African Music Field Songs

a. Field hollers: Field song that followed a “call and response” mechanism. When one started the song, others would join in rhythmic tone of the call.
b. Work songs: Songs that were sung while working at the field. These songs were different from that of Native Americans because the slaves did not farm their own lands.

c. Spirituals: a form of music developed by African Americans that had heavy rhythmic patterns and Christian beliefs; This genre contained themes of oppression, hope, community, and Christianity.

d. Street cries: Short lyrical calls of merchants yelling their products and services in markets

e. Ring shouts: A religious ritual in which worshippers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands.

2. Work songs formed a link between pure African music and the music that

Christianity was especially attractive to African captives because they 1) had traditional respect for Gods, 2) had an intensely religious culture, 3) revered water Gods, 4) saw similarities with themselves in oppressed Jews searching for the promise land, 5) thought the idea of afterlife was appealing and 6) found church and praise to be a social focal point free from their owner’s domination.

2. Early Afro-Christian music differed from work songs in that the content in Afro-Christian music was more religious. Not only that but it was more melodic and musical because it was sung rather than “hollered.”

3. The Negro church played a social role among many Africans and African Americans. For example, the church formed hierarchies and a center for social life. It also formed a center for abolition movements.

1. The first-person accounts are impactful because the stories are told as it is, not sugar coated. It speaks of their real-life experiences as slaves. Nonetheless, these accounts invoke emotions from the audience by allowing them to sympathize with the former slaves thus making the accounts more