Blues

• Europeans brought cultural music with them, although the music that came out of the experience of the slaves is considered to be unique
• There are other places in America where slaves were present but did not develop the same type of culture in music → mixed elements of European society and African culture
• Acculturation


  Marker of the culture you come from
• Assimilation


  Minority culture is totally absorbed
• Assimilation is harder if considered an outsider, so that you'll have the tendency to retain aspects of the culture. This happened with African Americans → did not feel welcomed due to all their differences, they retained their culture
• At the time of the slave trade, Africa was not unified, depending on where you lived in Africa you had a different culture or spoke a different language = Africans all had a different background that will represent an obstacle in America to keep traditional culture alive
• Slave traders would separate people to their origins in Africa so they would not be able to understand each other, as they all had a different culture and could not resist slaveholders
• Certain elements of African culture survive – culture is a style of life, manners of independence, hospitality or a general way of looking at the world
• Tribes


  • Shared the same idea of past, present and future
  • The way they see religion is very different than white people (Christianity is different than religions related to nature, where everything is a God, the spirits are all over)
  • The way they relate to religion and incorporate heroes in religion is different from white people's Christianity – they worship differently, because they have retained some of the original elements of African religions
• Different vision of time


  Constitutes a sort of common identity and worldview capable of standing slavery = people who went through it were able to survive it and create music out of it
• Culture is not a fixed condition by a process, but it continuously changes, depending on the reality of a situation. Each period has a song that is a product of that time, as well as the melody that is taken from different genres ⇒ speaks volume about how the community has evolved
• Blues could never have existed (born in the end of 19th century) while slaves were slaves — it is a creation of the effects of emancipation, the themes talked about blues songs are about traveling, being poor and looking for work and that never occurred in spiritual songs (about religion and things not related to freedom)
• The African worldview mingles with the European one
• Europeans noticed the talent and the presence of singing in African communities (racist stereotype?) = the way Europeans evolved, both in protestantism and catholicism, they noticed that sexuality was a taboo in European society, singing was reserved for particular events → opposite for African communities, they developed music because they did not have an oppressing religion. Whites have been taught not to do these things while Africans were not oppressed by their own religions, not because they were naturally good
• Alan Lomax, a folklorist and historian, studied around the country in the 40s with his father and they would go to different segregated communities and would record the common culture of the folk. He concluded, throughout his studies, that musical style appeared to be very conservative in cultural trait = the Africans, when they became slaves, lost a lot of their traits but the musical style stayed with them along with dance techniques
• That is the case even when a new set of tunes was introduced → in slave music they unified white music with their own music = cross culture with whites (both cultures are in contact and influence each other)
• Traits that stayed in the slave communities through slavery and after emancipation


  • Antiphony (call and response, someone sings and a chorus responds)
  • Group nature
  • Pervasive functionality (music is useful everyday for different things, not reserved for special occasions)
  • Improvisational character (something spontaneous)
  • Strong relationship with dance and body movement and expression
• In songs, there are various forms of verbal arts, such as jokes and anecdotes. African American slaves gave a central role to spoken arts and verbal interpretation ⇒ participatory nature of their expressive culture. Spoken arts develop in different ways ⇒ cohesion and coded language in certain songs (protecting themselves in an implicit criticism)
• In the way they used verbal arts they criticized a certain situation. Music was a central element and a daily activity, they sang while doing everyday tasks (from cooking to painting)
• Work song


  Contracted on a call and response pattern
• In the 1830s, a white passenger on a boat with a dozen slaves noted an example of a work song, and he tried to describe the antiphony. Once the song was finished, they were able to improvise inspired by the elements around them (improvisational character) → something immediate. Elasticity ⇒ characteristic of their song, they change the form in order to adapt it to the song
• African songs


  Served a dual purpose: preserve communal values and express deeper feelings about each others or their leaders
• There are things that cannot be verbalized in normal fashion, this would last in ordinary times. The Ashanti Tribe had a belief that your soul could become ill if you repressed too much inside, so they had to let it all out without being judged ⇒ there's one day where they could freely speak their minds and used these songs to do so
• These songs served many American traditional functions
• Work songs


  There's a leader and they all follow his rhythm while working. Some of these songs could be religious but also secular and have a sexual meaning
• The Rosie song


  • A man in prison that desires to be with his girlfriend, she's so beautiful that by the time he'll get out she won't be with him anymore
• Long John


  • Unifies the gospel of John and the story of a prisoner that is escaping, sung by slaves while building the railroad
• Soul train


  • African American communities continued the tradition of the train. Famous black music show that features dancers and artists
• Different themes that comprise the content of songs sung during slavery


  • Songs sung while slaves were in boats
  • Criticizing/ridiculing their master
  • Lamenting lack of freedom
  • About white patrols
  • Dreams of a better life
  • Family separation
  • Nostalgia
  • Children's songs
  • Nonsense (had no words and were meant to diffuse a type of pressure, nowadays scat singing - example of West African singing that has left its trace)
• Slaves were also musicians, but they brought instruments (or at least knew how to play them) and played instruments in the Americas (such as banjos, but also learnt how to play European instruments, such as the guitar and the piano). A slave's talent could be fundamental → they could entertain guests and they lived in the Big Houses (not all the slaves lived in these grand structures, they were living with poor masters, in small landholdings). They could be hired out to entertain other people, the money would get to the master (so that the slave's talent was more useful to the slaveholder rather than the slave himself)
• Music was strictly related to body movements, music was entitled to it → slaves learnt how to dance like white people (such as Waltz) but their own style was distinctive and remains to this day
• Characteristics of slave dance


  • Shuffling, gliding, dragging steps
  • Fluid body position as opposed to the stiff positions of Europeans
  • Imitation of animals
  • Tendency to eschew body contact
  • Concentration on movement outward from the pelvic region (found scandalous by white people)
• The Cake Walk was some entertainment in slave quarters that was clandestine, part of popular culture today we even have parodies), it's a show that mocks the master of the plantation, mocks female mistresses as well. They recount anecdotes normally done on Sundays. It was recorded in 1772 in Charleston, South Carolina, where slaves were mocking white society hidden in one of the slave quarters (making fun of the high manners of the whites in the big house)
• The Cake Walk was very popular, many times these mocking types of behaviors were done trying to cover the true aspect of the entertainment, the mocking aspect was actually hidden and the white master thought it was funny (double-entendre aspect, only one part of the crowd knows the hidden message behind the entertainment)
• Secular songs have only recently discovered their importance, negro spiritual songs predominated when slave culture was studied. Most people thought they only sang religious songs, possibly that the songs sung by slaves were religious, but secular songs may have been purposely hidden from whites
• Early white scholars of slave culture tended to underline the biased vision of docile nature of blacks, By the time of the Civil War there was a wide conversion to Christianity, the revival of the previous years also had a great impact (1730s The Great Awakening → responsible for spreading Christianity in southern plantations, but various revival happened, they all impacted the slave community and slowly they would adopt certain aspects of Christianity)
• Methodists tried to stop songs from being sung outside the church, trying to control slave culture
• Religious music seems superior because their slaves put all their spirituality and cosmology brought from Africa, crucial to understand the antebellum slave point of view
• White spirituals vs Black spirituals: the latter has Afro-American origin or Euro-American aspect. Scholars try to show where negro spirituals come from, but when comparing to Methodism we find similarity in matters, tunes and musical structure; significant relationship between white and black secular songs ⇒ spirituals were a white creation that had black composers of that music. White evangelical music was different from white protestant music/churches. The evangelical music is going to include: percussive qualities, complete rhythmic structure, syncopation, polymetry, overlapping patterns ⇒ characteristics of black music in Africa and all over the world (mix between white evangelical music and slave music, the latter influenced the former)
• Slaves were present as religious revivals (meaning in outdoor areas where a huge number of people can attend, there's a preacher and a pastor, a mix of both blacks and whites) and could attend Church services with whites; the contribution of blacks was so significant that whites noticed that