This course is an overview of African American music from 1890 to the present.
It includes ragtime,blues, jazz, "rhythm and blues", gospel and rap.
The history of African Americans plus their social, political and economic conditions are studied as background for the development of the music.
Class Outline
- What is the blues?
- Blues poetic structure
- Blues Musical Form
- Blues listening
Below is an outline of the course
UNIT 1: NOTHING BUT THE BLUESBlues developed after the Civil War and it reflects the change from a faceless slave to self dependence and loneliness of the sharecropper or itinerant worker.
This unit acquaints the student with the following:
- Economic conditions
- Solutions to the race problems
- New Laws
- Images and the Media
- Migration and World War I
- Blacks and Music
UNIT 2: SHAPING THE 20TH CENTURY
By 1890 the United States had become the world's largest manufacturing nation and she had a need for colonial markets, raw materials and cheap labor. The country met the need by occupying Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Philippines and by opening up immigration to Europeans. The freed slave, who was a large and well trained labor force, was left out of this economic expansion
This unit covers the following:
- The New Negro
- Race Records
- Big Bands
UNIT 3: EARLY JAZZ
White Americans called it the Roaring Twenties because they experienced prosperity and the good life. Blacks called it the Harlem Renaissance because their intellectuals and artist ushered in a period of nationalism
The following areas are included in this unit:
UNIT 4 MODERN JAZZ
- Jazz and nationalism
- Bebop
- Soul Jazz
- Free Form Jazz
- Jazz Rock Fusion
World War II and it's stress on democracy and fairness in Europe laid the foundation for direct action and change in the United States.
The following areas are covered in this unit:
UNIT 5 RHYTHM AND BLUES
- Post War America
- Technological innovations
- Black Radio
- Cover Records
- Du-Whoops
- Chess/Motown/Stax/Atlantic Records
In the 1920's and 1930's the term Race Records was used to identify music created by Blacks for African American entertainment. Protest from Civil Rights organizations in the early 1940's caused the recording companies to adopt the term Rhythm and Blues as an identifier of music created by blacks for black consumers..
The unit covers:
UNIT 6 GOSPEL MUSIC
- Historic black churches
- Hymns of Improvisation
- Black publishing/The business of gospel
- Dorsey Era
- Quartets
- Female gospel groups
- Black choir movement
- Gospel Music Conventions
The newly freed slave needed a music to function in urban areas in a way similar to the way spirituals had functioned in rural America. Spirituals made blacks aware of the world as it was, described the world as it ought to be, and then provided a prescription for living. Gospel songs filled the void.
This unit covers the following areas:
UNIT 7 THEOLOGY OF BLACK POWER
- New Heroes
- Afrocentrics and black youth
- Afrocentrics and music
- Merging of religious music with jazz and blues
- Growth of black college gospel choirs on white campuses
- The Last Poets
- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and the beginning of Rap
"Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud" ... those words by James Brown described a change of mood in black America. Integration and non violent protest was replaced with a new sense dignity and self respect. W. E. B. Dubois' concept of Pan Africanism spread to the streets and Molefi Kete Asante provided a new world view which he called Afrocentric.
The following areas are covered in this unit:
UNIT 8 AMERICA'S WELL OF CREATIVITY
Black music is as American as apple pie. It has given this nation an inclusive well of creativity from which anyone can drink. This inclusiveness is parallel to the country's policy of open arms to all people because it has absorbed old forms and styles from both Africa and Europe and synthesized them into one music
This unit reviews African American music in the 20th century and it's impact on world music.
