American Slavery :: Slavery Essays

The purpose of this report was for me to research and explore the connection betwixt African American women and music.Since prior to the slave decades, music has been an integral sectionalization of African American community, and served as a form of social, economic, and emotional hold in African American communities in the past and present.This paper go away cover three different types of secular music that emerged during the slave days, by the civilian war, reconstruction, and depression periods.They are blues, jazz, and gospel music.Each of these forms of music are still in existence today.In addition to exploring the history of apiece of these genres of music, this report will identify three African American womanish music legends, Bessie Smith, Emma Barrett, and Mahalia Jackson.Blues emerged in the period amidst the end of the civil war, and the beginning of the 20th century.Originating in the fields of the rural south, it became popular later on the emancipation o f the slaves.In this form of music, the singer and composer is one in the same, a characteristic not evident in the spiritual songs of the slave communities.Spirituals were moderately of a passage way for blues.Blues followed blacks to urban societies as spirituals followed the slaves onto the plantations.The differences between these types of music were that spirituals were collective, whereas an individual sang blues.Blues attri excepted to the evolution of black society toward individualism after the collective society of sla very.Blues became know as the music of the black working class.It was a way for African Americans to get the modern problems of economics, social errors, and poverty and power struggles they faced after they became free.African Americans were still living in unjust societies, where jobs were hard to find.They began to migrate north, but the case remained the same.They used music for economic gain in nightclubs, inlet halls, publishing, and recording.One o f the greatest African American female blues singers was Bessie Smith.She was born(p) on April 15, 1894 or 1898.The exact date is unknown.Her father William was a preacher, who died when Bessie was very young.This left her mother to raise seven children on her own.When Bessie was nine days old, her mother Laura had passed away, and two of her brothers had died as well.The oldest sister brought up the five remain brothers and sisters.Prior to the death of Bessies mother, she was singing on a street corner to the accompaniment of her brothers guitar.