Rimeiko Lyles rkl2114@columbia.edu Final Exam Response Paper Professor Kevin Fellezs African American Music 12/16/14 “Black” music has had a deep impact on the entire world of music, but many have had trouble trying to classify such a dynamic subset of music because of its wide-ranging acoustic qualities (Small pg. 24). How to define genres of music has been a question among scholars and people of the music industry, like Louis Jordan, for a long time for this same reason (Lectures 9/10). Does a particular song belong to a certain genre only because it meets some minimum criteria of acoustic qualities? Or does defining music go beyond its technical structures and physical characteristics? These questions become increasingly …show more content…
Musicians are constantly pushing the boundaries of their music, subsequently redefining their cultures musical identity (Lectures 9/9). Thus, trying to find a certain musical quality to define an entire culture’s music is almost futile because of the dynamic way music develops. But, some argue that similarities in a culture’s music can be traced throughout most of a culture’s sub genres, such as the openness and adaption elements that can be traced through African-American music in hip hop, soul, jazz, blues, spirituals, etc. Although this may be true, there are genres of “black” music that do not rely on the use of openness and adaption as we saw in the formally structured musical arrangements and performance style of the Fisk Jubilee singers when they were touring all over the world promoting a “white” style of performance (9/16). With that said, instead of looking for tangible musical qualities to define “black” music, it would be more appropriate to define “black” music based on the cultural background …show more content…
“Black” music does not exist simply because of innate biological differences that somehow add an element of “blackness” to the music people of African American descent produce. Instead, “black” music characterizes itself from the physical and mental conditions the people of the African American community have experienced, such as slavery, segregation, poor living conditions, racial oppression (like the slave codes), and many other situations that African Americans have experienced as a whole (Lectures 9/9 and 9/18). If “black” music is thought of as a way for African Americans to express themselves or their experiences as apart of their culture, then a black person composing a song imitating European-style classical music can still be considered “black” music as long as it expresses the “black” culture; much like the opera and classical music style that Joplin imitated in his ragtime music (Lectures 10/2). However, because of the commercial interest of the large music industry, record companies and media outlets stigmatized what “black” music should sound and feel like in order to target certain audiences with a particular genre, like the race records agenda of the early twentieth century (Lectures 10/7 and 11/20). Therefore, a black musician with a culturally diverse catalogue of music may not have his work accepted as being of black descent whether it