The cultural aspect and the expression aspect

The cultural aspect and the expression aspect

The bondage of the African American people was a strong way to create a kind of cultural and political social control. In fact, the bondage was the best way to make a breakdown in the relation of the white-black people. It couldn´t be that the black people saw the white as their masters. Counter to the white people, the black one just didn´t think in a master-slave relation. They just felt the pressure and social control that the white, with the slavery, did to them.  In that way, the black people hadn’t rights or vote, they weren´t citizens or civil subjects, they didn´t have rights or ways of communication.

Because of that, they saw the music like a way of expression. By the music they were able to express by themselves without being excluded. Lawrence Levine talked about that: 

“It wouldn´t distort African American music to argue that it has functioned primarily or even largely as a forum for protest. Black Americans have not spent all of their time reacting to the Whites around them. (…) But it would be an even greater distortion to assume that a people occupying the position that African Americans have in American society could create so rich and varied music with a few allusions or responses to their situation” (Levine. 2005: 586).

In: Levine,L. (2005). “African American Music as Resistance”. African American Music: An Introduction. (p. 587-598). New York Routledge. 

Then, there is a couple of thing around the African American Music that I would like to resume. For one side, the origins of the music of the African American people is a form of cultural expression that is cause of the repression and segregation in America. But for the other side, we can't say that it is just for that aspect, the African American Music is too a natural cause of a cultural product and folklore. 

Photography taken from: http://www.michaelpsmithphotography.com/jazzfest/pages/jazz1.htm

"Michael P.Simth PHOTOGRAPHY"

So, we have two aspects that are important in our analysis: the music as a way of expression, cause of slavery, segregation and repression; and the music as a cultural product and cause of folklore. That two aspects, i believe, is the most important to bear in mind in a analysis of African American Music. Otherwise, that doesn't means that there aren't no more aspects to see or to analyze, there are, in fact, other things that affect  the African American Music such as historical changes, wars, civil rights movements, policy makers, and politic aspects.