Research on the role of music in African American experience

Hip Hop and the African American Dream

Spoken-word music arrived in America for the first time with slave ships from West Africa . Ethnomusicologists have traced the roots of hip hop to the dance , the drum , and the song of West African griots or storytellers . The pairing of word and music is recognized as a portrayal of the painful journey of slaves who survived the passage . In early America , the slaves drew on the common elements of African music with their ring shouts , their field hollers , as well as their spirituals . Thus , Samuel

A . Floyd , the director of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago attests : Speech-song has been part of the black culture for a long , long time (McBride

In the summer of the year 1973 , an African American teenager in one of the Bronx River Houses , stuck a speaker in his living room window ran a wire to the turntable in another room , and set the housing project of three thousand folks alight with party music . Thus , Bronx turned into a music magnet , and hip hop was given birth to . This birth led to the creation of dance styles , and graffiti artists found a new job : to paint the word I ' loud and clear because hip hop is all about identity , that is , I am the best (McBride

James McBride notes : Not since the advent of swing jazz in the 1930s has an American music exploded across the world with such overwhelming force ' As a matter of fact , hip hop is nowadays enjoyed by people from around the world , and by all races . Still , the role of this music among the African Americans - the race through out of which emerge the best hip hop musicians - is crystal clear . For African Americans , the music represents the good old dream to hit upon a pot of gold to millions of dollars . Agonizing over how their parents slave many hours a day , young African Americans long to make it big in the hip hop business with fame and riches

HIP HOP AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN DREAM

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Works Cited

McBride , James . Hip Hop Planet ' National Geographic , April 2007...