ipl-logo

West African-American Slavery

1140 Words5 Pages

Blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American slaves.
Without African slaves from West Africa, there would be no blues music. The immediate predecessors of blues were the Afro-American/American Negro work songs, which had their musical origins in West Africa. It is impossible to say how old the blues are but it is certainly no older than the presence of Negros in the United States. The African slaves brought their music with them to the New World. This is the starting point of this essay, the African slave trade. This essay will also discuss the origins of the blues, African-particularly West African influences in the blues, religious aspects of the blues and the “Delta” musicians and singers of the 1920s-1930s. …show more content…

The first British settlement in North America was Jamestown, established in 1607. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the British slave trade brought ever increasing numbers of West Africans to Jamestown and other Atlantic coastal towns. Sources testify that during this period the African population was particularly concentrated in rural areas of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. On board the slave ships, the slave traders encouraged music and dance, to prevent the slaves falling into depression. Music was a form of therapy and freedom for the captives. African musical instruments purchased on the Guinea coast were played on board the ships. Due to this the knowledge of several African instruments reached America, in particular North America. These instruments include the one-string West African bowed lutes, two-stringed plucked lutes, flutes and drums. An eighteenth-century “African drum” from Virginia is held in the British Museum. This goblet-shaped single-headed drum is only known from the Guinea Coast. This poses a question whether these West African instruments arrived in the hands of the African slaves or in the hands of their captors. Or did these people make the instruments themselves using only local materials. However these instruments came into existence they became the early instruments of the blues, as did the guitar, fiddle, mandolin, mouth harmonica and …show more content…

Many blues texts might also be based on another well-known genre the slaves brought along from Africa: songs of mockery and denunciation by which unacceptable social behaviour is castigated in a symbolic manner. Songs of denunciation and songs of praise are both part of a larger class of songs of social

Show More
Related

How Did Romare Bearden Influence August Wilson

1501 Words | 7 Pages

“In a 1999 interview in The Paris Review, Mr. Wilson cited his major influences…the blues was the primary influence, followed by Jorge Luis Borges, the playwright Amiri Baraka and the painter Romare Bearden” (NY Times). The blues is different from other forms of music because it was only recorded by memory and was passed down through generations of African Americans. It began in North Mississippi in post-Civil War times. The blues music was influenced by African roots, church music, and rhythmic dance tunes which were called jump-ups. An evolution of African music created in the United States by slaves influenced the blue.

Read More

How Did The Blues Affect The Harlem Renaissance

783 Words | 4 Pages

“The Harlem Renaissance and the Blues” Birthed in the Mississippi Delta, the blues would have un-denying roots from the South. However, long before any form of blues genre came about, slave music expressed the sorrows of the African American experience. At the turn of the 20th century black communities in the south continued the tradition of musical expression by performing in small shacks all around the Delta. It was in these juke joints, that famous artist such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters first performed. With the cotton industry taking a turn for the worst many African Americans were living very undesirable.

Read More

Sonny's Blues: The Harlem Renaissance

934 Words | 4 Pages

Sonny's Blues was written in 1957, 37 years after the roaring twenties had come to an end. Long after the great Migration, where millions of blacks moved to northern cities to escape Jim Crow, and embrace the new found possibilities offered. During this period African-Americans in New York, collectively gathered in Harlem mainly, it was usually alluded to as the black capital. There blacks shared culturally and also, influenced music greatly. This is also where the "new negro" persona was crafted, blacks were no longer going to be referred to as someone's mammies or boy.

Read More

Negro Slave Songs In The United States Summary

640 Words | 3 Pages

According to Fisher, long before Africans were brought to America as slaves, music had been a major part of their culture. It wasn’t until they became enslaved that the songs began being used to pass down history. They began creating secret meetings, particularly held on Sundays, to discuss their freedom. These meetings allowed the slaves to come together and create a language that the whites couldn’t understand. Slaves typically did not know how to read or write, so they used their own codes in their songs that were difficult for outsiders to understand.

Read More

Semester Research Report

1067 Words | 5 Pages

But today, because of them, we use music to describe everything that happens to us in life. We use it as a way to free ourselves from the world around us just like the slaves freed themselves from slavery. No one will ever understand the real pain the slaves went through under the rule of the white men, until someone actually experiences what they went through. Their music is the closest thing that we have that can help us understand what they went through. And one day, all of those African slaves that suffered on earth will be at peace in

Read More

African American Music In The 1930's

929 Words | 4 Pages

The blues as an art form is an example of the socio-economic and cultural limitations placed upon African Americans in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Discrimination and segregation limited African American’s opportunities to have well-paying jobs that allowed for social exchange in traditional forms and equal representation in cultural products of the time. One of the few opportunities to work against this system was a performer and song writer for African American music. In this way the blues were used as a meeting ground for African Americans to share in their common plight. Many songs, while not directly focused on social issues, would focus on the day to day sufferings of a suppressed people and their sorrows.

Read More

Theme Of Blues In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

928 Words | 4 Pages

There are many controversies and interpretations surrounding this novel. Some argue that it is a story about going from invisibility to visibility, from ignorance to enlightenment through the naming of the self and identity (Neighbors). Yet others like Gene Bluestein argue that it is a story that through the blues shows the story of the American identity and equality (Bluestein). I will mostly agree with Bluestein that this novel does show obvious “bluesy” tendencies since it backs my understanding of the novel which is a story, like Neighbors said, about coming “from ignorance to

Read More

Comparing Blues And Gospel

430 Words | 2 Pages

   What do you feel when you hear the word “Blues”? Many people believe that the blues is all about sadness, depression, and feeling down. In fact, that is true. Blues music originated during the slavery years in North Mississippi. Its roots came from various forms of African American slave songs, such as work songs, spirituals, field hollers, love, hope, country string ballads, and many other things.

Read More

Essay On Chicago Blues

1005 Words | 5 Pages

Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, most music was work music or spirituals which were sung without musical instruments. While students of history know the musical classes that moves the blues, there isn 't much data regarding why the class was made. Modest and convenient instruments including the harmonica and guitar was effortlessly acquired and added to the spirituals as of now made by African Americans. The expansion of instruments could be the making of the blues. The blues rapidly got to be prominent among the African American audience members and the sound would in the long run be perfected bringing about sub-classifications including the Delta blues which started in the Mississippi Delta.

Read More

History Of The Delta Blues

2121 Words | 9 Pages

The blues is the earliest genre of music to come from the United States. It started as the poor, often slaves, singing or playing music on whatever they could afford. Blues can trace its origins back to slaves and the poor of the U.S., who sang and played whatever acoustic instruments they could find. As the blues became more popular and mainstream, it began to take shape as a real genre. One of the first mainstream musicians was Charley Patton.

Read More

The Blues History

398 Words | 2 Pages

The History of the Blues In the music world, the blues is probably one of the saddest forms of music out there. When upset, a blues artist would take their instrument of choice and start to play out their feelings and emotions. The whole point of it was to share what it is like to be ‘feeling blue’ (Blues History).But where did this come from? Who thought of sharing their feelings through music in such a way?

Read More

Trumpet Player Poem Analysis

753 Words | 4 Pages

1. Scansion and Analysis The Harlem Renaissance was a period of revolutionary styles of music, dance, and literature that presented the hardships and culture of African Americans. The “Trumpet Player,” by Langston Hughes portrays the theme of the therapeutic effects of music through the development of an African American trumpeter’s music. The free verse poem “Trumpet Player” epitomizes the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz through the unique use of inconsistent rhymed and unrhymed lines mixed with the use of colloquialisms.

Read More

Blues: The Most Interesting Form Of American Music

157 Words | 1 Pages

There are four reasons why Blues is the most interesting form american music. First, this blues was born from form of African people in America and now more than 100 years old. the blues have strongly influenced almost all popular music including jazz, country, and rock and roll and continues to help shape music worldwide. The second is this blues music has lots of genres and depend on the place.

Read More

Essay On Blues Music

734 Words | 3 Pages

Blues music as a genre and form was developed by African Americans in the south of the United States at the end of the 19th century. The genre has origins in many cultures such as in African music, African-American work songs and European-American folk music. Blues music incorporates field hollers, shouts, chants, etc. The blues form, found in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, and also the twelve-bar blues structure, which is the most common feature. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times.

Read More

Analysis Of Refugee Blues

1115 Words | 5 Pages

In this case repetition is used to regularly insinuate a sense of desperation and isolation. In addition to this, the first two lines of the stanza rhyme. Blues music was created and first sung by the African slaves who would sing to convey their hardship and isolation from others. Blues music to the African slaves was a strategy to explain their feelings and help them cope with their suffering.

Read More

More about West African-American Slavery

Related Topics

Open Document