EXAM 3 - PART 1

African Traditions in the New World

Most black slaves brought to the New World came from the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, and the
savannah regions of Western Africa. Although West African musicians would play music for
their own pleasure, most of their music is linked to some activity in the lives of the entire
community. Therefore, the music is not to an artistic end unto itself. Because of this, a piece of
music should not be judged on its aural merits alone, but rather on its effectiveness in achieving
the goal of the activity that it accompanies. There is music that has a specific purpose for births,
puberty rites, hunting trips, harvests, marriages, healing the sick, and for funerals.
West African music is associated with dance, so it is repetitive in its structure. The hypnotic
effect this music and dance facilitates entering trancelike states for tribal purposes.
West African Musical Structures
The majority of West African music is entirely based on a call- and- response structure. In this
form, the leader performs a portion of music and the listeners reply with a response. This
antiphonal form, that utilizes this style of performance, is found in many musical cultures around
the world and creates a musical dialogue.

Listening Example: Kneebone

Artist: Joe Armstrong

The rhythmic concept of West African music is its trademark; it is among the most complex in
the world. The foundation for this rhythm is a steady, basic pulse that other rhythmic elements
play off of. The practice of emphasizing notes that do not align with the pulse of the music is
called syncopation.
In a West African drum ensemble, many simple rhythms are played simultaneously. Individual
patterns are of different lengths and do not begin and end at the same time, yet they interweave
into a complex whole. The collective effect of the different rhythmic lines is called multilinear
rhythm.
West African musical aesthetics include coloring a sound by dirtying the tone. This enriches
the sound and brings it to life. For vocalists to achieve this effect, they use bends, growls, and

rasps. Instruments can be made to do the same thing by being modified to make a rattle or buzz
when vibrating.
The following two excerpts is a comparison that illustrates traditions of expressive inflections of
pitch in both African-American vocal and jazz instrumental styles.
First is the call of an African-American street vendor advertising the blackberries he is trying to
sell. This recording was made early in the twentieth century in Charleston, South Carolina.

Listening Example: Street Cries of Charleston

Artist: male African-American street vendor

Second is an excerpt from a piece called Fishermen, Strawberry, and Devil Crab in an
instrumental version that trumpeter Miles Davis made in 1958 of George Gershwins opera,
Porgy and Bess. The opera was inspired by African-American life in Charleston, including
Gershwins own scores for the musical sounds of vendors pitching their wares. Notice the
similarities between the street cries and Miles Davis manipulation of sound and pitch through
his trumpet.

Listening example: Fisherman, Strawberry, and Devil Crab

Artist: Miles Davis, (1926-1991) American jazz trumpeter

Acculturating into the New World

The British- Protestant colonists in the southeastern United States felt responsible for the slaves
in body and soul. Their evangelism made them intolerant of African folk traditions. Slave owners
considered African culture and religion to be savage and heathen, so they made a large effort to
eradicate all vestiges of the slaves former culture. This included music, so native African
instruments were forbidden. A special ban was placed on drums for fear that the slaves would
signal each other and organize an uprising. Ultimately, the slaves proved more resourceful,
creating instruments out of materials available. And if none were available, they would stamp
their feet or beat their chests and thighs what is termed patting juba.

Listening example: African-American Work Song, Hammer Ring

Hunters Dance is popular peasant music made by the people of Mali, also known as the
Malinke people, in the West African country of Guinea. The recording features a six-string
harp-lute (dozo-konu), the voice of the man who plays it, a womens chorus accompanying him,
a wooden whistle (fere), and a meal scraper (karinyan), which is a small tube of wrought iron
that is slit down the middle.
This piece features a repeating bass figure, obtained by plucking the strings of the dozo-konu and
is accompanied by a repeating rhythm on the metallic-sounding karinyan. This repeating rhythm
is the same pattern we call the ride rhythm in American jazz.

Listening example: Traditional West African Music, Hunters Dance

Pictured: Traditional African musical instruments

Listening example: Sint

Artist: Rakaba Bellet, a performing arts non-profit organization, specializing in the
artistic expression of African traditions.

Elements of African-American Music

Blue notes are associated with the feeling and sound of the African-American style and
tradition. A parent style of jazz, the blues developed in the southern United States at about the
same time as jazz.
Major scales are based on the seven-note scale (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do). This scale has
been used in thousands of melodies in many forms of musical traditions and in the majority of
Western music. Lowering the pitch of the third and seventh notes in this scale (notes E and B in
the key of C) produces blue notes.
Motor rhythm is the presentation of a steady rhythmic pulse at a consistent tempo. This
rhythmic pulse lays the foundation against which rhythmic devices such as syncopation and
swing feeling work. It is used in music to facilitate body movement and dancing.
Swing feeling is the relaxed rhythmic feeling and softer articulation of individual notes in a
musical line. It is superimposed over tense rhythmic drives of the underlying pulse of the motor
rhythm. This is achieved by using a softer articulation to begin each note. This is most
important to playing with a swing feel. There are three subdivisions of the beat instead of two,
with the first part of the beat getting two-thirds of the duration and the second getting one-third.
The emphasis is placed on the second part of the beat.

This swinging feeling between beats, as well as soft articulation, work to give African-American
music a relaxed character, even with the driving motor rhythm of the steady pulse at fast
tempos.
Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of a performer reacting to a musical environmental
situation. In the moment, such as altering the original rhythms of the melody, adding some extra
notes in an ornamental fashion, or perhaps spontaneously creating entirely new melodies
constructed to fit the preexisting succession of chords makes improvisation the most important
element of African-American music. Like syncopation, improvisation is not a technique
exclusive to African-American music.
Because of the fact that improvisation is a musicians reaction to a time and place, a specific
improvised performance can never be recreated exactly the same way again (even by the same
performers on the same day). Therefore, recordings are the only way improvised performances
exist in permanent form. This allows for a permanent record of something that is temporal in
nature, and otherwise impossible to recreate and study.
Popularization and Commercialization of African-American Music
In the early twentieth century, black composers and entertainers became prevalent in clubs, on
stage, in film, and the publishing houses of Tin Pan Alley. They presented their music to the
public and established trends that the music industry would follow in suit. The catalyst that broke
the barrier for commercial growth was ragtime.
Ragtime
Ragtime was introduced to the world during The Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893, a
major tourist event. Musicians, including black itinerant pianists, came to Chicago to play in the
speakeasies near the fairgrounds to entertain Exposition attendees. The pianists were playing
ragtime. This was the formal introduction of ragtime to a large mainstream audience. This style
of music had developed over a number of years, being played in saloons, pool halls, and
bordellos of red-light districts. It was through the medium of sheet music these piano rags
eventually appeared in middle-class homes and then eventually to respectable dancing
establishments. Increased ragtime sheet music sales were due, in part, to the fact that in the
middle-class home, the parlor piano was a status symbol. The high rate of sales of pianos in the
1890s was at an unprecedented high.
As the appetite for piano rags increased, publishers and performers were compelled to supply the
public with the product. Beginning in 1897, several instrumental rags began to appear. The
predecessor of the rag was the cakewalk, a lightly syncopated slow march that accompanied a
high-stepping dance of the same name.
Another catalyst for ragtimes popularity was the debut of the automatic player piano. Before
phonographs became widely available, the player piano was the only form of recorded music
available for the home. Since many households were not comprised of pianists, the purchase of a
player piano and a library of piano rolls provided an enjoyable alternative.

The most famous ragtime pianist/composer was Scott Joplin (18681917). Unlike most black
itinerant pianists of the time, he had a fair degree of formal training. His skills as a pianist were
decent, but his ragtime compositions are the epitome of this art form. Scott Joplin provided the
catalyst for ragtimes popularity when he wrote the Maple Leaf Rag.

Listening example: Maple Leaf Rag

Artist: Scott Joplin

The Blues
The popularity of the blues began with W. C. Handys (18731958) work. He was a formally
trained black musician. He saw commercial potential for the blues and made an effort to clean up
its rough character, while retaining its melancholy essence.
Handys first blues composition was Memphis Blues, written to be a campaign song for the
Memphis mayoral race of 1909. When released in 1912, it triggered a blues craze for the
remainder of the decade. It was the first blues piece to achieve national notoriety, rivaled only by
his later blues song St. Louis Blues in 1914. Black blues composers and publishers joined the
ranks of Tin Pan Alley songwriters in New York.

Composer Perry Bradford recognized the growing black consumer market of the early 1920s
and made an appeal to the General Phonograph Corporation to record a black singer
performing the blues. The company allowed Bradford and black cabaret singer, Mamie Smith, to
record Bradfords Crazy Blues in 1920. The recording was incredibly successful and started
an avalanche of recordings by black singers for the black record-buying public. This was
historically significant for the following reasons: 1. This was the first blues song recording by a
black singer specifically targeted for a black audience. 2. Because of the recordings success, a
substantial amount of black female cabaret singers were recorded over the next 15 years. 3.
Demonstrating success in targeting records to a specific demographic. This helped nurture not
only blues, but jazz, country, and other genres of ethnic music. 4. The popularity of published
and recorded blues led to the recording of one of Americas most unique oral traditions, genuine
southern folk blues singers, to be preserved.
The first authentic blues to be recorded was that of Bessie Smith (18941937) singing Down
Hearted Blues for the Columbia label in 1923. She grew up in the South, giving her a much
closer access to the source of the blues (much more than many of her peers in classic blues). She
spent her early career performing with Gertrude Ma Rainey, a blues and vaudeville singer
(18861939), known as the Mother of the Blues. Bessie Smith had an astounding commercial
success. Her first release in 1923 sold more than 750,000 copies that year, reaching the status of
Mamie Smiths (no relation) groundbreaking blues record, Crazy Blues, in 1920.

Listening example: St. Louis Blues

Composer: W.C. Handy
Artists: Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, (1901-1971) American jazz trumpeter

Listening example: Crazy Blues

Artist: Mamie Smith

Listening example: Booze and Blues

Artist: Gertrude Ma Rainey

Listening Example: Down in the Alley

Artist: Memphis Minnie, (1897-1973) a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter