optimistic, and music became not only a tool of entertainment, but also a means to express their feelings and voices. Although their lives were full of difficulties, their desire of music was not worn away. They were talented in music and born to sing like their ancestors in Africa. In fact, music was not only the link with their hometown for those slaves, and but also a bridge to expand the old African culture to the new land. The slaves found various ways for music. When they were working, they sang; when they took rest, they also sang; when they felt happy or sad, they sang to express their feelings; when a new life came to the world, they sang a song to welcome it; when their friends passed away, they sang a song for farewell; when the sun rise, they sang a song to go to work; when the sun set, they got together to sing as if music could take off their tiredness.
Although Afro-American music originated from Africa, it developed and hit in America. In American music circle, except country music and Rock &Roll, most types of American music originated from Afro-American music. Blues, as one type of Afro-American music, had a wide effect on the music circle, and it was based on the work song of black slaves. With the development of the society, Blues met various challenges, and then some new styles emerged, such as Jazz, which was famous even now. It gestated the later music form in America. There was no doubt that Blues and Jazz were the most important styles in music circle, and they had immeasurable impacts on international pop music. Spiritual song, which was the production of gospel, had inconceivable impression on people, and touched their heart and their soul. In the current international music circles, R&B and Hip-Hop were the undoubted mainstream, which were also the main styles of Afro-American music. Therefore, Afro-American music was always the core of American music, and also the leading fashionable factor, which dominated the international pop music.
A. The Popular Afro-American Music
By the early 1900s, Blues, which was influenced by African American spirituals, ballads, and work songs, had emerged as a category separate from folk. Because of sufferings from the oppression of the while people, the original style of Afro-American music was full of grief and plaintiveness, which was the keynote of Blues.
Blues belonged to the folk music of the black people, which came from the south of America, especially the Mississippi Delta. Now, nobody knows the exact time of its forming, but generally this kind of grieved melody followed the first group of black slaves to the new land. In the beginning, the slaves who lived in the south just got the inspiration from their African ancestors, and got the themes of Blues from their everyday life. Although it’s always so dolorous that it could moved everyone, the slaves just took it as one of the methods to express their feelings in the heart, but not as the way to get others’ sympathy. It was owing to this kind of attitude and purpose that Blues had such a strong vitality.
Originally, Blues only expressed the sentimental and depressive feelings of the black people. But when it stepped into the popular music circle, it began to express some sentimental and sorrowful feelings that all the human beings held. And its early themes concerned about hard life, unfair fate, undone dream and broken love affair of Afro-Americans. And later some new elements were added into it, which was the p
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