Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Blues dancing originated in the dances brought to America by enslaved Africans, who followed sub-Saharan African music traditions.There is no documented evidence across the history of pre-colonial sub-Saharan African dance for sustained one-on-one mixed-gender partnered dancing; African cultures apparently considered this type of dancing to be inappropriate.
Poor Irish immigrants to the Carolinas introduced jig dancing to the region, and other whites saw the slave dance styles as similar. Set de flo' was among these "jig" dances. [6] Slave owners would sometimes arrange dance contests between their slaves and slaves from other plantations. The slave owners would bet on the outcome. [7]
Jazz is recognized as beginning around the turn of the 20th century, but is actually much older. Most people believe that its existence derived from African slavery, but it has native African-American roots. Blues music gave birth to Jazz, and both genres of music stem from the work songs of the first generation of African slaves in America.
Competition has long played an important role in social dance in African-American social dance, from the "battles"' of hip hop and lindy hop to the cakewalk. Performances have also been integrated into everyday dance life, from the relationship between performance and socializing in tap dancing to the "shows" held at Harlem ballrooms in the 1930s.
The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify Islamic music as an influence on blues music. [11] [12] Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, a famous Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note ...
African Journey: A Search for the Roots is a blues album by an American historian Samuel Charters and an attempt to trace the roots and influences of American blues from the 1920s and 1930s back to the tribal music of West Africa. He draws connections and similarities through song content and instrument type and usage.
She attributes the origins of field holler music to African Muslim slaves who accounted for an estimated 30% of African slaves in America. According to Kubik, "the vocal style of many blues singers using melisma , wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of West Africa that had been in contact with the Arabic - Islamic ...
The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the African-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery, with the development of juke joints occurring later. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves.