ro-American communities, a one-sided portrait of life in urban America.
To the untrained ear, all Rap and Hip-Hop may sound the same, but there were a number of different levels in even the simplest Rap songs, and as its core, Hip-Hop was a post-modern musical genre that deconstructed familiar sounds and songs, rebuilding them as entirely new, unpredictable songs. Early Rap records, commonly called “old school”, were made by DJs scratching records and playing drum loops, with MCs rapping over the resulting rhythms. As the genre progressed, hard-rock guitars and hard hitting beats were introduced by Run—D.M.C, the first hard core rap group, and the scratching techniques were replaced by sampling. With their dense collages of samples, beats and white noise, Public Enemy took sampling to the extreme, and they helped introduce a social and political conscience to Hip-Hop. That faded in the 1990s as Gangsta Rap—originally introduced by NMA, who used Public Enemy’s sound as a template—became the dominant form. By the 1990s, Gangsta Rap, which originally was in direct opposition to such pop-oriented rappers as MC Hammer, had become smoothed over and stylish, and consequently was more popular than ever, as evidenced by the success of pop-gangsta Puff Daddy. Obviously, Hip-Hop and Rap were the most popular styles in modern music circles, and played a dominant role in fashion, no matter in America, or in Europe, and even in Asia.
B. The Essence of Afro-American Music
It’s well-known that with the slave trade in1619, African culture was spread to the new world simultaneously. During that period, Afro-Americans, who were slaves, lived miserably in plantation. They were deprived of all rights and became the property of the owners. Slaves can be traded in the market; they were treated as goods, or even animals. The white people could hurt or kill slaves willfully, but without any legal punishments. And in order to control slaves, planters did not allow slaves to speak their own languages. And the traditional fetes from Africa were forbid by planters too. The cultural and ethic root of slaves was cut by the white people, but their genius for music and dance weren’t taken away. In fact, Africans had born talent to record their history by music, and Afro-Americans inherited the tradition from their ancestors. So slaves were willing to records their bitter history and express their sorrowful feelings by music. That was also why many outstanding styles of music were created by Afro-Americans and played an important role in the international music circles. In the past, slaves were oppressed by the white people; their music was always full of grief and sadness. They can’t complain to their owners about their unfair sufferings, thus they gave vent to their feelings in the form of music.
In fact, music was the spirit support of slaves during those bitter times. Particularly, black slaves were far away from their hometown, and were cut from their spiritual roots—languages and customs. The original African religions vanished in this new land. The faith of the white people had a deep impact on slaves. Later, planters admitted slaves go to church, so slaves integrated Christianity with their original religions; they imbibed gospel of the white people, and developed it in their own ways, creating a novel style for gospel that was the source of Spiritual song. Compared with the old style, the new one was more powerful and emotional. Slaves got spiritual supp
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