User:LilMoney123/African-American Music Appreciation Month

African American Music Background

African American spirituals, Gospel and folk music all played a virtual contribution In the fight for equal rights. "Singers and musicians collaborated with ethnomusicologists and song collectors to disseminate songs to activists, both at large meetings and through publications"... They sang these songs to motivate them through protests, for mental strength through harassment and brutality The African American spiritual is one of the largest forms of Folk-song.In Africa, music was very important to people's lives; music-making surrounded important life events and daily duties. However, the white colonists of North American hated and looked down on African-infused ways of praise because they consider it to be uncivilized, so they banned the meetings. And African Americans would have met up in special locations like the 'praise house". or outside in meetings called "bruh arbor meetings. At these meetings African Americans would vent out by singing, chanting, dancing and sometimes even entering in ecstatic trances. Christianity wasn't introduced to African Americans in the American colonies until the seventeenth century. The slave population grew to love the biblical stories, how it contained parallels to their own life. Christianity made a permanent mark on the slave population. Spirituals opened up a way for the community to express there new faith, as well as there struggles and dreams. Also "Spirituals are sometimes regarded as codified protest songs, with songs such as "Steal away to Jesus," composed by Wallis Willis, being seen by some commentators as incitements to escape slavery". During the underground rail-road of the mid-nineteenth century used slang words from railroads to help slaves to freedom."Hard evidence was hard to come by because helping slaves was illegal. One Spiritual that was defiantly used as a code to flee to freedom was "Go down, Moses." song by Harriet Tubman to identify herself to the slaves who might be looking for freedom.

"African Americans can not be separated from the Transatlantic slave and the forced transportation of millions of African people across the Atlantic who were then enslaved". The culture from which they came from and the struggle and pain from which they endured contributed to what is known as African American music. Also, many features from African American music likewise ties back to African tradition, such as the call and an immersive singing approach. Slaves had literary had no freedom or education so the music was passed down orally. So the songs would change, not just from singer to singer but from day to day when sung by the same musician. "Music was a solace, a community builder, and voice for hope during enslavement and afterward, in the day of reconstruction during Jim Crow.

Genres of music

Sacred music

One of the genres celebrated during African American Music Was Sacred music A style of singing psalms and hymns called"shape-noting singing" came about in the eighteenth century.

The "White spirituall" Is not as famous as its cousin, the "Negro Spiritual". Both share symbolism the recordings are somewhat of a common origin with African American spiritual.On 1943, Willis James made a field recording at Lincoln park, singers were performing "ill fly away", which was made by a white man. This performance illustrates the relation between black and white spirituals of African American appreciation month.

Freedom songs based on spirituals have also helped to define struggles for democracy. Not only for African Americans but in other countries like Russia, China, and South Africa. Even in today's time popular pop artists continue to draw on the spiritual tradition for new protest songs. An example is Bob Marley "redemption song