Southern Musical Tradition and the African Tradition Essay -- Music Mu

Southern Musical Tradition and the African Tradition The second major tributary of the southern unisonal tradition comesfrom the African continent and is the heritage import of the five millionslaves brought to join America against their will to provide the bulk ofthe labor in the pre-industrial agricultural south. Contemporary vapors, whilenot exclusively black music by any core, remains largely black in terms ofits hint performers and, to a lesser extent, its listening audience. The forerunner of the modern urban vapors was, however, almost exclusivelyblack and was completely southern and agrestic. It was, and is, a music bornout of the experience of slavery and Jim Crow segregation with their bid poverty, alienation and suppression. As a musical genre, thisremarkable and durable spirit has an enormous relevance for thehistorical development of southern music in general and the southern blackexperience in particular. Modern vapou rs evolved out of the southern country blues and became anurban phenomenon in the selfsame(prenominal) social, economic and demographic processeswhich urbanized black Americans during the two or threesome decades prior toWorld War II. Thus, an examination of the black country blues provides apotentially fruitful vehicle for the study of southern rural culture viz aviz the black experience. At the very least, it provides a means forassessing the perceptions of southern culture which were held andarticulated by a sensitive stem of observers -- the bluesmen andblueswomen of the rural south. The extent to which their music wasreceived, popularized and appreciated by their audience provides a broaderlook at the hopes and drea... ...caldevelopment, display similar structural and thematic fill and have,since the 1960s, begun to recognize and celebrate these commonalities. Works CitedChapple, Steve and Reebee Garofalo. Rock and Roll is Here to Pay. scr atch Nelson Hall, 1977.Elkins, Stanley. Slavery A Problem in American Institutional and keen Life, 2nd ed. Chicago U. of Chicago Press, 1968.Morthland, John. The Best of Country Music. Garden metropolis Doubleday, 1984.Oliver, Paul. Savannah Syncopators African Retentions in the Blues. London November Books, Limited, 1970.Smith, M.G. Social and Cultural Pluralism, in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 83 (January, 1957)763-777.Van den Berghe, Pierre. lean and Racism A Comparative Perspective, 2nd ed. New York Wiley, 1978.