Religious music versus secular music
...sible. Music is one of the most important facet of black culture and it is really worth wandering through history to show to what extend it can be true. 2- BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Roots : In this topic, we will only deal with the American black community since the music we are interested in is black music in the USA. Therefore, it seems to be absolutely necessary to search in the past in order to define in a better way the present music. Black people were brought from Africa to America and they obviously did not come willingly. When the Europeans settled in North America, they found acres and acres of land which they could not exploit by themselves. To solve this problem, they decided to bring slaves from Africa that is to say in a few words free labour. The conditions of the trip from Africa were very harsh for those black people who were dragged away from their native land in a violent way by unscrupulous men looking for profitable trade. Once in America they were bought by landowners which meant that they belonged to them. Slaves did nothing but work all day long in very hard conditions. They were simply exploited and they could do nothing about that. Moreover, they were harshly treated by their masters who did not consider a Negro as a human being, it was only an instrument of work.. The Church also insisted on this point of view by stressing the fact that “blacks have no soul”. It is therefore easy to imagine what were the living conditions of those people. The only relief or protection they had was to stay together and keep their traditions alive not to forget the past : the time when they were still free men in their African land. So they tried to keep their customs within their own circles and in the beginning white people did not think in meddling with those affairs. Later, things began to change in that respect; the Church considered that it was necessary to convert people to Christianity, decision that could be seen as a paradox since blacks were supposed to have no soul and they were considered as savages. But according to the Church, the only way for them to gain a soul was to become Christians. In fact, they did not give them any choice, and the conversion began. But what was really interesting in that process was that black people achieved to keep a lot of African elements in their new religion. The purpose was to preserve their own culture and their own identity even if they had to adapt themselves to the white culture which was not a free choice. Thus, africanisms could be found in every aspect of their life : music, religion, language, habits, way of living …The language is an obvious proof of their determination since they spoke a kind of English mixed with African words and this was due to the fact that they had to learn a new language, difficult for them. On the other hand, the fact of using African words was a means of keeping safe their own world, to preserve it from the whites’ intromission, proof of their strong desire to avoid loosing their identity. Music was another way to claim their roots and the existence of African elements in black music is undeniable. The living conditions of black people in the United states during slavery were very hard and they did not change either after the emancipation in spite of what we could think about it. After a bloody civil war, Negroes achieved their freedom but the touch with reality was rather deceiving for them. They were not ready to get into the real life as freedmen and thus the problems they had to face were even harder. Segregation was nearly stronger than before and the status of the black man did not change. He was still considered as inferior and the jobs to which he could pretend were of course the lowest and the hardest ones. His living conditions evolved very slowly but they remained very difficult. Slavery was abolished in 1859 but it did not disappear with the civil war, it continued illicitly which shows clearly that the evolution was so slow. Therefore, the function of black music can not be drawn from its social and cultural context. In fact, black songs had many additional functions both in Africa and in America. As Lawrence Levine said : In Africa songs, tales, proverbs and verbal games served the dual purpose of not only preserving communal values and solidarity but also providing occasions for the individual to transcend, at least symbolically, the inevitable restrictions of his environment and his society but permitting him to express deeply held feelings which ordinarily could not be verbalized. In fact, slaves used the subtleties of their songs to comment on the whites around them with a certain freedom which was forbidden in other forms of expression. They used their songs to express their needs, their desires, their feelings and their sense of humour allowed them to laugh at everything despite their situation. Music in Black People’s life : The first singings of the slaves were work songs derived from the first complaints : “ The shouts yelled in that mean world which was life in slaves’ camps.” The musical history remembers them as “Shouts or Hollers”. In the nineteenth century, African music could be found mostly in the fields. Consequently, various classes of rural music have lots of African elements. This is mainly a question of function and the strongest African elements still existed in music since it served the same purpose as in Africa. One of these purposes was to allevi...