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Music: Its Purposes in the African American Community Other

" (Epstein 21). However, slaves did dance and chant often because the enslavers felt that this would give them some relief from the cruelties of slavery. Around 1650 unified songs began to develop in the slave communities (mainly due to their learning of the English language). These songs were called "folk songs," and although they were in English they still contains some African terms in them. In the late 1700s, slaves began to learn how to play various European instruments (like the piano). By the "end of the seventeenth century they [slaves] were already playing the fiddle [and other stringed instruments]." (Epstein 21). The reason why slaves were playing these instruments was that the enslavers wanted cheap entertainment at the various holiday and publics events. Around the 1750s, slaves began to regularly, sing songs during work. These songs " gave rhythm to regular labor [or] just [used] to past time." (Locke 160). In the late 1800s, enslavers want to covert slave to Christians and replace work songs and folk songs, with evangelical hymns This failed, but the negro spiritual was born; which were folk songs as "composition[s] performed with religious expression." (Locke 21). Spirituals were an interesting type of song; because it was the first time slave songs were uniform all over America, (the same spirituals used in South Carolina were used in Mississippi). In the 1800s, an event occurred that changed the slave community. A civil war broke out in America and when it was over the slaves were free; the slave community had just become the black community.
             Slave music had a very interesting affect on the salve community. The affect it had on the slave community was the one thing enslavers feared, unity. The enslavers were at first "concerned about the gathering of crowds of slaves and ( ) took action as early as 1695 ( )." (Epstein 59). Later, with work songs, they misinterpret several of the songs as revolt threats and eventually there were massive bans on certain types of songs.


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