Black Music in the Historical Past
Instruments
- Ad hoc instruments (i.e., jugs, spoons, washboards, etc.)
- Homemade instruments
- Instruments which produced percussive sounds
- A lack of drums and drumming, which were strictly prohibited by slaveholders
- A significant deficiency in instrumental music due to social, economic, political, and geographic conditions of the time
Forms/Song Types
- Antiphonal song form (call and response)
- Spiritual
- Work song
- Field holler
- Street cry
- Song of allusion
- Ring shout
- Song sermon
- Sorrow song
Scale
- Use of the blue notes (flatted 3rd and flatted 7th)
- Flexibility of pitch
- Use of the diatonic and pentatonic scales
Vocal Style/Ornamentation
- Open, resonant voice quality
- Wide variety of tone quality
- Common types of ornamentation
- rising attack
- falling release
- glissando
- rhythmic grunting
- bends
- dips
- shouting/singing
- upward break
- Percussive quality in sound
Rhythm
- Primacy of rhythm, despite forced acculturation to Western practices
- Hand clapping, stomping, etc., provide rhythmic impetus in lieu of instruments, particularly drums
- The music is somewhat less rhythmically complex than African music, but considerably more rhythmically complex than Western music
Miscellaneous
- Heterophony
- Improvisation
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