Member Since: 4/17/2011
Posts: 9,162
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Quote:
Originally posted by Airhead
What is black music?
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Quote:
African-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of musics and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large and significant ethnic minority of the population of the United States. Many of their ancestors were originally brought to North America to work as enslaved peoples, bringing with them typically polyrhythmic songs from hundreds of black African ethnic groups across West and sub-Saharan Africa. With the convergence in the United States of peoples from different regions, multiple cultural traditions merged with influences from polka, waltzes and other European music. Later periods saw considerable innovation and change. African-American genres have been highly influential across socio-economic and racial groupings internationally meeting also with tremendous popularity on a global level. African-American music and all aspects of African American culture are celebrated during Black History Month in February of each year in the United States.
Features common to most African-American music styles include:
field hollers
work song
call and response
vocality (or special vocal effects): guttural effects, interpolated vocality, falsetto, melisma, vocal rhythmization
improvisation
blue notes
polyrhythms: syncopation, concrescence, tension, improvisation, percussion, swung note
texture: antiphony, homophony, polyphony, heterophony
harmony: vernacular progressions; complex, multi-part harmony, as in spirituals and barbershop music
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_music
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