FEB 6 2014 Slavery and Frontiers Mississippi 1720-1835 Slavery in Mississippi has a very interesting beginning in the state. The indigenous people of the region did practice slavery to some extent. The Native Americans however did not use the same practices of the Europeans. The Europeans maintained slavery for its means of profitability but the native Americans only had slaves as a luxury. The Indians did not really differentiate the Europeans and the slaves that they brought with them to the newly discovered lands.
Angelica Davis Infinito: World Civilization African Dance & Statues African Dance is a performing art deeply woven into the social fabric of Africa and generally involving aspects of music and theatre, as well as rythmetic bodily movement. (http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-9384736). Traditional African Dance was created to express the life in the community by not the typical going to church and praising God through song and clapping. Traditional African Dance mostly refers to the Sub-Saharan Africa. African Dance is important to Africa to show many cultural differences in musical and movement styles.
Afro Caribbean Music If African music is said to have roots in almost all music, then undoubtedly a branch extends directly into the heart of the Caribbean Islands. All the islands have a spice of African influence, but due to length constraints, we’ve chosen to confine our discussion to Afro-Caribbean music in Jamaica and Cuba. History and Musical Cultural Context: Jamaica: From the early 1400’s to the middle 1600’s Jamaica was island under Spanish control. That was until 1655 when the British took control. After a brief period of experimenting with indentured European labor, the British turned to large scale importation of Africans to be used as slaves on the sugar plantations.
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre was founded by dancer, choreography and company director Alvin Ailey. Ailey’s African-American heritage inspired the themes and music for his choreography. His work often focuses on life experience, human emotions, blood memories, community and religious beliefs. He wanted to show the trials and tribulations of the black African Americans but also their elegance. For example in Cry (1971) Ailey’s intent was to portray the strength and struggle of the African-American women in the slave trade.
The difference between these two styles involves artists, major composition and influence. Through these three areas, the development of ragtime and blues greatly affect the revolution of jazz. The individual experience of artists can both affect and reflect the main characteristics of a music style. Ragtime dominated American popular music for nearly two decade from 1890s to 1910s. During this period, Scott Joplin, noticed as the most influential pianist to ragtime, was born into a typical Africa-American family in Northeast Texas, whose father had been a slave.
The first story is told about slaves who were chained together and were forced to drag one leg as they cut sugar to the beat of drums. The other story is about a hero who injures his leg during a revolution in the Dominican Republic. A victory celebration party was thrown for him upon the return of home, yet the villagers were sympathetic and felt obliged to drag their foot and limp around. Since the 1930’s, Merengue has been recognized as the national dance for the Dominican Republic and is known be the easiest dance to learn. Typically, Merengue is consists of paseo (which is walk), body and “jaleo”.
Tin Pan Alley paved the way for musical entertainment that we enjoy to this day. According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, The term “Tin Pan Alley” originally referred to W. 28th Street in New York around 1910 when during it’s heyday because songwriters would be creatively banging around on lower end pianos that you could hear from the street. Tin Pan Alley was the basis for traditional music that surrounds us to this day. Without the pianos that wailed their tunes through publisher’s doors beginning in 1880, people would have been deprived of the musical entertainment that Tin Pan Alley so strongly influenced. From Vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood musical movies, to ragtime, jazz, swing, and rock and roll, all the way to television variety shows after the depression; the pianos of Tin Pan Alley are credited for laying the foundation for the many entertainments that have endured for over two hundred years.
Being slaves, they had to disguise the study of the art, and that is how the dance came into it. Their hands were manacled most of the time, so the art used a lot of standing on hands feet up, and some moves were directed to fighting mounted enemies. Capoeira was born in the "senzalas", places where slaves were kept, and evolved in the "quilombos", a refugee home for slaves. The senzalas restricted the Capoeira development, because what hurt the slaves physically hurt the masters financially. When slaves fled, they started to practice the Capoeira again in the quilombos.
Jazz became so popular during these times, because life in America back than was rough for a lot of people. Some jazz was sung about these problems and how people dealt with them and their opinions on life. Other types of jazz were played to bring excitement to people’s everyday lives and give them a time where they could dance and enjoy life. One of the first types of jazz that contributed a lot to the jazz we know today was ragtime. Ragtime was big during the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s and originated in the southern United States.
The articles “The Buena Vista Social Club” by Tanya Katerí Hernandez and “Globalisation and the Tango” by Chris Goertzen and María Susana Azzi have both discussed the issue of the globalisation of Latin American music and how it is portrayed in foreign countries. Cuban son music emerged in the country during the 1910s and by 1930 had gained worldwide success. This style of music, a blend of Spanish canción, Spanish guitar and African rhythms and played in the clave rhythm, provided a key symbol of Afro-Cuban culture and identity while also heavily influencing other musicians and music genres. It provided Havana’s Afro-Cuban lower classes with a source of income and the chance to enter a previously European dominated market. Son was exported to the rest of the world during the 1930s and 1940s and became particularly popular in the United States, also providing the grounds for the creation of salsa music in the 1970s.