Unit Three: Overview
African-American Music
This
unit explores the heritage of African-American music in North America
from its origins in early slave music to blues, jazz, soul, and funk.
African-American slaves brought with them a rich tradition of African
music and dance, which transformed into something new when mixed with
the instruments and influences of the European-Americans. African-American
slaves sang daily to accompany their work and worship. In the fields,
they sang field calls to communicate with one another and to comfort themselves.
At home, they played singing games and sang lullabies to their children.
In their churches, they sang songs that helped give them a sense of hope.
Music offered a means to express the intense emotions that were always
a part of slave existence in America.
Spirituals and gospel music
are sacred music. Spirituals are emotional songs; they expressed the sadness
of the slave conditions but also the hope of salvation. Singing spirituals
was a way for slaves to make music that was acceptable to the plantation
owners , who often forbade other forms of musical expression. After emancipation
in 1863, spirituals traveled with the people to the cities and towns they
moved to. By the 1930s a new form of sacred music was taking shape: gospel
music. Gospel is modern sacred music that mixes the soulful, heartfelt
lyrics of spirituals with the rhythms, instruments, and upbeat tempos
of modern urban music. Gospel music is the evolution of African-American
spiritual music. As African Americans moved
away from the plantations, they carried with them the musical styles they
had developed during over two hundred years of slave life. The field calls,
spirituals, rhyming songs, singing games, and lullabies went with them
and mixed with the traditions of the European Americans. The musically
inclined sang on street corners and in small clubs to earn a living. They
composed their own songs based on the experiences of their lives, which
were often sad or desperate. The songs reflected the hunger, poverty,
and racism they encountered after gaining their freedom from slavery.
This music came to be known as country blues. Early country blues players
accompanied themselves on acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano. As time went
by, as they moved north into the cities, they found work in clubs that
featured blues singers and players. Over time more instruments were added,
tempos were increased, and the blues transformed itself into a more modern-sounding
urban style of blues, or dance music. Dancing was always a part
of African-American traditions-from dancing at church gatherings and after
work on the plantations, to dancing in "juke joints" and African-American
clubs and bars after emancipation. Ragtime music and New Orleans jazz
were some of the first popular dance music forms to emerge from African
traditions around the turn of the twentieth century. Eventually, as European-Americans
heard the music and began performing it, these styles spread and became
famous among mainstream audiences. By mid-century, as the civil rights
movement swept across the country, opening more opportunities for African
Americans to record and perform, their music finally came to the forefront
of American culture. Both soul and funk evolved
from the blues, spirituals, gospel, and dance music of the 1950s. Soul
mixes gospel music with rhythm and blues, creating a passionate, upbeat,
rhythmic style of music. In the 1960s, the Motown Records label made music
history by featuring African-American artists with a string of number
one soul music hits over a period of many years. Funk music followed in
the 1970s, mixing soul with rock and jazz. The result was a progressive,
groove-oriented, highly danceable music. Excerpted from Listen to
Learn: Using American Music to Teach Language Arts and Social Studies
(Grades 5-8) by Teri Tibbett (August 2004, $39.95, Paper) by permission
of Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint.
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