Listen to Dr. Edward Rhymes as he details the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the beginnings of American slavery and American society.
Spirituals: African-American sacred music has it’s in the slave experience. Spirituals sung by slaves in the field sometimes carried secret messages that helped runaways escape to freedom. Joined African musical practices with vocabulary and structures of European-American music. compromising work songs, calls, field and street cries, hollers, rhyme songs, and spirituals, this music provided the slaves with a means for effectively pacing, a form of sung prayer and praise, a means of surrepititous communication, and psychic relief from the degradation of bondage. Many of the work songs used the refrain. This pattern, as well as a number of actual African tunes, also influenced the African-American.
