy work for which they were paid very little. Men labored
in fields for farmers in exchange for a small plot to plant, or they helped
with civic projects such as building levees to prevent rivers from flooding.
It was common in those days for prisoners to be locked together with chains
for labor projects such as pounding rocks into gravel. The rhythms of these
types of labor served as backdrops for songs about suffering, poverty and
women. The term “Blues” itself refers to a state of mind that
suggests sadness, struggle and suffering. Many of the songs contain lamentations
about life in the plantations and the suffering endured by the slaves. Blues
instrumental styles show links with African music. Stringed instruments such
as guitars and one-stringed bows are used with bottle necks to provide a
singing-type sound on the instrument, and a Blues singer will utilize the
Call and Response musical form to play a song with his instrument.
Gospel
Gospel is a body of religious song that is prevalent in North America and
has captured the attention of both the young and old audiences throughout
the world. Gospel reflects aspects of the personal religious experiences
of Protestant Evangelical groups, both black and white. If you remember Rev.
Andrea Chrouch and Jimmy Swaggart, they both represent two streams of gospel
in North America.
Black gospel music exhibits the African connection of gospel music to the
continent and its people. This music draws from both white and black sources.
The black influence can be traced to spirituals, which where sung in service
meetings attended by slaves. This genre represents an adaptation of African
ways of singing to hymnody. This can be noted in the use of syncopation and
re-accentuation, flexible inflections and blue notes, and Call and Response
delivery. Black gospel is one genre that coincided with the beginnings of
Ragtime, Blues and Jazz and the rise of the Pentecostal churches at the end
of the 19th century.
Rock and Roll
Rock and Roll is another product of African musical traits brought here
beginning with slavery which combined with European music brought here by
the colonists. It is a musical genre that has been popularized by North America,
Europe and Asia. It is often described as beginning with Bill Haley and His
Comets and includes scant information about the blues and rhythm records
that he, and others, used as a model. The most popular artist associated
with this genre is Elvis Presley who had this hit song: "Good Rocking
Tonight", originally Wyonnie Harris' 1947 song. African American Rock
and Roller, Chuck Berry, was also very popular during Elvis’ time,
but not as popular, many say because of his race. Elvis made Rock and Roll
safer for white audiences, even though his dancing was controversial.
The African musical influences in Rock and Roll can be traced back to the
plantation songs of Stephen Foster, the
ragtime of
Scott
Joplin, the blues of Bessie Smith, the jazz of Count Basie, and
the jump bands of Louis Jordan. The knowledge of the stream of American popular
music allows one to understand that rock and roll was a natural result of
the combined forces that affected the music.
Hip Hop
Hip-hop has come to represent a collective term for Black American urban
art forms that emerged in the late 1970’s. The music of hip-hop culture
is rap music, which combines poetry with instrumental rhythms and contains
a certain level of competition among artists. It is characterized by semi-spoken
rhymes declaimed over rhythmic musical backing, drawn from the sampling of
pre existing recording and used of DJ mixing techniques (
Grove’s
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, p. 829). It is a vocal style that
was developed in Jamaica when DJs would talk over the Reggae Dub music they
played for their audiences. Jamaican immigrants to New York City in the late
1960s and early 1970s brought this musical practice with them, and young
urban black Americans adapted it to their situation. Funk and soul tracks
were used as the musical backdrops for this new American sound. Groups such
as Run DMC and Afrika Bambaata are some of the early artists that popularized
hip-hop in America. Recently we have seen that the influence of Hip-hop has
reached back to Africa, with the emergence of similar styles such as Kwaito
of South Africa (Arthur is a popular artist) and the new generation of Afrobeat
in West Africa (like Fela Kuti’s son Femi Kuti).
