African Diaspora I: the Southern U.S.
Weeks 3:
-The emergence of 18th and 19th-century African-American slave work songs and spirituals; the evolution of early 20th-century gospel.
9/10 Eileen Southern (1997), The Music of Black Americans, Chapt. 1: “The African Legacy,” (3-22).
The Transatlantic Slave Trade was the European global business of buying/trading enslaved people from Africa and selling/trading them in the Americas. The ‘middle passage’ refers to the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The ‘triangular trade’ describes three points of the trade route between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. The U.S.’s slave-trade period is usually thought of as 1619-1866, but the European history of enslaving Africans goes back to 1442 when around thirty people from Northeast Africa were sold in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1619, we have the often-cited source which tells that around twenty people from West Africa were sold in the land known then as Tsenacommacah, the land that is now called Virginia, to the English settlers and colonialists (i.e. invaders). But this was not the first time that Africans were forcibly brought to what was then a land occupied by the Indigenous, by Europeans. Around half a million Africans had already crossed the Atlantic ocean against their will by 1619. Around fifty years before that, as early as 1565, the Spanish had brought enslaved Africans to the land that is now called Florida. Also, around forty years before that date, in 1526, the Spanish had an expedition to the land that is now called South Carolina and had enslaved Africans aboard the ship with them and in that occupied territory. But this story is little known compared to the 1619 story of John Smith. What happened in 1526 is that the enslaved Africans had rebelled and caused the Spanish to abandon their territory. Also, between 1662 and 1807 the British had shipped 3.1 million Africans to the Caribbean. The point is that Southern fails to mention most of this, and gives us only the date 1619. Do you think this information is important for understanding the music of African-Americans in the U.S.?
What is Southern’s main argument? How does she support her argument?
By gathering various first-hand accounts, Southern gives us a portrait of the music-culture of African societies at the time of the transatlantic slave trade. The people who were traded and brought to again be traded on the East coast of the U.S. were West Africans from various societies, mostly kingdoms. 1620 is the year of the earliest account of African music in the English language. It is written by an English sea captain who went to the Gambia River region to assess the potential for trade. He reported that “without doubt, no people on the earth more naturally affected to the sounds of musicke than these people.” In another account, Olaudah Equiano, an African slave who was himself involved in the slave trade, wrote: “We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets.” These and other sources of first-hand accounts show us that Africa’s music was notable-enough-to-be-written-down significant for the European outsiders/visitors and by their accounts, very impressive (if not unusual for their particular European sense in some cases). There were many occasions for long ceremonies with music-making, professional musicians, musical instruments including drums, horns, and string instruments, specific stylizations of the voice, and poetry and dance. Each nation had its own cultivated styles, but Southern assesses that there was an identifiable heritage across all of Africa, as can be seen from first-hand accounts by explorers and traders, and also by looking at modern oral traditions in African communities. Music was a part of everyday life for Africans. From birth to death and everything in between, there was some kind of music involved in the lives of Africans. African music-culture was brought by enslaved Africans in immaterial forms, i.e. in the memories of enslaved Africans. Their music-culture was then passed down orally from generation to generation in the U.S.: “From the accounts of explorers and traders, to which can be added evidence deduced from modern oral traditions, we learn of the primacy of music as an integral part of everyday life, of distinctive performance practices, and the prevalent musical instruments. Moreover, it is possible to imagine how the music might have sounded since many instruments of the past are still used today, a number of songs were preserved in notation, and much music has been transmitted orally through the generations.”
The Role of Music in Society: music was a big part of Africans, from big, long, and elaborate ceremonies to everyday life
Occasions for Music Making: POLITICAL; preparation for war, return from battle, installation of kings, political assemblies, embarking on hunting trips, victory celebrations, homage to kings; litigation set to music (in Congo/Zaire); ECONOMIC; agricultural commemorations, boating songs, hunting songs, RELIGIOUS; veneration of spirits, divinities, ancestors; LIFE; the birth of a child, first tooth, the onset of puberty, initiation rites, betrothal ceremonies; RECREATIONAL; music for pure enjoyment.
Professional Musicians; every village had professional musicians, and they had a high rank in society.
Musical Instruments and Performance Practice: drums, flutes, and horns, string instruments, VOICE; high intensity, falsetto, shouts, groans, guttural tones, clear voice that Europeans described as “a rude noyse,” “a strong nasal sound,” “very loud and shrill”; MELODY; pentatonic and modal scales: RHYTHM; timeline
One of the bits in the reading that you will find useful for your Black Music/Cecil Taylor essay (Assignment 2):
“Melodic improvisation was a characteristic a feature of the music as was singing “extempore,” that is, text improvisation. The first affected the second to some extent: a singer would invent a song on the spot, then naturally change the repetitions in the melody to fit the ever-changing text. But instrumental music also was affected by improvisation. Bowdich observes that the embellishing figures of melodies fell into two classes: those improvised on the spot and those belonging to a traditional repertory:
Their graces [i.e., embellishing figures] are so numerous, some extempore, some transmitted from father to son, that the constant repetition only can distinguish the commencement of the air [i.e., melody]: sometimes between each beginning, they introduce a few chords, sometimes they leave out a bar, sometimes they only return to the middle, so entirely is it left tot he fancy of the performer.
In essence, the musical performance consisted of repeating a relatively short musical unit again and again, with variation in its repetition.” p. 14.
9/15 Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. (1995), The Power of Black Music, Chapt. 2: “Transformations,” (35-57).
Part 1: https://brooklyncollege.zoom.us/rec/share/uEZo6niESJu_3ITnIIyIafqaJAQLp2V72vmx2B5f74aUmd233fyAPMmbiOjja27A.CkeBN7xs249Oe4xa?startTime=1600181116000
What is Floyd Jr.’s main argument and what are his means of argumentation?
1886 Goerge Washington Cable’s linear timeline/narrative description of the performance he saw at Congo Square
Space: “throng” surrounding a “circle” with as “cresecent” of musicians.
Bodies: “pack of dark, tattered figures,” “brighte colors,” “squatting cross-legged”
Landscape: “grassy plane stretching around,” “dotted with black stumpes,” “in the distance the palegreen willow…the cypress swamp”
Beginning: began “with very slow and measured movements,”
Music: “strange and typical” tunes, something Cable had heard before
Dance: could have been “precluded”; “It suits the Ethiopian fancy for a beginning to be dull and repetitious ….”
Singers: Many at the same time from the beginning. “At the end of the first line every voice is lifted up.” The second line is “with growing spirit.”
Male soloist: “glistening black Hercules, who plants one foot forward, lifts his head and bare, shining chest, and rolls out the song from mouth and throat.” This “black Hercules” with “bare chest” had “tattoo streaks running down from the temples to the neck…like knife-gashes” and facial features, which indicates him to be of the Bambaras, “High Soudan.”
Ensemble: The soloist’s “restrained enthusiasm catch from one bystander to another.”
Congo women chorus: “They swing and bow to right and left, in slow time,” “piercing treble of the Congo women”: Some “responsive, others “competitive.” “A smiting of breasts with open hands begins very softly and becomes vigorous.” “women’s voices rise to a tremulous intensity”
Female soloist: “Among the chorus…one of extra good voice, who thrusts in now and again, an improvisation…. her plaintive melody of her voice.” Her “tall and straight” body, as well as her voice and the “Hindoo” features of her physical appearance indicate her to be a “Yaloff.”
Chorus: “more piercing than ever. The women clap their hands in time….”
Male soloist: “brisk and sinewy fellow has taken one short, nervy step into the ring, chanting with rising energy….he takes another, and stands and sings and looks here and there, rising upon his broad toes and singing and rising again…” tattoos on his face shows him to be a Kiamba. “The music has got into his feet.” He dances to the edge of the circle and prompts the hand of an “unsmiling Congo girl” and leads her to the ring to dance with him as the throng continues the chant.
Buildup: “sudden frenzy seizes the musicians.” The “measure quickens,” the “swaying, attitudinizing crowd sarts into extra activity,” “female voices grow sharp and staccato,” and “suddenly the dance is the furious bamboola.”
Dance: “frantic leaps” “frenzy” “another pair is in the ring” “a man wears a belt of little bells” “and still another couple enter the circle” “What wild–what terrible delight! The ecstasy rises to madness; …dancers fall…with foam on their lips and are dragged out by arms and legs from under the tumultuous feet of crowding new-comers. The musicians know no fatigue; still the dance rages on.”
Floyd Jr.’s takeaways from Cable’s description
- The ring
- Call-and-response (“some are responsive; others are competitive”)
- Percussion (hand clapping)
- Buildup (starts slow and grows intensity to a sudden climax)
- Dancers (couples entering and leaving the ring)
The “presence of gods through possession” is absent in Cable’s passage, but in a description of Black church services in 1867 book Slave Songs of the United States, we see the same characteristics of African-American musical performance in a church setting.
- The ring: After the church service, men and women, boys and girls, walked in a circle, forming a ring.
- Buildup: body movements started with jerks which built up until they were sweating.
- Call-and-Response: the people walking the ring sang the chorus of a Spiritual.
- Specialists: band of the “best singers and of tired shouters” stood at the side of the room and did most of the singing. They also clapped hands together and on their knees.
- The ceremony was energetic, loud, and lasted into the night.
19th c. The religious tradition of African-Americans
- Music of the ring was criticized by most whites as idolatrous and was suppressed in most parts of the U.S. except maybe in New Orleans.
- Even some Black Christians down the line viewed it as lewd and savage.
- But for new Americans, the ceremonies of the ring were culturally affirming. It reaffirmed community, identity, and cultural memory.
19th c. Protestantism and the emergence of Spirituals
- In Protestantism, singing is seen as a way to access the spirit of a High God.
- African-Americans adapted their African religions into Protestantism.
- From the centrality of music as access to God’s spirit in Protestantism emerged the new genre of African-American song, the Spiritual.
Themes in Spirituals
- While spirituals maintained African musical characteristics such as the call-and-response and improvisation, the songs were directly from the Black experience in America.
- Slavery and the possibility of freedom were textual themes.
- Example: Floyd Jr. compares the text of a Spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and a funeral chant of the Basotho to show that the “slaves made the Christian religion their own.” 41.
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