They now use instruments like the piano and guitar. Also they have been highly influenced by Western music. The history of African music has always brought much controversy since it is hard to say how music really sounded before British colonization. African music was most commonly transmitted orally so it was rare to find a written record of it. Music, dance and story telling are among the forms of art that have been kept century after century in Africa.
Musa is best known for a pilgrimage he made in Mecca in 1324. He went in regal spleror with an entourage of sixty thousand persons, including twelve thousand servants. Musa returned to his kingdom with an architect who designed imposing buildings in Timbuktu and other cities of Sudan” Chapter two This chapter is about the beginning of the slave trade. Blacks weren’t the only type of people that were slaves of course, just the most popular. Plantation owners preferred blacks because they were easier to find if they ran away, they tend to be more immune to diseases, and they didn’t really know their way around.
Due to the fact that many African Americans had many great talents that were passed down from generations and could not show them or use them. No one at the time could express there selves in the way that they really wanted to because they could face beating by their master. Many artist such as Langston Hughes had opened up and began to express their selves with poetry and new error of music called Jazz. Jazz was a way to also express ones feelings, pain, suffrage through the sound of music. “While it may have contributed to a certain relaxation of racial attitudes among young whites, perhaps its greatest impact was to reinforce race pride among blacks.” (Richard Wormser) This gave blacks a reassurance that it is okay to be proud of your color and that one day things would be different between the two race.
Before colonialism came to Africa, the continent was thriving. As Boahen says, “the most surprising aspects of the imposition of colonialism on Africa were its suddenness and its unpredictability.” Because prior to this, there was growing independence of many African nations. The slave trade had a major impact on Africa and its ability to grow economically. It also hindered family structures due to the massive amounts of men between ages 18 and 30 who were taken for slaves. African cities and towns did not have
The reason, as Sagas point it out, is that since the island was founded, there have been race-mixing and this practice lasted for century. Since they practice race-mixing, many of the citizens turn out to be mulatto so they do not really consider themselves Black. In Dominican Republic, if you have any white ancestry, you have a higher possibility to have a great life and live in the upper-class. This is different than the USA, of course, where if you have any Black ancestry, you are consider low in class. It is not that they do not think of themselves as “white”, but that they are really “Dominicans” for “national and racial purpose” (335).
Tools of Empire The French and British empires used many tools to gain land and maintain them during the height of their empires. The French language was a language of culture and trade. This language seemed to link all of the French colonized and the colonizers together. When the French were expanding their Empire, one of the places they expanded into was Western Africa. The African’s had no choice but to learn this new foreign language if they expected to trade and communicate at all with the French.
Out of all the various types of art shown in this lecture, the Harlem Renaissance intrigued me the most. My all time favorite painting is, Slavery through Reconstruction, Aspects of Negro Life Series. The work of Aaron Douglas is absolutely stunning. This particular painting looks like a celebration of the African culture. Especially, their success in overcoming the terrifying obstacles they were faced with.
Tattoos have been around thousands of years longer than that, as many unearther egyptian mummies have shown evidence of body art. The polynesians used tattoos as a declaration of social status-the more you had, the better warrior you were. The african tribes used
The African tradition of decorating the body both enhances one’s beauty and gives a person a higher status in their tribe” (African). Although African body art and scarification fuels many prejudices about the African people from the outside world, body art has existed as an important aspect of African history that allows self-expression in various tribes because forms of body decoration have existed for over five thousand years. Body art has existed as an important aspect of African history because of the many styles of body decoration that exist. Africans use scarification, body paint, mud coloring, body piercing, and lip disks to embellish their bodies. Scarification, also known as “The Proud Mark”, describes the art where a person marks his or her skin in decorative patterns.
Blacks Writers Over the past couple of decades the evolution of African American writers has blossomed in great amounts. Most African American writers usually write about the same things. (Jordan 2) Depending on the decade and the events going on most writers tend to surround their composed work with things they are familiar to. Black writers play an important part in the inspiration that allows the amount of writers we have to rapidly become the majority. Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Tupac Shakur all have different methods of composing works of art.