JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY

THE EVOLUTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC

FINAL PAPER SUBMITTED TO:

MR. QUINOUS JOHNSON

MUS 205-09 MUSIC APPRECIATION

BY: JOQUEZ JOHNSON

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

APRIL 17, 2018

 The earliest forms of African-American music were imported with the slaves themselves.

Slaves brought knowledge of West African musical instruments like drums, zithers, xylophones,

and the banjo. Tribal dances from West Africa morphed into “step” dances, and tribal melodies

became song styles like the “shout” and the “echo”. As slavery settled into the entrenched

peculiar institution in the South, slaves used music to ease the drudgery of their lives, and

sometimes to send messages. One of the most widespread of early musical forms among

southern blacks was the spiritual. Neither black versions of white hymns nor transformations of

songs from Africa, spirituals were a distinctly African American response to American

conditions. They expressed the longing of slaves for spiritual and bodily freedom, for safety from

harm and evil, and for relief from the hardships of slavery.

Many of the songs offered coded messages. Some, like "Follow the Drinking Gourd,

“Steal Away," and "Wade in the Water," contained coded instructions for escape to the North.

Others, like " A Motherless Child" and "I'm Troubled in Mind," conveyed the feelings of despair

that black slaves felt. The spirituals also served as critiques of slavery, using biblical metaphors

to protest the enslavement of black people. Such protest can be found in the lyrics of "Go

Down, Moses". Christianization brought the onset of Spirituals, and Gospel music is still very

important to the African American community. Spirituals allowed slaves to think about a new

world where there would be freedom from toil and strife. Message songs were also common

songs designed to send a message to other slaves without the slave owner catching on.

The end of the Civil War freed the slaves, but the cotton glut after Reconstruction left

most of the South desperately poor. A new form of music, born in depression and poverty, swept

the country, The Blues, the blues is perhaps the simplest American musical form and yet also the

most versatile. Along with jazz, blues takes its shape and style in the process of performance,
and for this reason it possesses a high degree of flexibility. Although certain musical and lyrical

elements of the blues can be traced back to West Africa, the blues, like the spiritual, is a product

of slavery. As the nation moved into the twentieth century, the blues evolved, borrowing

elements from such other musical genres as gospel and ragtime. A "country" style, in which a

solo singer accompanied himself on an acoustic guitar, also developed.

The very first reported Blues show was in 1916, on Ashley Street in Jacksonville. The

performer was Ma Rainey. She and Bessie Smith were the forerunners of this new style. The

soulful sophistication and haunting beauty of their blues performances were altogether new to

American audiences. Bessie Smith, perhaps the most famous of the classic blues singers,

epitomized the form's emotional power, while Ma Rainey's singing captured its racy, theatrical

side. The Blues was next picked up by Minstrel Shows and spread up and down the Mississippi

River. St. Louis was known for their shows.

Male Blues singers next made their mark with simple melodies and plaintive songs, like

the great Muddy Waters and, howling' Wolf, Jimmy Rogers, B. B. King, they had been trained in

the country style of acoustic guitars and solo performance. Now they built a new urban style

around electric instruments and amplification. Electric guitar, harmonica, drums, bass, guitar,

and piano were featured in many performances. Chicago blues offered a tight, "industrial" sound,

a hard-edged and hard-driving ensemble sound especially suited to telling musical stories of a

country people's adjustment to the industrial city. Chicago blues was part of the distinctive

culture country-rooted but flowering in the city

At the turn of the century, a more upbeat sound was heard from, believe it or not,

barbershops. James Weldon Johnson believed that the Barbershop Quartet had its beginnings in

Jacksonville and noted that almost every shop had its own chorus. Barbershop Quartets had
exuberant tunes done in four-part harmony and a cappella. “Echo” songs were common.

Barbershop Quartets were almost exclusively black. Because at the turn of the century, virtually

all barbers were black. It was an occupation that was open to African-Americans who didn’t

want to work in the fields. So, Minstrel Shows picked up the melodies, and Norman Rockwell

popularized the image of white barbershop quartets.

In the depths of World War, I, a new sound began sweeping the world. Originating in

New Orleans, jazz was the instrumental equivalent of the barbershop quartet. Smooth harmonies

and teamwork still are the focal point of New Orleans Jazz, as personified in the Preservation

Hall Jazz Band. Jazz was played from coast-to-coast, and exported to Europe with American

soldiers, where it quickly became the toast of Paris.

Any phenomenon as popular as jazz would surely spawn variations and themes. In

Kansas City, Charlie Parker introduced brass to jazz bringing in swing rhythms and saxophones

and trumpets. In Chicago, the first jazz soloists appeared. Many, like Louis Armstrong, would

become famous. In New York, the jazz swing rhythms were amplified into full scale orchestras,

ushering in the Swing Era. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie all

had bands, and the Cotton Club in Harlem became a chic destination.

While several black female concert singers have achieved great popularity during the last

fifty years, their success is not altogether new. Their way was paved by earlier classical singers

like Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield. The first of the widely known black vocalists, Greenfield made

her debut in 1853 in Philadelphia in a recital that was well reviewed in the white press. Other

early African American singers, all sopranos, were Nellie Mitchell Brown, Maria Williams,

Rachel Walker and many others but these women were praised for their wide vocal range and the

brilliance of their singing

 Their careers were brief, however, and when the vogue for black sopranos ended in the

1890s, most retired from the concert stage. Black concert singers continued to perform before

black audiences into the twentieth century, and a few gained wider popularities, among them the

contralto Marian Anderson. Although a white group tried to prevent her from performing,

Anderson became the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.

During the war, up until the 1930s, the Great Migration found many African-Americans

moving to northern cities. Unfortunately, the North was not the Promised Land to many, who

still faced poverty, unemployment, and racism. Beginning in Detroit, a new sound emerged. The

Swing Era sound picked up a faster beat, more bass, fewer instruments, and burst onto the music

world as “Rhythm and Blues” or R&B. This was pioneered by a small record company in Detroit

called “Motown”. Motown signed groups like the Supremes and the Chi-Lites, and solo stars like

Ray Charles and the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.

By the 1980s, problems in urban living had reached a climactic level. Poverty, crime,

drugs, and violence threatened to tear apart the fabric of African-American life. In this emotional

maelstrom, a new form of music was born. It was a lament against urban poverty, like the Blues

had been a lament against rural poverty. Also, like the Blues, it touched a chord and quickly

spread everywhere. Early rap skipped instruments entirely, just using lyrics and a bass beat. It

became most popular when it morphed into hip-hop and returned some instruments to the mix.

Some hip-hop is still raw and vulgar, reflecting the hard life on the streets, but many artists have

moved more mainstream.

Rap is the most complex and influential form of hip-hop culture, combining elements of

the African American musical tradition with Caribbean calypso, dub, and dance-hall reggae.

Two of its earliest innovators were West Indians, DJ Kool Herc and Grand-master Flash. The
Jamaican DJ Kool Herc was known for using massive speaker systems and multiple turntables to

loop "break beats" into an endless groove of dance beats. Like all the early hip-hop disc jockeys,

Kool Herc used beats from all types of music from rock to soul, thus breaking down the artificial

barriers between different musical categories. Sometimes he would recite or talk over the beats.

This was one of the earliest forms of rapping. To sound-system technology and break beats, the

Barbadian Grandmaster Flash added "scratching," a technique of spinning records back and forth

quickly to create new rhythms and unusual sounds.

Many rappers tell tragic tales of decaying neighborhoods, vicious murders, and police

brutality. Others celebrate black history, black families, and black communities, or they brag of

their successes in the bedroom, on the streets, and in the record studio. Women rappers like

Queen Latifah and Yo-Yo complicate these subjects by celebrating female empowerment. In

telling their ghetto-centric tales, male and female rappers make use of both American and black

popular culture. Above all, rap lyrics consistently attack economic and political inequalities,

waging a full scale assault on the institutions that keep most African Americans in poverty. The

combination of gritty urban storytelling and beat-driven, technologically sophisticated music

keeps hip-hop on the cutting edge of musical innovation.

Since rap exploded into the mainstream in the mid-1980s, it has generated many different

schools and styles. Local crews have become regional possess: The West Coast rap style of Ice

T, Ice Cube, and Snoop Doggy Dog has battled for ascendancy over the original East Coast style

of Run D.M.C., KRS-One, and Gang Starr.

 Works Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_music

https://nofi.fr/2017/02/history-of-black-music-from-plantation-to-the-white-house/35687

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/african-american-music/roots-of-african-american-music