AFROCENTRIC
AFRICAN
MUSIC




JUNE
African-American Music,
Appreciation Month
Black Music Month
Month of black music




AFRICAN MUSIC

AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC

THE BLUES

BLUE NOTES

THE 12 BAR BLUES

THE 8 BAR BLUES

16 BAR BLUES

RHYTHM AND BLUES

JAZZ

GOSPEL

GANDY DANCERS

RAGTIME MUSIC

FOLK MUSIC

ACAPPELLA MUSIC

REGGAE MUSIC

CARIBBEAN MUSIC

ZOUK MUSIC

SALSA MUSIC

CALYPSO MUSIC

MAMBO MUSIC



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SECTION 1



AFRICAN
MUSIC




AFRICAN
MUSIC

African music is as vast and varied as
the continent's many nations and ethnic
groups, so a general description of
African music is not possible.

Although there is no distinctly pan-African
music, there are shared forms of musical
expression, and regional similarities between
dissimilar groups.

The music and dance forms of the African diaspora
(many Caribbean and Latin American music genres
like rumba and salsa, as well as African American
music) were founded to varying degrees on musical
traditions from Africa, taken there by the African
slaves.

Some musical genres of Northern Africa, Northeast
Africa and the islands off the East African coast
share both traditional African and Middle Eastern
features.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_music




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SECTION 2



AFRICAN
AMERICAN
MUSIC




AFRICAN
AMERICAN
MUSIC

African American music, black music,
formerly known as race music, is an
umbrella term given to a range of
musical genres emerging from or
influenced by the culture of African
Americans, who have long constituted
a very large ethnic minority of the
population of the United States.

They were originally brought to North
America to work as slaves in cotton
plantations, bringing with them the
typically polyrhythmic songs from
hundreds of ethnic groups across West
and sub-Saharan Africa.

In the United States, multiple cultural
traditions merged with influences from
polka, waltzes and other European music.



Features common to most African
American music styles include:


call and response

vocality
(or special vocal effects):

guttural effects,
interpolated vocality,
falsetto,
Afro-melismas,
lyric improvisation,
vocal rhythmization
blue notes


rhythm:
syncopation,
concrescence,
tension,
improvisation,
percussion,
swung note


texture:
antiphony,
homophony,
polyphony,
heterophony


harmony:
vernacular progressions;

complex multi-part harmony,
as in
spirituals,
barbershop music



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Music




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SECTION 3



THE
BLUES




THE
BLUES

The blues is a vocal and instrumental
form of music based on the use of the
blue notes and a repetitive pattern
that typically follows a twelve-bar
structure.

It evolved in the United States in the
communities of former African slaves,
from spirituals, praise songs, field
hollers, shouts, and chants.

The use of blue notes and the prominence
of call-and-response patterns in the music
and lyrics are indicative of the blues'
West African pedigree.

The blues influenced later American and
Western popular music, as it became part
of the genres of ragtime, jazz, bluegrass,
rhythm and blues, rock and roll, hip-hop,
country music and pop songs.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues




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SECTION 4



BLUE
NOTES




BLUE
NOTES

In jazz and blues, blue notes are notes sung
or played at a lower pitch than those of the
major scale for expressive purposes.
Typically the alteration is a semitone or less,
but this varies among performers. Country blues,
in particular, features wide variations from the
tonic but still with the blue-note feeling.

The blue notes correspond approximately to the
flattened third, flattened fifth, and flattened
seventh scale degrees, although they approximate
non-equal tempered pitches found in African work
songs; specifically, the flatted seventh may
often be a justly tuned minor seventh.
These blue notes are what turns a major scale
into the blues scale.

The blues scale is used in almost all twelve-bar
and eight-bar blues, but it is also used in blues
ballads and in conventional popular songs with a
"blue" feeling, such as Harold Arlen's "Stormy
Weather".



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_note




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SECTION 5



TWELVE
BAR
BLUES




TWELVE
BAR
BLUES

The 12-bar blues has a distinctive form
in both lyrics and chord structure. Most
commonly, lyrics are in three lines, with
the first two lines almost the same with
slight differences in phrasing and
interjections.

The chord progression is simple to identify
after some study and attention as it rises
and falls in a regular and very familiar
pattern.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_bar_blues




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SECTION 6



EIGHT
BAR
BLUES




EIGHT
BAR
BLUES

An eight bar blues is a typical blues chord
progression, taking eight 4/4 bars to the
verse. "How Long Blues", "Ain't Nobody's
Business" and "Cherry Red" are examples.

One variant is to couple an eight-bar blues
with a different eight-bar blues bridge to
create a blues variant of the standard 32-bar
song.

"Walking By Myself", "I Want a Little Girl"
and "(Romancing) In The Dark" are examples
of this form. See also blues ballad.

Eight bar blues progressions have more variations
than the more rigidly defined twelve bar format.
The move to the IV chord usually happens at bar 3
(as opposed to 5 in twelve bar.)

Worried Life Blues (probably the most common eight
bar blues progression).



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-bar_blues




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SECTION 7



SIXTEEN
BAR
BLUES




SIXTEEN
BAR
BLUES

Sixteen-bar blues is a blues chord progression
very similar to the eight bar blues form, except
that blues is not traditionally associated with
any set notation so sometimes it can be called
sixteen bars instead of eight.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_bar_blues




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SECTION 8



RHYTHM
AND
BLUES
MUSIC




RHYTHM
AND
BLUES
MUSIC

Rhythm-and-Blues Music or R&B, variety of
different, but related, types of popular
music produced and supported primarily by
black Americans beginning in the early
1940s.

Rhythm-and-blues music, also known simply
as R&B, embraces such genres as jump blues,
club blues, black rock and roll, doo wop,
soul, Motown, funk, disco, and rap.




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SECTION 9



JAZZ
MUSIC




JAZZ
MUSIC

Jazz, type of music first developed
by African Americans around the first
decade of the 20th century that has
an identifiable history and distinct
stylistic evolution.

Jazz grew up alongside the blues and
popular music, and all these genres
overlap in many ways.

However, critics generally agree about
whether artists fall squarely in one
camp or another.

Performers of jazz improvise within the
conventions of their chosen style.

Jazz is a style of music which originated
in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
at around the start of the 20th century.

Jazz uses blue notes, syncopation, swing,
call and response, polyrhythms, and
improvisation, and blends African American
musical styles with Western music technique
and theory.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz




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SECTION 10



GOSPEL
MUSIC




Gospel literally translated, means
"good news" deriving from the Old
English "god-spell" used in the
religious New Testament text.




GOSPEL
MUSIC

Gospel music refers to the religious music
that first came out of African-American
churches in the first quarter of the
twentieth century or, more loosely, to both
black gospel music and to the religious
music composed and sung by predominately
white Southern Gospel artists.




WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_music




GOSPEL
MUSIC

Its roots were in Sunday school hymns,
camp meeting spirituals, and the melodies
and harmonies of popular music; the bass
voice often echoes the other parts.

Black gospel music, which became distinctive
by 1930, is especially associated with the
Pentecostal churches.

It developed out of the combination of the
earlier hymns, black performance styles,
and elements from black spirituals.

Singing, which may merge into ecstatic dance,
is usually accompanied by piano or organ,
often with handclapping, tambourines, and
electric guitars.



ENCARTA
http://encarta.msn.com/




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SECTION 11



GANDY
DANCERS




The African-American
musical legacy includes
a rich worksong tradition.




GANDY
DANCERS

Skills and work songs of the gandy dancers,
the railroad section crew members whose
physical movements were synchronized by a
"caller."

The caller sung work chants ensuring safety
and pacing, while spiritually uplifting the
men at their toil.

The gandy dancers expertise in railroad track
maintenance and their work song tradition is
unparalleled.

One of these traditions is that of the railroad
"gandy dancers."
Gandy dancers (from the Chicago-based Gandy
Manufacturing Company, maker of railroad tools,
and the "dancing" movements of the workers using
them) were those men teamed in groups of 8 to 14
whose responsibility it was to lay or care for
the tracks of the southern railroads.

Prior to the 1960s, the all-black gandy dancer
crews used songs and chants to help accomplish
specific tasks and to send coded messages to
each other so as not to be understood by the
foreman and others. Different songs and tempos
were for the different jobs-lancing calls to
coordinate the dragging of 39-foot rails;
slower "dogging" calls to direct the picking up
and manipulating of the steel rails;
more rhythmic songs for spiking the rails,
tamping the bed of gravel beneath them, or lining
the rails with long iron crowbars.

The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew,
for example, to realign a rail to a certain position.
His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically
and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of
the work at hand.

It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right
chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men.
Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of
the blues, each caller had his own signature.

The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been
compared to how a preacher can move a congregation.



AL.US
http://www.arts.state.al.us/actc/compilation/gandy.html/




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SECTION 12



RAGTIME
MUSIC




The music, vitalized by the
opposing rhythms common to
African dance, was vibrant,
enthusiastic,
often extemporaneous.




RAGTIME
MUSIC

The first Ragtime composition was published
by Ben Harney. Notably the antecedent to Jazz,
early Ragtime music was in the format of marches,
waltzes and other traditional song forms but the
consistent characteristic was syncopation.

Syncopated notes and rhythms became so popular
with the public that sheet music publishers
included the word "syncopated" in advertising.

In 1899, a classically trained young pianist from
Missouri named Scott Joplin published the first
of many Ragtime compositions that would come to
shape the music of a nation.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#Ragtime




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SECTION 13



FOLK
MUSIC




Folk music, in the original
sense of the term, is music
by and for the common people.




FOLK
MUSIC

Folk music arose, and best survives,
in societies not yet affected by mass
communication[citation needed] and
the commercialization of culture.

It normally was shared by the entire
community, and its performance not
strictly limited to a special class
of expert performers, and was then
transmitted by word of mouth.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music




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SECTION 14



ACAPPELLA
MUSIC




ACAPPELLA
MUSIC

A cappella music is vocal music or singing
without instrumental accompaniment, or a
piece intended to be performed in this way.

A cappella is Italian for "in the style of
the chapel", and was originally intended to
differentiate between Renaissance polyphony
and Baroque concertato style.

In the 19th century a renewed interest in
Renaissance polyphony coupled with an
ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were
often doubled by instrumentalists lead to
the corruption of the term to mean
unaccompanied vocal music.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_cappella




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SECTION 15



REGGAE
MUSIC




REGGAE
MUSIC

Reggae is a music genre developed in Jamaica
in the late 1960s.The term is sometimes used
in a broad sense to refer to most types of
Jamaican music, including ska, rocksteady and
dub.

The term is more specifically used to indicate
a particular style that originated after the
development of rocksteady.

In this sense, reggae includes two subgenres:
roots reggae (the original reggae) and dancehall
reggae, which originated in the late 1970s.

Reggae is founded upon a rhythm style characterized
by regular chops on the back beat, known as the skank.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae




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SECTION 16


MUSIC
OF
THE
CARIBBEAN




MUSIC
OF THE
CARIBBEAN

The music of the Caribbean is a diverse
grouping of musical genres. They are each
syntheses of African, European, Indian and
native influences.

Some of the styles to gain wide popularity
outside of the Caribbean include reggae,
zouk, salsa and calypso. Caribbean and
central America music.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_music




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SECTION 17



ZOUK
MUSIC




ZOUK
MUSIC

Zouk is a style of rhythmic music
originating from the French Caribbean
islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

It has its roots in Cadence music from
Dominica, as popularised by Grammacks
and Exile One.

Zouk means 'party' in the local creole
of French with English and the African
influences, all three of which contribute
the sound.

In Europe it is particularly popular in
France, while on the African islands of
Cape Verde they have developed their own
type of Zouk.



WIKIPEDIA
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk




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SECTION 18



SALSA
MUSIC




SALSA
MUSIC

Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly
Spanish Caribbean genre that is popular
across Latin America and among Latinos
abroad.

Salsa incorporates multiple styles and
variations; the term can be used to
describe most any form of popular
Cuban-derived genre, such as chachachá
and mambo.

Most specifically, however, salsa refers
to a particular style developed in the
1960s and '70s by Cuban immigrants and
Puerto Rican migrants to the New York
City area, and stylistic descendants like
1980s salsa romántica.

The style is now practiced throughout Latin
America and abroad; in some countries it may
be referred to as música tropical.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa_music




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SECTION 19



CALYPSO
MUSIC




CALYPSO
MUSIC

Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean
music which originated in Trinidad at
about the start of the 20th century.

The roots of the genre lay in the arrival
of African slaves, who, not being allowed
to speak with each other, communicated
through song.

This forged a sense of community among the
Africans, who saw their colonial masters
change rapidly, bringing French, Spanish
and British music styles to the island of
Trinidad.

The French brought Carnival to Trinidad,
and calypso competitions at Carnival grew
in popularity, especially after the
abolition of slavery in 1834.



WIKIPEDIA
THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_music




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SECTION 20



MAMBO
MUSIC




MAMBO
MUSIC

Mambo is a Cuban musical form
and dance style. The word mambo
(conversation with the gods) is
the name of a priestess in Haitian
Voodoo, derived from the language
of the African slaves who were
imported into the Caribbean.



WIKIPEDIA
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo




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