HonOring HistoRy
“Koromanti” transcribed by Mr. Baptiste, from (Sloane book)
Black American music from before the Civil War references a complex past—one in which music served several purposes overlapping and distinct from those of European music.
Here is a quick overview. Black musicians in the United States and broader Atlantic before the Civil War created music in many contexts:
1.
CoMmunity ExpreSsion
in enslaved populations, especially after appx. 1780:
Devotion
example: folk spirituals and hymns—like New Zion Baptist Church’s “My Lord What a Mornin” and many kinds of music born of the Second Great Awakening and that live on in modern Black churches today. See the “Sacred” branch of the Carnegie Hall Timeline.
My Lord What a Mornin
Celebration, recreation, and entertainment
example: instrumental music for dance—like Mr. Baptiste’s “Koromanti” (1707), which predates this period significantly but gives some sense of the possibilities of past African-derived instrumental sound; or European-derived dances like those by Francis Johnson (1839)—see Listening to Music for discussion
Koromanti
Victoria Gallop
Proof of labor, coordination of labor
example: folk spirituals, work songs—like Henry Truvillon’s rendition of a cotton picking song) (1939)
Cotton Picking Song
Resistance
example: folk spirituals, work songs—like John Lowry Goree’s “Let Me Go to My Dear Mother” or New Zion Baptist Church’s “Bound for the Promised Land” (1939)
Let Me Go to My Dear Mother
Bound for the Promised Land
2.
IndiViduaL ExpreSsion
individual expression in private moments, free and enslaved
(music that resists documentation)
example: folk spirituals, lullabies—like “John Brown’s Lullaby” (1939)
John Brown's Lullaby
3.
performance and ExpreSsion
by free or enslaved musicians/composers in more nearly European context
example: dance tunes, concert music—like Tom Wiggins’s “Battle of Manassas” (1863)
Battle of Manassas
4.
Any oF the aBovE in CombInation
These are best-guess examples of music that would have served these purposes. There is more to read on all of this, and especially more nuance to these functional categories and types of music. Comprehensive sources include Eileen Southern’s The Music of Black Americans, Dena Epstein’s Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, and Portia K. Maultsby and Melonee V. Burnham’s African American Music: An Introduction, but there is more referenced throughout the site. I also recommend reading further about the differences between folk spirituals and arranged spirituals.
Note two special things from this list:
1.
Many of these types of music and functions for music overlap. Black musicians in this period played and combined instrumental music of both European and African origin. Devotional songs, some aspects of which often had their roots in European religious practices, were adapted for a community’s and individual’s need for both prayer and resistance. This multiplicity of origins and use can make the racialized history and use of music more complex to explain.
2.
At the same time, some of the contexts explained above stand apart from those for the music of white Americans of the same time period, particularly “proof of labor” and “resistance.” Performing and studying music of Black Americans from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries exposes musicians to the rich purposes of past music that they may not have considered. Further, it gives musicians not only an opportunity to connect with a history that may or may not be their own, but it also gives musicians access to older songs and instrumental music that are distinct from European music of the same time period.
A Note on Blackface Minstrelsy
There were also inauthentic representations of Black music that were taken by some populations to be true to a Black experience, and that entertainment function of music is not meant to be included in the list above. Readers probably already know about blackface minstrelsy and its musical roots in a parody of work songs of the enslaved. (For readers who want a history of an example like “Zip Coon”/“Turkey in the Straw”/the ice cream truck song, here is a short introduction. Here is a more thorough history.) While certain critics like Frederick Douglass weren’t fooled, some audiences did take blackface to represent authentic Black expression.
Certainly some musical nuances of blackface songs were informed by contact with African American populations, but it is well documented that the tunes also resembled Irish and English melodies of the time, and the texts were racist caricatures of Black experience. This music is not authentic, even though it involved Black participants at some times, like Ernest Hogan, James Bland, or the performers in the Ethiopian Serenaders, among others. I won’t be saying much more about it in this space. (Similarly, Portia Maultsby’s Timeline at the Carnegie Hall site, referenced here repeatedly, contains very little mention of it.)
“We believe [“the dough-faced editor of the Cass paper in this city”] does not object to the ‘Virginia Minstrels’, ‘Christy’s Minstrels’, the ‘Ethiopian Serenaders’, or any of the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens.”
— Frederick Douglass, Rochester, 1848
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