The History Of Forced Migration

Due to the fact of how relevant and how it shares significance today, in a world filled with instant communication and social African American Forced Migrations and the Start of Spiritual Music
It is a common notion that for music to be able to traverse and grow within different soundscapes, music must go through a form of migration. There are two different forms of migration that have been seen throughout the world’s history. The first form of migration is called Voluntary Migration. Voluntary Migration is a movement in which a group of people agree to leave their region for their own personal benefits, whether they be focused around religious or economic opportunities. Given these positive opportunities, cultures can thrive and grow and

Forced Migration is a complete contrast to what Voluntary Migration stands for and is a movement that results in destroying cultures and soundscapes. The process of Forced Migration forces groups of people, from their homeland unwillingly stripping them of their culture and forcing them to conform to a new way life, against their own choice. This process results in people longing for their nostalgia of their homeland and maintaining musical traditions as a part of their shared identity. While both of these migrations create different and unique soundscapes, one particular soundscape can be traced back through text and oral transmission and lead to the genre of music of American Spiritual, that genre of music can be traced back to the Forced Migrations of African Americans. Throughout early American history, musical repertories have shown traces of how painful and agonizing the experiences that African American’s had dealt with during the Slave era and how painful and tragic the transition was. This a moment in African American history in which developing a new culture was a difficult process, due to the fact that they were previously stripped away from their homeland and were forced to adapt a new way of life. Spirituals were introduced throughout the culture of African American Slaves as a new form of musical expression who had converted to New World

Around the time period of the Civil War, Gospel Music started to become more and more popular within the soundscape of the south. While Spiritual music focused more on traditional sense of folk songs, Gospel was gained inspiration from spiritual and focused its aesthetics on congregations and hymns with references referring back to its roots. Not only did Spiritual music have an effect on the progression of Gospel music, this lead to the creation of Blues and Jazz. Blues is typically associated with music that had evolved from African spirituals, chants, work songs and hymns that expressed through trials and tribulations from the heart of the folksongs. Jazz evolved and grew to be a popular phenomenon from the fundamentals and the premise of the Blues and instilled a genre that would become one of America most recognized genres of