Reading Response 11/10

In Blues People by Amiri Baraka, the author writes abut the history of the West Africans that were brought to America as slaves.  In these novel excerpts she addresses the issue of the 1^st American slaves and their attempt to hold on to their African customs and traditions, while being forced to labor foreign land.  One custom that was bought to America was the work songs that they sang. Even though the work songs survived slavery, its original content changed dramatically due to circumstances. Songs once used while laboring their own fields in West Africa held different meaning in America. Not only did they try to make their relatable to their current situation, they were also forced to give some of the basic foundations of these songs. Individual songs for different task such as fishing, weaving and hunting songs were suddenly lost and became one song about the cultivation of the white man’s field. Their songs referring to the gods or religion were not permitted due to the white masters believing that Africans were “heathens” and references to god meant they were planning on leaving. The slave owners also saw a threat in the African drum and prohibited the use of it believing that they represented an intention to revolt.

These work songs were handed down to their offspring but the cry to return home to Africa which was the basis for the songs sung by the first slaves, was no longer relatable to new generation of slaves.  Like their ancestors, the American-born slaves now changed these songs to suit their own circumstances.  They could not chant about returning to Africa when America is the only home they’ve known, so their cries turn to cries of FREEDOM. With the drums, religion and the cries to return home removed from African music; the new slaves set to establish their own musical identity using the only surviving aspect of African music, Rhythm. The history of drums being used as communication by Africans helped Afro-Americans developed “an extremely fine and extremely complex rhythmic sense.”  With the lost of their own identity they soon realized that America was the white mans world and used the ideas and religious ideology to set a foundation for what they hoped to become.