Afro-American Music

This tape is being made especially for the students who are inter­ested in Afro-American music. This text is being made by Portia Maultsby Ph. D., of Indiana University in America.

The first thing I would like to say is: Afro-American music has its roots in African music. The blacks in America came from Africa and therefore their culture is rooted in that of African traditions. For many years Americans didn't acknowledge the African heritage of the black population, but instead wanted to describe the culture of this group as being an imitation (and a poor one at that) of Euro-American cul­tures. But today it is widely acknowledged that the traditions and customs and, in general, the culture of Afro-Americans is based on the cultures of Central and West Africa, the two regions from which most of the black people came to America.

Because the culture was very different, it was described in negative terms. European travellers — the missionaries from Europe as well as the slave holders who were from Europe but living in America — often described the music, the traditions and activities of slaves as barbaric, pagan, indecent, and all sorts of other negative terms were used. This culture again being an African culture was aesthetically very different from that of Europe. Because the culture was seen as pagan and bar­baric and primitive the Europeans decided that black Americans should learn to be more like them and act like them. They therefore intro­duced various aspects of their culture into that of the slaves.

One of the first traditions introduced to slaves was that of their western ways of worship, meaning Christianity. They instructed the slaves in the principles of Christianity, which involved teaching them the Christian psalms and hymns.

Blacks, however, or the slaves, did not sing the songs as taught to them by the Euro-Americans, nor did they worship in the way that they were taught by these people. What they did was to reinterpret the religious culture of the Europeans to conform to an African way of religion and an African way of singing.

This African way may be described as the use of call-and-response structures, or what is known as a leader-chorus structure. In using this structure, which we also refer to as a form, an individual impro­vises one line of text, and the group of singers — or in this case the

congregation — responds with a line of text which is repeated as a response after each improvised line of text.

The whole notion of improvisation is African in its origin. The other characteristic that distinguished African and slave singing from that of their European counterparts was the addition of hand clap­ping and foot stamping to the music, as musical accompaniment. In Africa, drumming and hand clapping were the major sources of in­strumental accompaniment. But in America, whites forbade blacks after period of time to play drums.

The reason for this was that the slave holders realized that these drums were being used to communicate messages for slaves to gather and revolt or run away. So laws were enacted to forbid slaves from playing drums or illegally gathering without the supervision of whites. But there were too many slaves to be controlled by whites, and at night they would slip away in the forest regions and meet and discuss their plans. Or there were too many slaves to be instructed by the few white ministers that were available. And in time slaves began to conduct their own religious services.

So it is in this context and away from whites that American black slaves were able to develop a culture that in its earlier stages was very African, and then later, as slaves interacted more with European cultures, the culture that eventually evolved among blacks was known

as Afro-American.

It is important to keep in mind that the Afro-American culture is not purely African, but yet is derived from African values, aesthetics and a way of thinking. And because it is not purely African we cannot call it an African culture in America. Whereas, the distinction can be: in earlier days, for example in the early 1700s and throughout the 1600s, blacks were celebrating African holidays; they were singing African songs; they were doing purely African dances; they were elect­ing African kings. But by the 1800s they were required to participate in the holidays of their masters, of the Europeans in America, and what they did do was to take these holidays, to take the European culture that they were forced to learn and adopt it from an African frame of reference, so that it made sense to them. Which is what they did with Christianity. It was a way in which they adapted and sur­vived in their new environment.

Another example would be that the slaves did not have access to African instruments. So they were not playing African instruments.

But what they were doing was playing instruments that they had made based on an African tradition.

They played them in an African fashion. When they learned to play European instruments they played those instruments in an Afri­can fashion.

This, then, is what we call an African frame of reference for play­ing instruments or an African frame of reference for doing something, doing anything. So our relationship to Africa can best be described in terms of the conceptual approaches to the way we do things.

One of the most distinguishing features in Afro-American culture which again is tied to African cultures is various cultural values, that give use to certain sounds and behaviours associated with the black music tradition. One such value is that music making is considered, to be a participatory communal activity, meaning that everyone par­ticipates in the event. There is not a concept of a performer and audi­ence; the audience becomes a part of the performance.

Another characteristic that is representative of culture values is the kind of sounds that we make with our voices. We like distorted sounds again, not pure sounds. Our sounds tend to be influenced by animal sounds and sounds in nature. And our approach then to a melody or creating sound to sing a note is based on certain kinds of nuances with the voices that we do. We like changes in the colour­ings of sounds; we like changes in being in a high register and moving to a low register. In essence we like variation in our musical perfor­mances; we don't like purity. That is not a culture value with us, a pure sound or a sound that is a homogeneous sound or a one like excitement and we like colour.

Many of you may be familiar with blues and jazz. And in these traditions the instrumentalists try to make their instruments sound like voices. That is why we play western instruments in a way that is different from European and white American performers.

Another example would be that of jazz musicians, in which they use the mute to create distorted and vocal sounds on the trumpet and trombone, so the instrument will sound more like "wah...wan" as opposed to the pure "dah...dah...dah".

Another feature that is common to the Afro-American music tra­dition is the embellishment of the melody, and the interjections of various kinds to the melody. For example, grunts (ugh... ugh), screams, and hollers and moans.

These sounds capture the feelings and emotions of black people. It should not be considered as extra to the music. These sounds become intricately woven into the melody, even though you may say, "Well, I don't hear melody, I just hear an insertion of a scream or a grunt." Well, that, in essence, is a part of the melody. When you take these subtleties and nuances away from the Afro-American tradition then you really don't have an Afro-American sound. They are intricate to what makes the sound unique to black people.

Therefore these features that I have just described give rise to the distinctive quality of Afro-American music.

8. Study the following text.