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Music was a way for slaves to express their feelings whether it was sorrow, joy, inspiration or hope. Songs were passed down from generation to generation throughout slavery. These songs were influenced by African and religious traditions and would later form the basis for what is known as “Negro Spirituals”. Col.
How did slavery influence art?
Like the colorful quilts female slaves sewed for warmth, utilitarian objects such as baskets, rugs, bowls, and pipes were outlets for creative expression that enlivened the sober conditions of slave living quarters. Skilled male slaves brought artistic vision to their crafts as well.
How did black people change music?
African-Americans created a distinctive music that sank its roots deeply into their experience. Following the Civil War, black Americans, through employment as musicians playing European music in military bands, developed a new style of music called ragtime which gradually evolved into jazz.
How did slaves communicate through art?
Ultimately the slaves persevered through crucial times by singing and dancing, slaves would later use the arts to express their hopes of freedom. Slaves sang and danced to “Songs of freedom.” Most of these songs were sung throughout the voyage in the underground railroad.
How did the slaves resist slavery?
Many resisted slavery in a variety of ways, differing in intensity and methodology. Among the less obvious methods of resistance were actions such as feigning illness, working slowly, producing shoddy work, and misplacing or damaging tools and equipment.
What happened to Dave Drake?
It is thought that he died in the 1870s, because he is not found in the 1880 census. (He was listed as “David Drake, occupation: turner,” in the 1870 census.) Because of the story that has emerged about him, Dave’s pots are the most valuable and important pieces of Edgefield pottery.
How did African music influence jazz?
From these early days of jazz, all the musical principles and aesthetic values of African music are evident and continued to be influential: interlocking and percussive rhythms, syncopation, density of sound or polyphony, ostinatos, improvised variations, and call and response.
How does music of Africa influenced the world of music?
Many genres of popular music, including blues, jazz and rumba, derive to varying degrees from musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by enslaved Africans. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, soul music, and rhythm and blues.
Why is black music so important?
Long before Rap and Hip-hop dominated the music culture, Black Music had a profound influence on the culture of the United States and the world. It was from the shores of Africa that slaves were imported to the Americas in droves, bringing with them the core of the music that would later engulf the world.
How did slaves use music?
Initially, slaves used song and music to boost the overall happiness of the people they worked with. During times of difficult labor, slaves would break out in a song to pass the time, and lift their spirits. Slaves would often sing songs that praised the lord, or asked the lord for help and guidance.
How did slaves make music?
Enslaved Africans either carried African instruments with them or reconstructed them in the New World. These included percussive, string, and wind instruments, from drums and banjos to the balafo (a kind of xylophone), the flute, the musical bow (a stringed instrument), and the panpipe (a tuned pipe).
What type of music did slaves sing?
Today, slave music is usually grouped in three major categories: Religious, Work, and “Recreational” songs. Each type adapted elements of African and European musical traditions and shaped the development of a wide range of music, including gospel, jazz, and blues.
How did slavery affect African society?
The slave trade had devastating effects in Africa. Economic incentives for warlords and tribes to engage in the slave trade promoted an atmosphere of lawlessness and violence. Depopulation and a continuing fear of captivity made economic and agricultural development almost impossible throughout much of western Africa.
How did slaves shape their own destinies within the oppressive system of slavery?
They found ways to defy their bondage through harvesting personal gardens, creating culturally diverse foods, practicing religion, expressing themselves through music, creating strong family bonds and even through their ideas of freedom.
What was life like in slavery?
Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. Plantation slaves lived in small shacks with a dirt floor and little or no furniture. Life on large plantations with a cruel overseer was oftentimes the worst.
Who first made face jugs?
This distinctive type of ceramic face vessel first appeared in the American South in the mid-1800s. Jugs such as these are attributed to a small number of black slaves working as potters in the Edgefield District of South Carolina.
How did David Drake lose his leg?
Around 1835, Dave was run over by a railroad train, and one of his legs was severed. He survived, but his injury left him unable to move the foot treadle that turns the pottery wheel. He teamed with a slave named Henry, whose arms were crippled, but whose strong legs could drive the wheel for Dave.
Did slaves make pottery?
Jars and Jugs Between the 1850s and the 1880s, the Edgefield district in South Carolina became a center for pottery made by enslaved African Americans, possibly for use on the plantation, possibly for their own use, and possibly, later, for sale.
How did slavery influence jazz?
While working in the fields, slaves sang work songs that combined African tribal chants with Christian hymns incorporated from the Southern Baptist Church. Together, these influences created Negro spirituals that had strong, percussive beats and were accompanied by intense physical dancing.
What influenced blues music?
Blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). It was influenced by work songs and field hollers, minstrel show music, ragtime, church music, and the folk and popular music of the white population.
What style of music influenced the development of jazz?
Jazz is a distinctively American style of music that developed in the early decades of the 20th century. Its roots include many Afro-American folk music traditions, such as spirituals, work songs, and blues. It also borrowed from 19th century band music and the ragtime style of piano playing.
