... of slave music in the United States: a secular music that consisted of field hollers, shouts, and moans that used folk tales and folk motifs, and that made use of homemade instruments from the banjo (which became a standard American instrument in the 19th century, largely through minstrelsy), tambourine, and calabashes to washboards, pots, spoons, and the like. From the 1740s, many states ... had banned the use of drums in fear that Africans would use them to create a system of communication in order to aid rebellion. Nonetheless, blacks managed to generate percussion and percussive sou...

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• Grade Level: High School