AFRICAN-AMERICAN'S MUSIC:WORK SONGS GOSPEL, BLUES, RAGTIME AND JAZZ

Africa-American people need to espress themselves through the music. They are a culture very musical. From African roots they conserved a powerful rhytm, mean while they learned from Western culture the traditional harmony. In a music class we are studying different examples of African-American music.

 The work songs were the songs that the African-American slaves sang in their jobs. 

African-American people are also very religious. In their churches they sing spirituals or gospel songs. In these songs they express their joy of believe in God.

Blues is a word that means sadness, nostalgia or malancholy. In African-American music, a blues is a sad, nostalgoc and melancholic song. These songs are profanes, not religious, and they talk about life and problem of African-American people.

Ragtime is a music piece for piano solo. It is characterised by his particular rhytm ( a 'rag' rhytm). Ragtime music in cafes, bars, restaurants and also in cinemas, in the movies without sound.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY

In music class, we are sutdyng African-American music. We will listen work songs, spirituals, blues, ragtime and jazz. To understand them we have to know the terrible history of African-American people.
From 1500 to 1800 a lot of African people were kidnapped and forced to be slaves. African slaves were sold in American countties like Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil and United States.

Slaves were obligated to work in the worst jobs, mainly in the cotton and sugar fields. They were trated like animals, how if they were not human beings. African slaves had to forget their names, their religions and their culture.

During 19th Century, slavery was forbidden in American Countries. In United States, Abraham Lincoln was the president that freed thr slaves. Form then, African-American are free.

But they did not have the same rights, and suffered episodes of racism. It was necessary the fight of more perople, like Malcom X or Martin Luther King, to realise the civil equality.