It is impossible to define music as just an entertaining pastime. Music holds so much spiritual and emotional wisdom. By delving into the rich and passionate history of music as whole, it makes what more modern musicians are doing that much more impactful, because one can truly see where all of this came from, where the inspiration for everything originated. Jazz music in particular started and spread, and was changed and transformed along the way to make it the powerful art form we now know today. As slaves were brought to America, they brought their traditions and culture and introduced America to a brand new style of music (Davis WIJ, 15). However, just because different styles of music are branches of each other it does not mean that they are the same. If one closely inspects the relationship between African American religious music and the Blues, one can really see all of the vision behind them. There is a beautifully strong connection between early African American religious music and the music that is culturally accepted as the Blues. The two have really strong roots in the African American community. They share a lot of similarities when it comes to the actual music itself. "Theoretically speaking, it is impossible to separate African American religious music from blues " (Davis AAM, 117). This means that at their cores, the two genres are virtually inseparable. The main distinction between the two comes with the message that they are trying to send. It will be demonstrated and proven that when both histories are really dissected, it is clear why the two are so indisputably entangled.
Music coming out of the era of slavery is now known as coming out of the time period dubbed the Great Awakening. Slaves were treated like they were malleable, like anything their owners wanted to change about them was easily accomplished. Obviously, religion was a huge factor, as slaves were forced to switch their religious beliefs.
That unique song was the African American spiritual. ... The blues is a style of music that began in America in the early 20th century. ... Some influential African American blues artists were W.C. Handy (the father of the blues), Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith just to name a few of the early pioneers. ... People felt that the blues sound should not be mixed with religious music. ...
African American music has been called "( ) the musical Lingua Franca of the world [because] everyone listens to African American music and relates to it."... The next era of African American music was called, "Classical African American Music (1860s -1950s)." ... This new type of song was called the, "Blues," and although it had the same music fell and tone of spirituals, it differed "from spirituals because they [were] very wordily instead of religious" (Cone 99). ... Blues was the first African American style to be not only recorded but also played on national radio. ... This music did a gr...
The purpose of this report was for me to research and explore the connection between African American women and music. Since prior to the slave decades, music has been an integral part of African American society, and served as a form of social, economic, and emotional support in African American communities in the past and present. ... One of the greatest African American female blues singers was Bessie Smith. ... The twentieth century saw the development of a specific form of religious song in African American society. ... Gospel music was a way for African Americans to rejoice in the Lord. ...
Jazz music originated in the United States in the early 20th century. ... Jazz and Blues instruments came about after traditional African instruments were not allowed by the American slave owners so gradually their native songs and melodies were lost. Then later African American brought back their traditional harmonies called call and response but with Christian subjects. ... However, blues was the first solely secular form of African American based music with the birth of ragtime and jazz following closely behind ". ... "Jelly Roll Morton music was a bridge between Ragtime and early Jazz. ...
The purpose of this report was for me to research and explore the connection between African American women and music. Since prior to the slave decades, music has been an integral part of African American society, and served as a form of social, economic, and emotional support in African American communities in the past and present. ... One of the greatest African American female blues singers was Bessie Smith. ... The twentieth century saw the development of a specific form of religious song in African American society. ... Gospel music was a way for African Americans to rejoice in the Lord. ...
A horrific chapter in history had begun, and neither Africa nor America would be the same again. Approximately ten million Africans were brought across the seas to the Americas to be manipulated into slavery. ... This neo-African culture included African-American styles of dance and storytelling, work and spirituality, conversation and community. ... The earliest folk-blues were sung by nameless African-Americans living and working in the South's cotton belt in the early 1880's and 1890's- in particular, the region from the Mississippi Delta to East Texas. ... Blues music ...
After the Industrial Revolution, true folk music began to disappear, and the popular music of the Victorian era and the early 20th cent. ... Beginning with ragtime in the 1890s, black Americans had begun combining complex African rhythms with European harmonic structures, a synthesis that would eventually create jazz. ... The ability of radio broadcasting to reach rural communities aided the dissemination of new styles, notably country music, and to a lesser extent blues. ... Presley and Little Richard, soon developed as an amalgam of rhythm and blues with country music and other influences (s...
Popular music in the early forty's consisted of jazz, swing, bebop, country, honky-tonk, gospel, classical, and waltzes. ... Rhythm and blues was popular among the African-American population of America, but until the early 1950's, white people had little interest in rhythm and blues. Two men, wanting to make a profit and expand the growing music business even more, exposed rhythm and blues to white teenagers. In 1951, Allen Freed, a disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio teamed up with Leo Mintz, one of Cleveland's largest record store owners, to introduce traditionally African Amer...
Cultural Comparisons As mentioned earlier, often Native Americans or African Americans are referred to as a single group when in fact they are comprised of hundreds of individual tribes. ... Music was a crucial part of African and later African American society. ... African American music roots, however have led to many popular music revolutions. Simple field hollers of the cotton fields of a single person singing out a changing line with others answering a repetitive answer turned into Call and Response, a very common musical element found in Blues and Jazz music. Blues and Jazz roots led int...
