African American Music Essay

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Black music in the Americas has been described as one of the most complex and interesting forms of western music. A majority of the music created today could be traced back to some type of black music. African American music of the Mississippi specifically has a very distinct sound that has inspired many different types of music. This type of music culture has often been compared to that of the neo-African Caribbean. Despite the fact that afro-Caribbean and African-american have very distinct sounds they do have some similarities. In both cultures there is some form of call and response for example in the church scene it pretty much mimicked the call and response heard in most Afro-Caribbean music. Both cultures also have rhythms that are…show more content…
The music of the Mississippi delta sounds quite different from neo-African music from the Caribbean due to fact that it seems to have a lot of European influences. I noticed that in the film a lot more string instruments were being used as opposed to drums and other percussive instruments. Unlike the African slaves of the Caribbean African-american slaves were not allowed to play drums because of the strict slave codes that were meant to stop any communication between slaves. The lack of percussion instruments also takes away the poly-rhythmic sound that is associated with African and Neo-African Caribbean music. There also does not seem to be many large group settings where music is created outside of a church setting. Most of the music is sung solo which creates a disconnect between the performer and the audience which is a more European concept. This may have become more popular because most slaves were mixed which meant that they did not a group of people that share the same culture. It was also mentioned in the film that a lot of the songs came from sadness. One man said that “Singing wasn’t no joy in it whatsoever.” (35:20) although music from the Caribbean also had lyrics about hardship African-American music sounds much more
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