AMERICAN MUSIC IS ROOTED IN BLACK CULTURE AND EXPLOITATION
When you hear the term “American Music,” what tune starts playing in your head? Is it the blues, the swinging beat compelling you to snap your fingers along in rhythm? Or perhaps it’s rap, making you want to belt out loud the lyrics to your favorite song. Maybe for some, it's folk music, longing to hear the fun tune of a fiddle or banjo. Whatever music you think of, it is impossible to ignore the fact that American music is unique, vast, and globally adored. While we love and appreciate the music that is produced in America, it is equally important that we learn of its origins. It is the product of Black culture, which has been exploited and capitalized since the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Black artists and creators have paved the way in the music industry yet go vastly unrecognized and uncompensated. Although their profound impact on music has far more detail than can be confined in a short blog post, this is a brief history that provides the first step towards understanding and reparations.
During the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century, millions of West Africans were displaced and enslaved, many taken to the United States. Many were forced to work on plantations, where their lives were restricted in innumerable ways, including limited literacy and lack of property ownership [1]. Music was one way in which African tradition could be kept alive throughout this period, it was a form of liberation through constraints; it could not be taken away from them. It was passed down orally through generations (in song) and through traditional instruments, like the banjo. It was a way for them to express sorrow, hope, and freedom [2].
However, things started to change sometime around 1830, when a white man named Thomas Dartmouth Rice heard a Black man singing on a plantation. At this period in American history, the country did not have its own style of entertainment or music, it was all European operas and plays. Rice took inspiration from the melodic tune the Black man was singing and began to perform at programs called minstrel shows. He created his own songs curated for white audiences through copying West African music; he also often used African-American vernacular and performed in blackface [2]. Unfortunately, he was not the only one to do so. In 1841, another white man named Joel Sweeny used the banjo, which originated in West Africa and was brought and played on plantations by African captives, to once again perform and mesmerize white audiences. In addition, he sold and profited off the instrument, directly exploiting the cultural exquisiteness of the banjo that is specifically rooted in Western Africa [4]. White audiences were extremely captivated by this new sound. It led to the beginning of American bluegrass and thus the creation of an American sound [2]. Although we’d like to believe that American music has been untainted, it is in fact the outcome of cultural theft and a direct capitalization of a sound that was never theirs.
This brief historical synopsis of a whitewashing of Black music delves into just a fraction of how America dissociates its musical heritage from its actual origins, and leaves Black artists and creators uncredited and exploited. All great American music is grounded in Black people and culture, though it goes unrecognized and underrepresented within the music industry. It contributes and sustains the inequity that exists in our country that is based on racism through the capitalization of Black culture.
One artist trying to reclaim African-Americans’ rightful place in American music, specifically country music, is Queen Esther. In her TED Talk, she reminds the audience that bluegrass and blues music originated from West African music tradition, and that country music would not exist without Black people teaching white people how to play the banjo and guitar. “If American music were a house, African music traditions would be the joist and the beams that allow it to stand, and Blues would be the house itself. We have every right to own the house we built.”[3]
To learn more on this topic, watch Queen Esther’s Ted Talk, The true origins of country music, and listen to the New York Times podcast, 1619 No. 3: The Birth of American Music, which are both linked below.
Written by Lucy Merkel
References :
Duffus Stein, K. (n.d.). Roots of African American Music. Smithsonian Music. Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://music.si.edu/spotlight/african-american-music/roots-of-african-american-music
Hannah-Jones, Nikole (Host). (2019, September 6) The Birth of American Music [No. 3] In 1619. The New York Times. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS82SHpleU82Yg
Ted Residency. (Nov 12 2018). Queen Esther: The true origins of country music[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltswXrGK4DQ
The Truth About Black People and Country Music — We Created It! (2020). Black History. https://www.blackhistory.com/2019/07/truth-black-people-created-country-music.html