African American Music Flashcards
The idea of “creolized” forms of music are the product of what?
transculturation
about 600,000 slaves were brought to the USA. The number of 4 million slaves in the USA reported by 1860 includes the growth of population through the many generations of slaves.
There is some evidence showing that black and white musicians were performing together and there was a mix of musical traditions during the 1700s, but we don’t know what it sounded like, or to what extent their musics changed.
What is Antebellum Slavery?
The period from 1776–1865 is called Antebellum Slavery (antebellum meaning occurring before a war, and usually with reference to the American Civil War from 1861–1865). Antebellum slavery refers to America’s independent political rule that maintained slavery. Slaves were mostly in the South-eastern USA for farming of tobacco and cotton. The Northern states (generally) believed in the freedom of slaves, whereas slavery defined the economic system of the South.
How is survivals of African Cyclical music important?
Cyclical music is primary in Sub-Saharan African music (including West Africa but across the Southern continent to the Southwest such as Zimbabwe):
polyrhythms played by instruments, drums, and handclapping, with short phrases (like riffs) to generate rhythmic momentum, and many times accompanied by dancing.
Complex rhythms are layered and built up through consistent repetition of short cycles.
As a generalization, this is very important to African American music (and popular music) with short repeated forms like the 12-bar blues, or even AABA and verse-chorus structures.
What is timbral variation? what music is it central to?
timbral variation—the constant manipulation of sound quality—is central to black music. The textbook has some examples. How people played the diddley bow is a great example, and one you should pay attention to in the video this week.
What are some two of the most important aspects of african music that have impacted popular music?
> timbral variation—the constant manipulation of sound quality—is central to black music. The textbook has some examples. How people played the diddley bow is a great example, and one you should pay attention to in the video this week.
improvisation. It is also important because, as we have seen already, it is a signature of black musicality (sometimes construed as negative in Minstrelsy, but also very positive in cases like Louis Armstrong and jazz).
What is the importance of blue notes and the blues scale?
The basis of African musics is not major or minor scales (like those we hear in classical music).
The manner of singing comes from bending in and out of notes within the octave, not discrete steps like do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.
Blue notes are notes that “scoop” or “bend” the pitch. The blues scale was devised as a system to think about bent notes that are commonly performed according to the major scale.
Know that melodies in popular music are many times based on blue notes, providing evidence that a lot of melody (and sometimes harmony) are based on African survivals, not European music.
What is the diddley bow?
diddley bow: It is a homemade instrument with a single string (or wire) affixed to (usually) a wooden object. A traditional way of playing the diddley bow is to strike the string and change its pitch or timbre with a glass object (shown in the image above).
What is a griot? What of the griot tradition in the USA?
Griots are musicians, historians, sources for spreading news, and holders of various moral stories. In Africa, a griot usually plays a stringed instrument, accompanied by singing, telling stories, or a rhythmic declamatory style of speech-singing. It is similar to rap: poetry set to music and usually with a moral story.
The griot tradition continued in the USA as entertainment: telling stories in an oral (not written) tradition.
What is important about how a griot tells his story?
It is rhythmic with energy that builds. If there is something different between black and white music, black music has more value attached to how something is performed, not just the message or what notes we hear in the music.
What are work songs? what musical characteristic was especially common in work songs?
Work songs (or slave songs) have a long tradition of singing to accompany work. One function was to pass the time; another was to create a cohesive social group for work; another was to pass down stories to younger generations. Work songs are also an oral tradition, with common themes of resistance (whether real or imagined) and the lived experience of slavery.
Call-and-response was common in work songs. A leader would begin a phrase (the antecedent phrase) and the workers would join in singing, sometimes during the antecedent phrase (they would know the song) or sometimes responding with the consequent phrase.
Describe the Sacred music tradition.
Christianity was introduced to the African-American community in 1740. This movement, called the Great Awakening (for all British and American cultures) centred on Evangelical Christianity, primarily in the Pentecostal and Baptist churches. Its practices include the following:
1) Dramatic Conversions
2) “Glossolalia” (Gift of Tongues)
3) Spiritual Healing
4) Mass Baptism
5) Religious Experience through the Theological Doctrine
In the 1790s, there was the founding and fast growth of black churches throughout the USA. More than places of worship, they were important centres of community activity and significant for the preservation and learning of music (a tradition that continues to have a large impact on popular music today).
6) Animated Preaching Style
What is lined hymnody?
Singing in the church was an oral tradition called lined hymnody, or lining out. A leader (e.g., the reverend or other church member) would know a hymn (the melody and text of a religious song) and prompt the congregation for singing. The leader is singing a line (lining out) for its repetition. The leader would sing a phrase, and it would be repeated by the congregation. Sometimes, the congregation would know the hymn, and start singing after the leader began. It is a form of call-and-response.
What are spirituals?
A large body of African American sacred music is called spirituals. They typically have “blues” features (scoops and bent notes), and are either monophonic (a single singer) or performed by a chorus.
Who where the Fisk Jubilee Singers?
African-American chorus from Nashville, Tennessee.
Fisk University was founded in 1867 as the first college for African-Americans. Fisk had poor financial backing and started a group called the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1871.
This travelling group raised money to support the university and created the concert spiritual.
The group took traditional African-American spirituals and sung them in a bel canto style (a “beautiful voice” style typical of Italian opera).
In the first seven years of their tour, they raised approximately $150,000 to save the university from bankruptcy and help build its campus. (Using an inflation calculator, $150,000 in 1878 equates to over $3.5 million today.) Many of the audiences for their tour were white with this music sung in concert halls.
What is Gospel Quartet Singing?
There was a new style of singing developed in the 1880s called Gospel Quartet Singing. African-American men in barbershop quartets were an important part of the development of barbershop harmony. Many of their songs were sacred texts set to barbershop singing.
