Black American music is vitally important to the creation of such musical genres as jazz and blues. Today's R&B and hip hop music are thought to be direct descendants of the original forms of African-American music, which have their origins in the slave trade to the new world.
History
Black American music has its beginnings back in the early 1600s, when slaves were first brought to America from Africa by slave traders. Slaves were stripped of all of their possessions when they were brought to the new world, but they salvaged their culture through their music.
While slavery was not as prevalent in the north as it was the south, it still existed in all the colonies. Slaves were mostly house servants in the north, and that allowed them more freedom to express their culture in public than in the south.
By the early 1700s, black gospel music started to become popular among all parts of northern society. In 1723, an African-American man named Nero Benson went on record as the first black musician in American military history when he enlisted as a trumpeter in the United States army.
In 1729, the northern United States interest in African-American music was realized with the first public performance of African-American music.
Following the acceptance of African-American culture in the north, many more public displays of African-based music began to appear.
Features
One of the earliest known public expressions of Black American music were festivals known as Pinksters. Accounts of Pinkster festivals began appearing in New York newspapers in early 1737. They were described as festivals filled with African music, played on replicas of African instruments, and displays of cultural dances.
The northern United States was very anti-slavery, and instances of this free expression of African music and culture began to appear in northern publications with a slant towards the abolitionist point of view.
Significance
As early as 1620, English explorers had made note of how important music was to African culture.
British explorers and traders such as Richard Jobson and James Houstoun made detailed notes of their contact with several tribes in Africa, and one of the common themes in all of their writings is the strong presence of music in African society. Houstoun made note of instruments such as drums and horns being used to greet him upon his arrival to the court of an African king named King Conny.
Drums became an important part of Black American music as it began to develop. The rhythms that were brought over from those African tribes to America, became an integral part of Black American music such as jazz, blues and hip hop.
The idea of the horn being important to African music comes out in the evolution of jazz, which eventually included such legendary horn players as Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong.
Types
The three core types of African-American music are known as jazz, blues and gospel music.
Gospel music includes religious hymns that started in the fields sung by slaves as they worked. In the northern United States, prior to the Civil War, many publications of black gospel sheet music and lyrics began appearing in response to the growing interest in black music.
Blues is basically the religious story-telling leanings of gospel set to the primal rhythms of guitars and drums. Early blues began in the south near the delta of the Mississippi River, and was taken to different parts of the United States by African-Americans looking to escape the severe poverty in the south.
Jazz is often referred to as a uniquely American form of music that came to prominence around the turn of the 20th century.
Considerations
African tribes often used what was referred to as a "talking drum" for their form of communication. They used music and dance to tell stories, relay news, and get messages from one tribe to another. In this way African society developed a deep dependence on music as a primary form of communication.
This dependence on music as a way of communicating was brought to America, and is considered a driving force behind the creation of all Black American music down through American history.
