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“Early
Southern Roots of Modern Popular Music, Part 6” by Matthew Moye, Executive
Director
American Slave Music to 1800
"We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and
poets," remarked a former American slave.
The quote is found in the best-selling book, The New
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or
Gustavus Vassa the African, Written by Himself (London, 1789). Equiano
was specifically referring to Africans, but also to their enslaved brethren
in the New World. For those American slaves, music was a precious trace
of their African heritage---intangible, but real. It is hardly surprising
that they should have preserved so carefully the African ways of music.
It was their link to a common identity among the dispersed slaves.
This article on African-American music up to 1800 is
the sixth in a series of articles summarizing how the
American South came to produce the music which the rest of the world today
sings and dances. Slave music, one of three major components of Southern
music, has had a profound and enduring influence on international culture.
(The other two are European upper class music and the folk music of the
British Isles.)
The resource base for this topic is large. An important
text for this article is Eileen Southern’s 1971 edition of The Music
of Black Americans.
"The Sound of Musicke" in 16th-18th Century Africa
There are fewer than 400 documented slave songs
surviving today. These are enough, however, to link slave song traditions
with the music of the historical people of west Africa from Senegal to
Angola.
One common feature is that both native Africans and
American slaves used music especially in ceremonies--- birth, rites of
passage such as adulthood and marriage, worship of God, and death. American
writers often noted also the work and boat songs of the slaves. These
are all documented in early European records of African contact.
In
Africa, music was used in recounting history, in making war, and in identifying
tribes. Even in court, the Angolan lawyers sang their cases. These uses
were not readily applied in early America.
There was little opportunity for newly abducted slaves
to bring along musical instruments. Still, the earliest
American slaves had experience with guitar-, zither-, and harp-like instruments.
They also had used bagpipes, reeds, horns, trumpets, rattles, bells, keyboards,
and flutes. Most of all, though, their cultures in both Africa and the
New World emphasized drums.
Vocal Traditions
According to Dr. Southern, "the most constant feature
of African songs was the alternation of improvised lines and fixed refrains."
Musicologists have noted this same technique among the American slaves,
giving it the name, "call-and-response." A song leader improvises
a verse (both with embellished words and tune), which is followed by a
group refrain.
Dance
If call-and-response were the most common feature,
then Dr. Southern indicates that the most noticeable feature was rhythm.
Europeans were fascinated with multiple layers of rhythms in the same
performance, particularly in the circle dance. Men leaped and made grand
gestures, while women used the more subtle "shuffle step."
Characteristic of both African and slave dance, the women were bent over
and had "crooked knees." Finally, ecstatic seizures were noted
on both continents.
Slaves
Learn, Then Take a Turn
Slaves who could play instruments were given special
status. The instrument of preference for both slaves and their masters
was the fiddle. History has not yet fully answered the question of who
taught the slave fiddlers to play or when the slaves had time to learn
it. It is noteworthy, however, that the fiddle was small enough for a
slave to carry easily and also that masters liked to have a fiddler handy
for entertaining guests and family. Thus, the specialized job of slave/musician
came to pass.
Another way that slaves
in the Southern colonies learned "European" musical forms was
through instruction in religious music. Psalm-singing till about 1800,
then hymn-singing by the 1790s, and finally singing schools were all readily
available to the slaves. In fact, there remains even today among African
Americans a preference for the hymns of Isaac Watts, whose hymns were
prominent when the slaves were evangelized.
By the time of the
American Revolution, slave compositions were being noted by the whites.
Some slave musical masters were even apprenticing whites. Also at this
time, the African-influenced banjar (banjo) came to be an accepted instrument
among whites. Africa’s influence, through the slaves, had finally
blended into American life.
Movements
Toward Independence
Between 1778 and 1796, independent churches for blacks (Baptist, A.M.E.)
were being formed. Blacks inevitably began to have their own hymn books.
A landmark publication was the 1801 book, A Collection of Spiritual
Songs and Hymns Selected from Various Authors by Richard Allen, African
Minister, published in Philadelphia. Allen was the organizer of the first
African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen selected hymns that gave blacks
hope for a better life after this one. The first verse of one of Watts’s
hymns, "There is a Land of Pure Delight" is an example:
There
is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign.
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
Allen also
added refrain lines, which pre-dated the use
of refrains in white churches.
Summary
Until 1800, blended music was bubbling everywhere in
the Southern background, but almost no white observers understood that
the impact was a two-way street. With the evangelization of slaves in
the last half of the 18th Century, a new era for musical history was on
the way. Africaninfluenced rhythms would soon be making their way into
all manner of raditionally white forms.
The next article
will discuss the music of American
slaves in antebellum times, Westville’s period.
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Early
Southern Music and Its Influences
Matthew
Moye
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