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

Southern Musical Tradition and the African Tradition The second major bird feeder of the southern harmonyal tradition comesfrom the African continent and is the heritage import of the five millionslaves brought to North America against their will to provide the bulk ofthe drive in the pre-industrial agrarian south. Contemporary blues, whilenot exclusively black music by any means, remains largely black in cost ofits leading performers and, to a lesser extent, its listening audience. The forerunner of the modern urban blues was, however, almost exclusivelyblack and was completely southern and rural. It was, and is, a music bornout of the experience of slavery and Jim Crow segregation with theirattendant poverty, alienation and suppression. As a musical genre, thisremarkable and durable expression has an big relevance for thehistorical development of southern music in general and the southern blackexperience in particular. Modern blues ev olved out of the southern country blues and became anurban phenomenon in the same social, economic and demographic processeswhich urbanized black Americans during the two or three 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 group 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 content and have,since the 1960s, begun to recognize and celebrate these commonalities. Works CitedChapple, Steve and Reebee Garofalo. Rock and Roll is here(predicate) to Pay. Chicago Nelson H all, 1977.Elkins, Stanley. Slavery A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, 2nd ed. Chicago U. of Chicago Press, 1968.Morthland, John. The Best of Country Music. Garden urban center 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. Race and racial discrimination A Comparative Perspective, 2nd ed. New York Wiley, 1978.