The Black slaves of colonial America brought their own culture from Africa to the new land. Despite their persecution, the "slave culture" has contributed greatly to the development of America’s own music, dance, art, and clothing. Music It is understandable that when Africans were torn from their homes and families, lashed into submission, and forced into lifelong slave labor, they would be, on the most part, resentful and angry. Various forms of expression, clandestine yet lucent, developed out of these feelings. One such form of this was music. Native African music consisted mainly of wind and string melodies punctuated by hand clapping, xylophones, and drumbeats. Along those lines, an early type of slave music was the spiritual, which has its roots in Protestant hymns taught to the slaves. Spirituals were long thought to be the spontaneous creation of African-American slaves and the only original folk music of the U.S. Spirituals told tales of suffering and struggle, but these true meanings were often hidden. An example is in the song "Gospel Train" with the lyrics, "Get on board, little children/There’s room for many a-more/The gospel train’s a-leavin’..." The "gospel train" of the song likely represented an escape method, such as the Underground Railroad. Another type of music distinct to African slaves was gospel. These songs originated in plantation fields as work songs, and were later sung in churches of Black congregations. They were intended to enliven a crowd, and employed bright music and joyful lyrics. Gospel music contributed to the development of musical genres historically considered "white", such as rock’n’roll and country and western. Religion Before Blacks came to America, they had their own highly developed religious beliefs. Most cultures believed in one almighty God, and the ideas of good and evil. They also practiced "ancestor worship", believing that dead family members could influence aspects of their lives. A main difference between African and Christian religions, however, is that Africans did not find it necessary to convert all other cultures to their religion. Thus Africans were rather resistant to the preaching of Christian ministers when they came to America. The Christian ideas they did absorb, however, were indoctrinated into their lives with the addition of culture such as gospel music. Later, a minister of mainly of African-American congregations would use distinctly "Black" preaching methods, as when the minister begins to employ numerous stock phrases and ideas, Midway in the message the preacher begins to chant his words rhythmically.
In her excerpt, Baumrind discusses the potential dangers of the aftereffects on the participants of the experiment. On many occasions she suggests that these people are subjects of a cruel and unethical experiment, and suffer from harm to their self-image and emotional disruption (227). She also calls Milgram’s experiment a “game” (Baumrind 225); this illustrates her negative outtake on the experiment which is seen throughout the article. On the contrary, Parker discusses the aftereffects on Milgram himself. He expresses how the experiment, although it shows light to what extent of obedience a person may travel, ruined Milgram’s reputation. Parker also cites many notable authors and psychologists and their reactions to Milgram’s experiment. Despite their differences, Baumrind and Parker are able to find common ground on a few issues concerning the Milgr...
Soul music was developed in the late 1950s from African American church music called Gospel music. After slavery ended in1865, African American were not welcomed in the church of White Americans, so they built their own churches and sang Christian songs with African American vocal styles and rhythm. As the civil rights movement, staged bigger and bigger demonstrations and increase in African American pride “Soul music” became more than party music for young blacks: it became a rallying flag for the Black nationalist movement. Soul music was born thanks to the innovations of continuous post-war musicians who essentially turned Gospel music into a secular form of
Creel, M. W., review of S. Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. In Journal of American History, 75:4 (1989), pp. 1281-1283.
Moreover, many owners later came to feel that Christianity may actually have encouraged rebellion (all those stories of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, after all, talked about the liberation of the slaves), and so they began to discourage Christian missionaries from preaching to the slaves. African Americans have taken their own spiritual, religious journey. God was looked upon as a source of peace and encouragement. The community of enslave Africans were able to use religion and spirituality as a way of overcoming the mental anguish of slavery on a daily basis. To a slave, religion was the most important aspect of their life. Nothing could come between their relationship with god. It was their rock, the only reason why they could wake up in the morning, the only way that they endured this most turbulent time in our history.
Music nurtured the African American tradition and their struggle towards equality in the same century.... ... middle of paper ... ... Greensboro, N.C.: Morgan Reynolds Pub. Carter, D. (2009).
Slave’s masters consistently tried to erase African culture from their slave’s memories. They insisted that slavery had rescued blacks form the barbarians from Africa and introduced them to the “superior” white civilization. Some slaves came to believe this propaganda, but the continued influence of African culture in the slave community added slave resistance to the modification of African culture. Some slaves, for example, answered to English name in the fields but use African names in their quarters. The slave’s lives were filled with surviving traits of African culture, and their artwork, music, and other differences reflected this influence.
Slavery in American Society focuses in the significance of the world the Slaves made. O. Patterson clearly defines how natal alienation allowed the master to undermine and control his slaves since some of the slaves cultural identities were taken away from them. The master believed that slave management would help keep the slaves loyal to himself and make the slaves a better worker. However, the slaves did manage to form strong personal ties to assure themselves of who they were culturally. There were many significant ways that shaped the slaves' world, such as religion, spirituals, family life and conjure. The slaves found ways in which they could unite and maintain some of their cultural and religious practices.
Slave music was divided into three groups; recreational, work songs and religious songs. A work song is some sought of music connected with specific work that is sung while conducting a task, timing or even appealing for protest. Work songs helped to organize groups of people into manageable units hence easing the burden of hard labor. Records of work song are ancient like the historical records; they vary depending...
Blues and Jazz have had their beginnings in the Deep South. Although it wasn’t an instant start, Blues and Jazz are an evolution and compilation of spiritual songs, hymns, ragtime, gospel music and work songs of slaves.
African American religious culture is a distinct custom in America. The distinct identity of African-American culture is deeply rooted in the historical experience of the African-America...
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
African-American slaves may not have had the formal education that many of their white slave owners possessed, but they intuitively knew that the labor they toiled through each and every day was unjust. This dynamic of unfairness brought about a mindset in which slaves would critique the workings of slavery. To many people’s understanding, slavery was an invasively oppressive institution; Levine however, noted, “for all its horrors, slavery was never so complete a system of psychic assault that it prevented the slaves from carving out independent cultural forms” . Slave spirituals were a part of the independent cultural form that enslaved African-Americans produced; these songs had numerous functions and critiquing slavery served as one of
When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.
American slaveholders dehumanized slaves through both psychological stress and physical forms of brutality. Despite the ambiguity in brutality, as this relative term can be perceived differently by different cultures’ tolerance to pain, slave holders attachment and monitoring of their slaves became an overwhelming obsession. The slaveholders’ continual micromanagement and overbearing obsession always left the slaves at fault. In “Dancing for Eels,” in Raising Cain: Blackface performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop, by W.T. Lhamon, he informed the readers about the “ Great Negro Plot”. The name of the revolt vilified and gave the blame to slaves while the organization was hardly a “Negro” revolt (Lhamon 20). The intimate relationship became very intensive as slaveholders in America capitalized their right of possession over another being. Phrases such as ‘my slave’ or ‘our slaves’ were subtle forms of attachment. When slaves ran away, there were mixed feelings of anger, betrayal, and confusion among the slaveholders. They could not understand why an individual did not want to be enslaved. As a response, a hunting party for blacks known as Patty Roller characterized this extreme obsession as white men monitored slaves activities while enforcing discipline. In America, Whites were used to having black people immerse in their culture. When Black people left, their presence was
In From Slavery to Freedom (2007), it was said that “the transition from slavery to freedom represents one of the major themes in the history of African Diaspora in the Americas” (para. 1). African American history plays an important role in American history not only because the Civil Rights Movement, but because of the strength and courage of Afro-Americans struggling to live a good life in America. Afro-Americans have been present in this country since the early 1600’s, and have been making history since. We as Americans have studied American history all throughout school, and took one Month out of the year to studied African American history. Of course we learn some things about the important people and events in African American history, but some of the most important things remain untold which will take more than a month to learn about.