African American Music Through The Ages

1729 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: History of African Music

African American Music Through the Ages Yvette Agyei Negro Spirituals Negro Spirituals One of the earliest and ubiquitous forms of music created by blacks was the spiritual. Many of the slaves were illiterate in English. Therefore Oral transmission became the chief means of communication because of restrictions placed on slaves music became the chief means of covert communication. The spirituals originated through camp meetings and other religious exercises they started out spontaneous.The spirituals allowed blacks to maintain their African identity while identity. Hidden Meanings Many of the spirituals had hidden meanings. For instance Harriet Tubman used the song ‘Go down Moses’ to Alert other slaves she was headed North. Harriet Tubman was Moses in the song because she brought slaves to the promise land. Negro Spiritual The Negro spirituals were permitted because to slave owners it seemed as though the slaves were beginning to convert to Christianity. Although the spirituals had African influence they were not as overtly African as other forms of music. Therefore slave masters did not view as threatening. The theme of most negro spirituals was freedom Jubilee For a while after slavery negro spiritiuals were seen as crude and embarrassing. That is until the Fisk Jubilee singers toured the country in 1871 these singers brought negro spirituals to white audiences this gave it national and international attention. In the 1900s Negro spirituals slowly became a tradition amongst black classical music composers such Harry T. Burleigh, Margaret Bonds, and Hall Johnson who set the negro spirituals to piano. Minstrelsy Portraying black stereotypes became popular in what is known as minstrel shows. Initially it was mainly white e... ... middle of paper ... ... as well as the ones discussed this slideshow have had a major impact on the global music landscape. Works Cited The History of African-American Music." The African-American Experience. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Media, 1999. American Journey. Student Resources in Context. y Meagan Sullivan." Music Reference Services Quarterly 17.2 (2014): 21-37. African American Music as Rebellion from Slave Song to Hip Hop. Web. "A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy - A History." A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy - A History. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. Guthrie, Ramsey P. "Race Music : Black Cultures from Behop to Hip-hop." Race Music : Black Cultures from Behop to Hip-hop. MPublishing, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. Lovell, John. "The Social Implications of the Negro Spiritual." JSTOR. Journal of Negro Education, 4 Oct. 1939. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

Show More
Related

  • Similarities Between Cotton Mather And John Woolman

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cotton Mather and John Woolman were two men who had very passionate ideas for the slaves. “Negro Christianized” written by Cotton Mather was an appeal to the slave owners to convert their slaves to Christianity. He primarily focuses on the idea that slaveholders should treat the slaves with dignity and respect along with converting them to Christianity. In John Woolman’s work “Some Considerations On Keeping of Negroes,” he talks about how slavery was detrimental to the slaves and the slave holder. He illustrated through his own conduct the principles of compassion and good will that formed the central message of his itinerant ministry.

    Read More

  • The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University

    461 Words  | 1 Pages

    At a time when most black music was being performed by white minstrel musicians in blackface and vulgar caricature, a small group of exceptionally well-trained and talented black singers at Fisk University in Nashville achieved world-wide renown for their stirring and very professional performance of traditional black spirituals.

    Read More

  • African-American Religious History

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    The second edition of “African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness,” covers the religious experiences of African Americans—from the late eighteenth century until the early 1980s. My paper is written in a chronological order to reflect on the progress blacks have made during the years—by expounding on the earliest religion of Africans to black religion of today. Race Relation and Religion plays a major role in today’s society—history is present in all that we do and it is to history that African-Americans have its identity and aspiration.

    Read More

  • Impact of Music of the Harlem Renaissance Upon the Artists of Today

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    By the end of World War I, Black Americans were facing their lowest point in history since slavery. Most of the blacks migrated to the northern states such as New York and Chicago. It was in New York where the “Harlem Renaissance” was born. This movement with jazz was used to rid of the restraints held against African Americans. One of the main reasons that jazz was so popular was that it allowed the performer to create the rhythm. With This in Mind performers realized that there could no...

    Read More

  • Music In Lawrence Levine's 'The Quest For Certainty'

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    African-American slaves may not have had the formal education that many of their white slave owners possessed, but they intuitively knew that the labor they toiled through each and every day was unjust. This dynamic of unfairness brought about a mindset in which slaves would critique the workings of slavery. To many people’s understanding, slavery was an invasively oppressive institution; Levine however, noted, “for all its horrors, slavery was never so complete a system of psychic assault that it prevented the slaves from carving out independent cultural forms” . Slave spirituals were a part of the independent cultural form that enslaved African-Americans produced; these songs had numerous functions and critiquing slavery served as one of

    Read More

  • R & B Research Paper

    1234 Words  | 3 Pages

    Soul music was developed in the late 1950s from African American church music called Gospel music. After slavery ended in1865, African American were not welcomed in the church of White Americans, so they built their own churches and sang Christian songs with African American vocal styles and rhythm. As the civil rights movement, staged bigger and bigger demonstrations and increase in African American pride “Soul music” became more than party music for young blacks: it became a rallying flag for the Black nationalist movement. Soul music was born thanks to the innovations of continuous post-war musicians who essentially turned Gospel music into a secular form of

    Read More

  • Rock n Roll & 20th Century Culture

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Albert Murray, the African-American musical tradition is “fundamentally stoical yet affirmative in spirit” (Star 3). Through the medium of the blues, African-Americans expressed a resilience of spirit which refused to be crippled by either poverty or racism. It is through music that the energies and dexterities of black American life are sounded and expressed (39). For the black culture in this country, the music of Basie or Ellington expressed a “wideawake, forward-tending” rhythm that one can not only dance to but live by (Star 39).

    Read More

  • Music Influence on the Civil Rights Movement

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    Buford, Larry. "Motown, Civil Rights - Blackface and the Civil War." EURweb. 18 Dec. 2013

    Read More

  • Religious and Spiritual Practices of Enslaved African Americans

    1736 Words  | 4 Pages

    Moreover, many owners later came to feel that Christianity may actually have encouraged rebellion (all those stories of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, after all, talked about the liberation of the slaves), and so they began to discourage Christian missionaries from preaching to the slaves. African Americans have taken their own spiritual, religious journey. God was looked upon as a source of peace and encouragement. The community of enslave Africans were able to use religion and spirituality as a way of overcoming the mental anguish of slavery on a daily basis. To a slave, religion was the most important aspect of their life. Nothing could come between their relationship with god. It was their rock, the only reason why they could wake up in the morning, the only way that they endured this most turbulent time in our history.

    Read More

  • Negro Spirituals

    1984 Words  | 4 Pages

    Today, these lyrics have crossed barriers and are sung in many churches across America as spirituals. However, such songs as Wade in the Water, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and Follow the Drinking Gourd, were once used as an important tool of survival by the slaves of the antebellum era. The content of many Negro spirituals consisted of a religious theme. However, Negro spirituals were not intended to be religious. The primary purpose of Negro spirituals was to mislead an overseer or the plantation owner.

    Read More

  • The Fisk Jubilee Singers: The African-American Spiritual

    307 Words  | 1 Pages

    The African-American spiritual was created in a time of horrible US history. Spiritual which is derived from the words spiritual song from the King James Bible’s translation of Ephesians 5:19 which says: Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. After being brought to America and given religion they would create their own spirituals while working in the fields. The spiritual started out as a work song and then became known as the Negro Spiritual now it is called the African-American Spiritual The enslaved Africans would sing these songs to signal the run-away slaves which way to go to get to freedom. The African-American Spiritual was originally an oral tradition that describes the hardships of slavery with heavy Christian values. These songs were usually of the monophonic nature and sang in unison. Around the world the African- American Spiritual became known as the Slave Songs of the United States. The first set of African-American Spirituals to be published was in 1867. Today, the African-American Spiritual is its own genre of music and sang by many popular groups, one of which is the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

    Read More

  • Black Theology

    1507 Words  | 4 Pages

    The development of Black Theology in the United was one that shocked the nation as a whole. While in slavery, Blacks had to sneak and hold church services. This was partly because Whites felt that Blacks were not able to be accepted into heaven, and they believed that once one as a Christian they could no longer be enslaved. So to appease their conscience they would not allow Blacks to take part in theology. Due to these issues Black Theology soon originated within the United States.

    Read More

  • Black Music in Toni Morrison's Jazz

    1730 Words  | 4 Pages

    As it mentioned above, the title itself, draws attention to the world-renowned music created by African Americans in the 1920s’ as well as to the book’s jazz-like narrative structure and themes. Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues

    Read More

  • My Cultural Identity

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    Powell, A. (2007). The Music of African Americans and its Impact on the American Culture in the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Miller African Centered Academy, 1. Retrieved from http://www.chatham.edu/pti/curriculum/units/2007/Powell.pdf

    Read More

  • Electronic Dance Music Festivals

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    Small, Christopher. Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music. Hanover, NH: U of New England, 1998. Print

    Read More

More about African American Music Through The Ages

Open Document