music roots

Music came as work songs, lullabies, battle songs, religious music.

http://www.acslink.aone.net.au/christo/histmain.htm

"In both Africa and Europe there were stringed instruments, wind instruments, and percussion. African music represents something closer to the cacaphony of life, and children begin playing musical games by age three."

Drums=men.

"In West Africa, professional musicians were griots, in a low class, and the admired and scorned archivist. In Equatorial, the "mvets" were more admired, and didn't normally sing praises of the rich and powerful.

"In the USA, African music was virtually eliminated by slave owners. Slaves were mainly imported from the Mandingo, Wolof, Fanti, Ashanti, Yoruba and Calabari tribes of West Africa. Tribal groups were split up and drums were originally prohibited, but the American banjo is based on the West African gourd guitar. African work songs appropriately survived and slowly evolved into blues. New European instruments were taken up by the blacks. Jazz, which transformed European structured music with African techniques of interweaving rhythm and melodies, call-and-response patterns and 'vocalising' with instruments, became the first all-American music form.

"Originally jazz was dance music, a fusion of ragtime piano style with blues, spirituals and the brass music of marching bands common at the start of the twentieth century. African-American dance music was also kept alive in the form of R&B. The R&B idioms fused with country music and ballads to become rock and roll. After jazz, rock and roll proved to be the most influential fusion but as it spread across the globe, it soon became ‘white’ music. Soul also developed out of R&B fused with gospel music. Many of the best soul musicians developed their talents in church gospel choirs. Funk and rap followed."