African Americans have made significant contributions to the art of music in many genres. Black culture and American music are inextricably linked, stretching back to the time when enslaved people were imported from the shores of Africa, bringing with them the roots of their music and culture. Those roots changed music history-for all of us-forever, and that influence continues today.
Seeing the need to have the accomplishments of African American music and its musicians recognized, music producer Kenny Gamble and broadcast executive Ed Wright, crafted an idea of celebrating the contributions of African Americans musicians to the art of music while also taking black music globally. In 1978, Gamble, influential music activist and broadcaster Dyana Williams, and Wright launched the Black Music Association (BMA) in part to push for the creation of a Black Music Month. President Jimmy Carter hosted the first Black Music Month gathering in the summer of 1979. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a Presidential Proclamation giving African-American Music Appreciation Month national designation.
Today, there’s virtually no music we listen to that hasn’t felt the effects and benefits of that African and Black heritage.
The National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee.
Origins in Slavery
The music of African Americans can be traced back to the days of slavery. Music and dance were an integral part of African life and remained important to Blacks in America. Both slaves and free blacks used music as an accompaniment to work, worship, and celebration. In the fields as slaves were working you could hear them singing songs to pass the time. These songs were a way for them to share their life stories. Many slave owners began to forbid their workers from using their own languages to chant or use drums.
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White slave owners subjugated their slaves physically, mentally, and spiritually through brutal and demeaning acts. Some White Americans considered African Americans separate and unequal for centuries, going to extraordinary lengths to keep them oppressed. African-American slaves created a distinctive type of music that played an important role in the era of enslavement. Slave songs, commonly known as work songs, were used to combat the hardships of the physical labor. Work songs were also used to communicate with other slaves without the slave owner hearing. The song "Wade in the Water" was sung by slaves to warn others trying to leave to use the water to obscure their trail.
During the eighteenth century, the slaves' informal assemblies in praise houses and brush arbor meetings featured songs and chants such as the ring shout, a circular dance accompanied by chanting and handclapping. Due to the fact that white colonizers viewed indigenous African religious practices that included drumming and dancing as idolatrous, the enslaved individuals conducted their music-infused religious ceremonies in private.
The earliest form of Black musical expression in America, spirituals include African-American work songs that wielded a powerful influence on the blues and gospel music later. Spirituals were rooted in biblical stories but represented the severe hardships endured by African-Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century to the 1860s. The “call-and-response” exchange is a prominent feature of spirituals-that is, when a leader sings a phrase and the rest of the group responds with the same or different phrase. Originating from traditional African songs, call-and-response is a key component of African-American work songs and eventually found its way beyond spirituals and into blues, gospel, rock ‘n’ roll, soul and even hip-hop music.
In the late 18th century folk spirituals originated among Southern slaves following their conversion to Christianity. Slaves reinterpreted the practice of Christianity in a way that had meaning to them as Africans in America. They often sang the spirituals in groups as they worked the plantation fields. African-American spirituals (Negro Spirituals) were created in invisible churches and regular Black churches. The hymns, melody, and rhythms were similar to songs heard in West Africa. Enslaved and free blacks created their own words and tunes. Spirituals from the era of slavery are called Slave Shout Songs. These shout songs are sung today by Gullah Geechee people and other African Americans in churches and praise houses.
During slavery, these songs were coded messages that spoke of escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad and were sung by enslaved African Americans in plantation fields to send coded messages to other slaves, unbeknownst to the slaveholders. Slaves also used drums to communicate messages of escape. In West Africa, drums are used for communication, celebration, and spiritual ceremonies. West African people enslaved in the United States continued to make drums to send coded messages to other slaves across plantations. The making and use of drums by enslaved Africans was outlawed after the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739. Enslaved African Americans used drums to send coded messages to start slave revolts, and white slaveholders banned the creation and use of drums.
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Folk spirituals, unlike much white gospel, were often spirited. Slaves added dancing (later known as "the shout") and other body movements to the singing. They also changed the melodies and rhythms of psalms and hymns, by speeding up the tempo, adding repeated refrains and choruses, and replacing texts with new ones that often combined English and African words and phrases. Folk spirituals were spontaneously created and performed in a repetitive, improvised style. The most common song structures are the call-and-response ("Blow, Gabriel") and repetitive choruses ("He Rose from the Dead"). The call-and-response is an alternating exchange between the soloist and the other singers. The soloist usually improvises a line to which the other singers respond, repeating the same phrase.
The banjo, of African origin, became a popular instrument, and its African-derived rhythms were incorporated into popular songs by Stephen Foster and other songwriters. Over time the banjo's construction adopted some European traditions such as a flat fingerboard. Some banjos had five strings, in contrast to the West African three-string version.
In the 1830s, the Second Great Awakening led to a rise in Christian revivals, especially among African Americans. Drawing on traditional work songs, enslaved African Americans originated and performed a wide variety of spirituals and other Christian music. Some of these songs were coded messages of subversion against slaveholders, or signals to escape. For example, Harriet Tubman sang coded messages to her mother and other slaves in the field to let them know she was escaping on the Underground Railroad.
During the period after the Civil War, the spread of African-American music continued. The Fisk University Jubilee Singers first toured in 1871. In the following years, professional "jubilee" troops formed and toured. The first black musical-comedy troupe, Hyers Sisters Comic Opera Co., was organized in 1876.
In the last half of the 19th century, barbershops often served as community centers, where men would gather. Barbershop quartets originated with African-American men socializing in barbershops; they would harmonize while waiting their turn, singing spirituals, folk songs and popular songs. This generated a new style of unaccompanied four-part, close-harmony singing. Later, white minstrel singers stole the style, and in the early days of the recording industry their performances were recorded and sold.
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Emergence of New Genres
With the abolition of slavery, a new form of music began to emerge. Free blacks found themselves expressing their disappointment in a post-slavery society.
Following the Civil War, African Americans employed playing European music in military bands developed a new style called ragtime that gradually evolved into jazz. Jazz incorporated the sophisticated polyrhythmic structure of dance and folk music of peoples from western and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Blues and ragtime were developed during the late 19th century through the fusion of West African vocalizations, which employed the natural harmonic series and blue notes.
During the period after the Civil War, the spread of African-American music continued. In a groundbreaking moment in 1898, Broadway witnessed the debut of the first musical created by African Americans, courtesy of Bob Cole and Billy Johnson. The musical landscape saw another milestone in 1890 with the first recording by black musicians-Bert Williams and George Walker-highlighting music from Broadway productions. Theodore Drury played a pivotal role in nurturing black talent in opera, establishing the Drury Opera Company in 1900. Despite its short run until 1908, the company left an indelible mark as the pioneer in black participation within opera.
The early part of the 20th century saw a rise in popularity of blues and jazz. African-American music at this time was classed as "race music". At the time "race" was a term commonly used by the African-American press to speak of the community as a whole with an empowering point of view, as a person of "race" was one involved in fighting for equal rights.
Ragtime performers such as Scott Joplin became popular and some were associated with the Harlem Renaissance and early civil rights activists. White and Latino performers of African-American music were also visible.
By the turn of the 20th century African Americans were becoming part of classical music as well. Originally excluded from major symphony orchestras, black musicians could study in music conservatories that had been founded in the 1860s, such as the Oberlin School of Music, National Conservatory of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Black people also formed symphony orchestras in major cities such as Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. Various black orchestras began to perform regularly in the late 1890s and the early 20th century. The Music School Settlement for Colored became a sponsor of the Clef Club orchestra in New York. The Clef Club Symphony Orchestra attracted both black and white audiences to concerts at Carnegie Hall from 1912 to 1915. Conducted by James Reese Europe and William H. Tyers, the orchestra included banjos, mandolins, and baritone horns. Concerts featured music written by black composers, notably Harry T. Burleigh and Will Marion Cook.
The return of the black musical to Broadway occurred in 1921 with Sissle and Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. In 1927, a concert survey of black music was performed at Carnegie Hall including jazz, spirituals and the symphonic music of W. C. Handy's Orchestra and the Jubilee Singers. The first major film musical with a black cast was King Vidor's Hallelujah of 1929.
From 1900 to 1930, Black American music underwent significant evolution, laying the foundation for many modern genres and profoundly shaping American culture. The early 1900s saw the rise of ragtime, characterized by its syncopated rhythms and popularized by artists like Scott Joplin. As the decade progressed, blues music emerged from the Deep South, with pioneers such as W.C. Handy, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith bringing the genre to a wider audience. The 1920s, known as the Jazz Age, witnessed the explosion of jazz, a genre that combined elements of blues, ragtime, and brass band music. This period also saw gospel music taking shape, influenced by the spirituals and hymns sung in Black churches. The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural and artistic movement centered in New York City, further propelled Black music into the mainstream, showcasing the talents of Black musicians and celebrating African American heritage. Despite systemic racism and limited opportunities, Black artists revolutionized the music industry.
The first symphony by a black composer to be performed by a major orchestra was William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony (1930) by the New York Philharmonic. By the 1940s, cover versions of African-American songs were commonplace, frequently topping the charts while the original versions did not reach the mainstream.
Meanwhile, jazz performers began to move away from swing towards music with more intricate arrangements, more improvisation, and technically challenging forms. African-American musicians in the 1940s and 1950s were developing rhythm and blues into rock and roll, which featured a strong backbeat. Prominent exponents of this style included Louis Jordan and Wynonie Harris. Rock and roll music became commercially successful with recordings of white musicians, however, such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, playing a guitar-based fusion of black rock and roll and rockabilly.
In 2017, National Public Radio wrote about the career of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and concluded with these comments: Tharpe "was a gospel singer at heart who became a celebrity by forging a new path musically ... Through her unforgettable voice and gospel swing crossover style, Tharpe influenced a generation of musicians including Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry and countless others ... As the 1940s came to a close, other African Americans endeavored to concertize as classical musicians in an effort to transcend racial and nationalistic barriers in the post-war era.
R&B was a strong influence on rock and roll, according to many sources, including a 1985 article in The Wall Street Journal titled, "Rock! It's Still Rhythm and Blues". Fats Domino was not convinced that there was any new genre. In 1957 he said: "What they call rock 'n' roll now is rhythm and blues. I've been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans".
According to Rolling Stone, "this is a valid statement ... all Fifties rockers, black and white, country born and city bred, were fundamentally influenced by R&B, the black popular music of the late Forties and early Fifties".
Elvis Presley's recognition of the importance of artists such as Fats Domino was significant, according to a 2017 article: the "championing of black musicians as part of a narrative that saw many positives in growing young white interest in African American-based musical styles".
At a press event in 1969, Presley introduced Fats Domino, and said, "that's the real King of Rock 'n' Roll" ... By the mid-1950s, many R&B songs were getting "covered" by white artists and the recordings got more airplay on the mainstream radio stations. For example, "Presley quickly covered "Tutti Frutti" ...So did Pat Boone", according to New Yorker. "In 1956, seventy-six per cent of top R.&.B. songs also made the pop chart; in 1957, eighty-seven per cent made...
The explosion of rock and roll in the 1960s catapulted African American music and artists into the mainstream of American culture. By mid-decade, Quincy Jones had become the first African American record label executive, and the distinctive sound of a black-owned record label, Motown, permeated the airwaves of AM radio. The atmosphere of experimentation that defined late-1960s popular culture encouraged a multicultural creative environment in which various styles clashed and merged and interracial groups such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Sly and the Family Stone, and Santana symbolized the openness and youth-oriented solidarity of the counterculture.
The experimental mind-set of the 1960s combined with a new black consciousness brought new black musical genres to prominence in the 1970s, from rock-influenced fusion and funk to Afro-Caribbean styles such as dub (a precursor of rap), ska, and reggae, a mixture of calypso and New Orleans rhythm and blues that evoked millennialist religion and black separatism in its lyrics. Meanwhile, the mainstream of black music was dominated by vocal rhythm and blues, which retained much of its early style while incorporating contemporary musical and social themes. From the lighter side of funk and rhythm and blues emerged disco, a predominantly white cultural phenomenon that nevertheless reflected the social diversity of the urban club scene, garnering special appeal among Latino and gay American communities.
During the last two decades of the twentieth century, African American music continued to demonstrate an eclecticism and image consciousness reflected in its history and exacerbated by the ever-increasing power of mass media. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed greater financial and creative empowerment of blacks in the American music industry, as music videos brought increased exposure for African American music and artists.
The Evolution Of African-American Music
Key Genres and Artists
Here's a closer look at some of the key genres and artists in African American music history:
- Gospel: From gospel legends Shirley Ceasar. As slaves became Christians, a religion forced upon them, they began singing hymns later termed spirituals. These spirituals later evolved into gospel music. In 1955, Thurman Ruth persuaded a gospel group to sing in the Apollo Theater. This presentation of gospel music in a secular setting was successful, and he arranged gospel caravans that traveled around the country playing venues that rhythm and blues singers had popularized.
- Motown: Motown was inspired by blues music, but with more rhythm added in. This style was named after Motown Records, whose goal was to feature African American musicians. From Motown legends Diana Ross and the Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Temptations, The Miracles, The Four Tops, the Jackson 5, and Marvin Gaye.
- Rap/Hip Hop: The Bay Area has also produced many legends from Oakland-born artist Sheila E., to rap/hip hop artists Too Short, M.C. Born in New York City in the 1970s, hip hop was created by African Americans who lived in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and became a cultural movement. Influences came from blues, R&B, and funk. Notable musicians include Dr. Dre, Jay Z, Ice T, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G, Snoop Dogg, P Diddy, Lauryn Hill, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Kendrick Lamar, Salt-N-Pepa, and Nicki Minaj.
Here is a table summarizing the evolution and characteristics of various African American music genres:
| Genre | Origin | Key Characteristics | Notable Artists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ragtime | 1890s | Syncopated rhythms, lively, danceable | Scott Joplin |
| Blues | 1860s | Expresses sadness, features guitar, upright bass, and piano | Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Ma Rainey |
| Jazz | 1900s | Improvisation, complex chords, polyrhythms | Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday |
| R&B/Soul | 1940s | Soulful singing, strong bass and rhythm track | Janelle Monae, Boyz II Men, Toni Braxton, Usher |
| Rock and Roll | 1950s | Inspired by blues, boogie woogie, gospel, and rhythm music | Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino |
| Pop | 1950s | Popular music with broad appeal | Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Mariah Carey |
| Funk/Soul | 1960s | Strong rhythm, influenced by soul, jazz, and African grooves | James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Prince |
| Motown | 1960s | Blues-inspired with added rhythm, featured African American musicians | Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye |
| Hip Hop/Rap | 1970s | Rhythmic chants, call-and-response vocals, sampling | Dr. Dre, Jay Z, Tupac, Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar |
A visual representation of the interconnectedness of African American music genres.
The African American Museum and Library at Oakland not only has numerous archival collections that include oral histories of Bay Area musicians but also library materials relating to African Americans in the field of music. Our reference library has numerous titles that document the history of African American music. One title in particular, Lift Every Voice by Burton W. Peretti traces the roots of black music in Africa from the end of slavery in the United States to the present day. An impressive collection of photographs of jazz greats and legends taken by Carol Friedman.
Carnegie Hall’s Timeline of African American Music traces a path from the drumbeats of Mother Africa to the work songs and Spirituals created in a new land to the blues, gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, and hip-hop expressions of African Americans that are celebrated around the world. The timeline presents a detailed view of the evolution of African American musical genres over a 400-year span, revealing the unique characteristics of each genre and style alongside in-depth studies of pioneering musicians who created some of America’s most timeless artistic expressions. Many of the genres included have a subset of styles and are associated with specific historical periods, social contexts, and functions. The Timeline of African American Music is an integral part of Carnegie Hall’s online educational resources and serves music lovers, educators, and students around the world.
The history of African American music is one of increased popular acceptance and exposure accompanied by a decreased sense of identity. Black musical expression, once regarded as an exotic but exploitable raw material, gradually became yet another entry in the diverse lexicon of American music. Black music in the late twentieth century reflected the general eclecticism of the age as well as the obsession with formulas characteristic of the popular music industry; nevertheless, it remained significant as both a reflection and a determinant of American popular culture.
