The Birth of P-Funk: George Clinton

American history was radically changed when President Abraham Lincoln gave the very famous Emancipation Proclamation. This lead to the freedom of millions of African Americans who sought the same liberty and equality that was promised to everyone under the United States constitution. These liberties, of course, were not achieved right away. During the Reconstruction era, which is the decade right after the Civil War, many of the recently freed slaves did not have money, property, or credit. They could not buy the necessary things to enjoy their freedom, which lead to sharecropping, a glorified form of slavery. Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner lets a tenant use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land (Sharecropping).. Added on to this, facilities were segregated to prevent the black man from enjoying the same things as the white man due to Jim Crow laws which were enacted after the Reconstruction era. The struggle for equality and rights continued during the Gilded Age (1873-1900), the Progressive Era (1900-1920s), the Great Depression (1930s), WWII (1939-1945), the beginning of the Cold War (1947), up until the Civil Rights movement (1954-1968). At this point in history, African Americans fought for their rights and changed the course of American history. Music was a very important tool used by African Americans that helped achieve this. Ever since the slavery times, music was a big part of their culture

The Spirituals are spiritual. Conscious artistry and popular conception alike should never rob them of this heritage, untrue to their tradition and to the folk genius to give them another tone. That they are vulnerable of both crude and refined secularization is no excuse. Even though their own makers worked them up from the "shout" and the rhythmic elements of the sensuous dance, in their finished form and basic emotional effect all of these elements were completely sublimated in the sincere intensities of religious seriousness. To call them Spirituals and treat them otherwise is a travesty. Emotionally, African slave songs were far from simple. They are not only spread over the whole length of human moods, with the traditional religious overtone skillfully insinuated in each

“When first entering in America, British folk music was distinguished by three-chord tunes, sparse instrumentation (with some fiddlers), mostly male performers, improvisation, the singers’ sporadic shouts (Scottish “yips”), Christian themes served up in hundreds of hymns, and a secular collection of songs that told stories, generally about love and lost love, using metaphor and symbol to tell those stories” (Allen 101). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British music changed and became Americanized. Vocal harmonizing slowly evolved, and fiddlers were accompanied by those who played banjo, an African American opening. “Tambourines and “bones” (tapping out rhythms using pork rib bones) were a minstrel show contribution” (Allen 102). When African Americans were forced into slavery and brought to North America in the 1600s, they brought their own musical traditions and sounds. Slaves who were on the Mississippi River Valley delta soil developed what will later be introduced as blues music. On the plantations, slaves greatly changed British American hymn singing. They took non-religious British American songs and turned it into their own forms of music that followed their culture and taste of music. Blues emerged in the early twentieth century at the same time country music became settled from its folk roots. Blues music talked about the indifferences African American slaves were going through at that time. “The blues voiced human

Black slaves were being taken away from their families and were not permitted to bring material objects with them. In the Colonies, Africans weren't allowed to read, write, or learn anything except for what their master taught them. Some Africans learned to play a musical instrument by watching other white male musicians. Some became relatively famous. They had memories and their culture of music to keep their minds off of their enslavement. Their music in Africa was reflected in the new songs they sang as a release from the physical and mental cruelty of their new slavery.

The roots of modern american rock and roll music, are firmly planted in Africa. As the native Africans were torn apart from their family’s and brought to the new world their lives were immediately and drastically changed forever. Finding themselves immersed in a completely new environment with a foreign culture, they thankfully persevered and carried on with their own traditions and most importantly to this paper, musical ones. Most American slaves originated from Western and Central Africa. The West Africans carried a musical tradition rich with long melody lines, complicated rhythms (poly rhythmics) and stringed instruments CITATION. The West Africans music was also strongly integrated into their everyday lives. Songs were preformed for religious ceremonies and dances and music was often a

One of the first things that attracted the African American slaves to Christianity was a way of obtaining the salvation of theirs souls based on the Christian’s idea of a future reward in heaven or punishment in hell, which did not exist in their primary religion. The religious principles inherited from Africa sought purely physical salvation and excluded the salvation of the soul. However, they did believe in one supreme God, which made it easier for them to assimilate Christianity.

The slave era brought together many African Americans who were from all different backgrounds and spoke different languages so when they were forced to work together in the plantations it was as if, they had a common communication by singing the slave shouts together. Slaves were not always allowed to speak however, they could sing and together this was harmony that is found in jazz and Spirituals. The oppression from the slave shouts transferred over to the early blues and Spirituals. The rhythm is also heard from early on in the slave shouts. In the slave era when they were slave shouting or ring shouts singing together there was a rhythm they had going or a pulse you could hear with their signing. It was an amazing way of communication

African American religious music is the foundation of all contemporary forms of so called “black music.” African American religious music has been a fundamental part of the black experience in this country. This common staple of the African American experience can be traced back to the cruel system of slavery. It then evolved into what we refer to today as gospel music. The goal of this paper is to answer three main questions. What are the origins of African American religious music? How did this musical expression develop into a secular form of music? What is the future of African American religious music? These questions will be answered through factual research of African American traditions, artists, and various other sources.

Spirituals, a religious folk song of American origin, particularly associated with African-American Protestants of the southern United States. The African-American spiritual, characterized by syncopation, polyrhythmic structure, and the pentatonic scale of five whole tones, is, above all, a deeply emotional song. Spirituals are really the most characteristic product of the race genius as yet in America. But the very elements which make them uniquely expressive of the Negro make them at the same time deeply representative of the soil that produced them. Spirituals were long thought to be the only original folk music of the United States, and research into its origin centered mainly on the nature and extent of its African

Humans from the coast of West Africa arrived to the New World as slaves. Stripped of everything familiar, they brought with them their traditional ways of using music to record historic events, expressions, and to accompany rituals. While toiling in the tobacco fields of Virginia, slaves were not permitted to speak to each other. So, they resorted to their African tradition. They sang!

The turning point of slavery by the 19th century, slaves no longer identified themselves as Ibo, Ashanti, Yoruba, and so on, but as African-American. In music, art, folklore, language, and religion, their cultural expressions emerged as a synthesis of African traditions, European elements, and new conditions in America. Their religion also had to changed, according to give me liberty “no experience was more wrenching for African slaves in the colonies than the transition from traditional religions to Christianity,” (141). In South Carolina and Georgia, two very different black

Throughout the history of this country, the music of African-Americans has remained a strong influence upon our society and culture. Beginning with the music carried over from Africa with the slaves, up until now, with the new styles created by urban youth today, African-Americans have retained certain elements within their music which makes it unique from any other musical form. Some of the musical forms which were created from, and/or were strongly influenced by afro-centric musical characteristics are: Hymnals, Gospel, Spirituals, Ragtime, the blues, and R&B. While many of these musical forms are still popular today amongst Blacks and Non-Blacks, jazz and hip-hop are arguably the two most widespread and

The songs were developed to reduce the level of boredom and increase production, these songs created a sense of familiarity and togetherness among workers. The African American work songs were created during the slave era in the seventeenth century; many had their origin in traditions of Africa and were sung to remind them of home or ordered by their masters to boost morale and keep slaves working. They have also been seen as means of endurance, expressing of anger and frustration via verbal signals. Some aspects like call and response were said to be rooted in African tradition, where a leader could sing a verse and be repeated by the greater mass. This eventually led to spirituality development which acted as a basis for Christianity leading to modern day gospels and blues.

For centuries, Gospel music has influenced and promoted African-American social, moral and ethical values, playing an imperative role in modelling their past and future. Originating from the hardships of slavery and the strength of Christian worship, Gospel music has adapted to musical tastes through the development of a number of sub-genres, while retaining its moral and spiritual framework. Throughout its musical history, Gospel music has had a profound and predominant influence on its devotees and followers. During the turbulent years of the American Civil Rights Movement, Gospel music played a vital role in building the foundations of stability and

The slave trade in New Orleans brought hundreds of slaves from West Africa into a young and developing city. With them came their cultures and music styles. As slaves, a sense of community became essential to their joint and individual survival. And, since New Orleans afforded their urban slaves with the ability to congregate, they began to express this West African culture in the form of music. It was