Music is the most widely acknowledged African American contribution to American culture. Enslaved Africans melded their traditional musical styles with the influences and realities of their new surroundings to create even more innovative sounds. Recognized and cherished the world over, African American musical genres include blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, and hip-hop, as well as their many variations.

This chapter explores those roots and traces today's sounds back to the views early Africans held about music and how they manifested that during slavery. It also explores jazz, blues, gospel, and R&B as well as hip-hop's path from humble beginnings to global exposure.

African Roots

Every African village had musicians. Some worked directly for kings or chiefs, and many such positions were hereditary. In some African cultures, musicians sat near the king or chief during various ceremonies to indicate their exalted status. Africans used several types of instruments, but drums such as the snare, congas, and bongos were the most common. Frequently, the drum served as a royal or sacred instrument. Idiophones, most typically represented by bells, gong-gongs, and xylophones, were also popular. Early European travelers, who noted that Africans highly valued music, also wrote about chordophones, string instruments that resembled fiddles. The human voice was another important instrument.

During 18th-century slave voyages, slave traders intentionally separated Africans from their own cultural groups to prevent slave revolts. So when the Africans sang aboard slave ships, slave traders never imagined they were forming new alliances. Perhaps Africans, themselves, didn't initially know that music would become one of their defining cultural links.

Technical Stuff

Ironically, slave owners also valued the musical ability of their slaves and sometimes included it as an attractive feature in slave sale announcements. Slaves performed at slave auctions, and notices for runaway slaves even referenced musical talents. Enterprising masters hired musicians out, spawning the tradition of blacks entertaining whites.

African American Music Fundamentals

To illustrate the basic fundamentals found in African American music overall, scholars often point to the ring shout, a religious ritual performed in a circle comprised of shouters (or dancers) and singers, which is the oldest known African American performance style. The common features are

* Call-and-response: Also known as antiphony, the leader sings a line and the other participants answer in unison. Music wasn't a solitary act; observers were encouraged to participate by clapping, dancing, and joining in the refrain. This call-and-response format is an important feature of all African-based music, especially African American music.

* Vocality: Includes cries, calls, hollers, and moans, among other expressions. In addition, singers display an intense emotionality as well as vocal versatility.

* Rhythm: Polyrhythm, the existence of two contrasting rhythms, as well as improvisation and syncopation, the stressing of a normally unstressed beat, are typical in African American music.

* Texture: Includes harmony and the simultaneous performance of the same melodic line with individual variations. In the absence of drums and other instrumental accompaniment, clapping and foot patting enhance the texture of the voice.

Technical Stuff

Although the ring shout has typically been attributed to the South, it existed among Northern blacks as well. Until the discovery of the McIntosh County Shouters in Georgia in 1980, however, the ring shout was believed to be extinct.

Feeling the Spirit: The Spirituals

Spirituals represent the greatest body of African American songs created before the Civil War. Distinguished American folklorist and musicologist Alan Lomax noted the repetition, relaxed vocalization, and polyrhythmic accompaniment common in spirituals was consistent with the performance style found throughout Africa. Some spirituals even contain African melodies. Although all traditional spirituals feature the call-and-response element routinely found in African American music, thematic content make them uniquely African American. Freedom, faith, struggle, hope, and patience are themes born directly from slavery.

Drawing inspiration from the Bible, slave spirituals often highlighted Jacob, Daniel, Moses, and Gabriel, among other biblical figures. Death was particularly prominent, and heaven differed greatly from the real-life degradation of slavery. Slaves envisioned an afterlife with no white people or work. Also, spirituals were assigned different purposes. Certain songs accompanied funeral services, the ring shout, and everyday life as well as formal worship services.

Early spirituals were largely a communal effort composed mostly by slaves in the South; therefore, they lack exact origins and authors. African American songwriters didn't copyright spiritual hymns until 1900. Most white people were completely unaware of spirituals until after the 1867 publication of Slave Songs of the United States. This collection represented the first systematic effort to collect and preserve these songs. Lead editor William Francis Allen, a Harvard graduate, began collecting the songs from former slaves while working on St. Helena Island in South Carolina as part of the Freedmen's Aid Commission. The book categorizes the songs by state and includes other notations.

Spirituals were much more than songs of worship. Certain songs contained messages regarding secret meetings, as well as clues about escape routes for runaway slaves. Flip to Chapter 5 for more information about the role music played for runaway slaves.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers

Beginning in 1871, the Fisk Jubilee singers of Fisk University helped spread the spirituals to a larger audience through touring. University treasurer and music professor George L. White borrowed money and took nine students - seven former slaves and two children of former slaves - on the road. In high demand, the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled throughout the United States and Europe popularizing the spirituals. Most important, however, is that the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who inspired the formation of similar groups at other black colleges, set a precedent for African Americans to perform African American-oriented material abroad and break down barriers domestically. Undoubtedly, the Fisk Jubilee Singers' success contributed to the later spread of ragtime, jazz, and other forms of black music globally.