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Duke Ellington School of the Arts Music Department Course Syllabus and Outline

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Duke  Ellington  School  of  the  Arts  

Music  Department  

Course  Syllabus  and  Outline  

 

African-­‐American  Music  History  

 

Instructor:    Steven  M.  Allen,  DMA         Period:  4   Email:    steven.allen2@dc.gov       Room:    G-­‐19    

Text:  

“By the Rivers of Babylon: The History of African American Music from Civil War through Civil Rights” – Steven M. Allen

DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to explore the historical depth, stylistic richness, and generic variety of African American music in the United States. It uses the methodological and analytic tools of musical anthropology and history to develop a socially and culturally grounded understanding of black music in America, past and present. Beginning with a broad consideration of black music as a modern cultural formation – that is, as a

privileged expression of contemporary black culture in America – this course charts a historical course from the resonances of African music cultures under slavery, through nationalist and racist appropriations of black music in post-bellum America and the creative resistances and innovations under Jim Crow, to the complex matrix of African American sound, text, and local and global culture in the hip-hop era. Reading and listening closely and critically into black music history, we will explore connections between sacred and secular, popular and classical, and folk and commercial music, through many genres and styles, including: spirituals, blues, jazz and soul.

OBJECTIVES

• To present a general history of African American music and its emergent significance as a socio-cultural practice.

• To develop a deeper understanding of these musical traditions within the broader American and African American cultural landscape.

• To create an awareness of styles and forms that characterize major periods in African-American music history.

• To develop an understanding of how the music was and is performed through a study of the various performers, composers, and their practices and audiences. Materials:  

• Pencil • Binder

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Student  Expectation:     Grading:   Weekly  Assignments  –  15%   Class  Participation  –  10%   Quizzes  –  10%   Exams  –  15%   Mid-­‐term  Project  –  20%   Final  Project  –  30%   Unit I I. Introduction:

A. African Cultural and Ritualistic Practices “When We Remembered Zion” 1. Dance, Drum, and Song (Seen as ONE unit)

a. Characteristics

1. Call and Response 2. Body Movement 3. Vocal Nuances 4. Repetition 2. Rhythmic Complexity a. Poly-rhythm 1. Time line

2. Additive, Divisive, Irregular meter b. Syncopation

1. Specific accents on important beats or words. 3. Improvisation

II. The African Diaspora (1619-1730) “We Hung Our Harps”

A. Birth of the Spiritual – Sacred Music 1. Ring Shout Ritual

2. Types of Spirituals a. Sorrow Songs b. Jubilees

c. Double Entendre d. Work Songs

B. The Blues – Secular Music “Forty acres and the Blues”

1. Characteristics

a. Trope/ Metaphor/ Similie

b. The Signifying Monkey - Double Entendre c. Work songs

a. Chain-gang b. Dock workers c. Prison Songs

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Required Reading:

Allen, Steven M. “Babylon’s Harps: The Preservation of the Negro Spiritual in America” 2014. pp. 1-10

Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. "Of the Sorrow Songs," in Souls of Black Folk, pp. 250- 264.

Floyd,  Jr.,  Samuel  A.  “Ring  Shout!  Literary  Studies,  Historical  Studies,  and  Black   Music  Inquiry,”  Black  Music  Research  Journal  11,  no.  2  (Autumn  1991):  265-­‐ 287.  

 

Floyd,  Jr.,  Samuel  A.  The  Power  of  Black  Music:  Interpreting  its  History  from  Africa  to   the  United  States.    New  York  and  Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1995.    

Jones,  Arthur  C.  Wade  in  the  Water:  The  Wisdom  of  the  Spirituals.  New  York:  Orbis,   1993.  

 

Thurman,  Howard.  Deep  River  and  The  Negro  Spiritual  Speaks  of  Life  and  Death.   Richmond,  IN:  Friends  United  Press,  1975.  

Required Listening and Analogy: Wade in the Water

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdMwGvjEDss&list=PL6rzYfWx7X5L6 ge5bRDD4xJ_BT9oykkJB&index=25

The Ring Shout and the Birth of the Spiritual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmmTMg3e5Uo&index=10&list=PL6rz YfWx7X5L6ge5bRDD4xJ_BT9oykkJB

McIntosh Shouters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBd1Xwq8Xx4&index=13&list=PL6rzYf Wx7X5L6ge5bRDD4xJ_BT9oykkJB

Alan Lomax: Field recordings of prison songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvEnkoSBPmY&index=22&list=PL6rzY fWx7X5L6ge5bRDD4xJ_BT9oykkJB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiBODTtoB7U&index=23&list=PL6rzYf Wx7X5L6ge5bRDD4xJ_BT9oykkJB

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Unit II

III. Post-Slavery America (40 acres and the Blues) A. Ragtime

B. Nationalism

C. Concertized Spiritual

D. The Black Church (Come Sunday) 1. Hymnody

a. The Colored Sacred Harp 2. Religious Practices

a. Lined-Out b. Shaped-Note E. Black Colleges

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1. Fraternity and Sorority Life

 

Required  Reading:  

Gillum,  Ruth  H.  “The  Negro  Folksong  in  the  American  Culture,”  The  Journal  of  Negro   Education  12,  no.  2  (Spring  1943):  173-­‐180.  

Graham,  Sandra  J.  “The  Fisk  Jubilee  Singers  and  the  Concert  Spiritual:  The   Beginnings  of  an  American  Tradition.”  PhD  diss.,  New  York  University,  2001.  

Hurston, Zora Neale. (1934) 1981. “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals,” in The Sanctified Church, pp.79-86. Turtle Island Press.

Richard A. Waterman. "Hot" Rhythm in Negro Music” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Spring, 1948), pp. 24-37.

Unit III

III. Harlem Renaissance A. Big Band Jazz B. Art-Songs

C. Musical Theater

IV. The Birth of Gospel Music A. Male / Female Quartets B. Church Music

1. Hymns and Anthems

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3. Denominational Practices 4. Regional Variants

Unit IV.

V. Rhythm and Blues A. 12-bar

1. Rhyme and Meter 2. Harmonic Progressions VI. Bebop Jazz

A. Freestyle / Form

VII. Struggle for Civil Rights (Move on Up a Little Higher)

Composer Focus Harry T. Burleigh Florence Price Scott Joplin R. Nathaniel Dett

Harry Lawrence Freeman William Grant Still

Margaret Bonds W. C. Handy Thomas Dorsey Ulysses Kay Hale Smith William Dawson Thomas Kerr Duke Ellington George Walker Miles Davis Charlie Parker

James Weldon and J. Rosman Johnson Works for listening and Analogy Troubled Water - Bonds

Sonata Eb - Price

Afro-American Symphony - Still Ordering of Moses - Dett

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Bibliography

Ruth H. Gillum, The Negro Folksong in the American Culture. The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 12, No. 2. (Spring, 1943), pp. 173-180.

Olly Wilson, “Black Music as an Art Form” Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 3 (1983), pp. 1-22

Walter L. Daykin,”Nationalism as Expressed in Negro History” Social Forces, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Dec., 1934), pp. 257-263.

 

Troubled  Water  -­‐  Bonds   Sonata  Eb  -­‐  Price  

Afro-­‐American  Symphony  -­‐  Still   Ordering  of  Moses  –  Dett  

The  Martyr  -­‐  Freeman  

Negro  Folk  Symphony  –  William  Dawson    

Bibliography    

Brooks,  Tilford.  America’s  Black  Musical  Heritage.  Englewood  Cliffs,  NJ:  Prentice   Hall,  

1984.    

Cimbala,  Paul  A.  “Black  Musicians  from  Slavery  to  Freedom:  An  Exploration  of   an  African-­‐American  Folk  Elite  and  Cultural  Continuity  in  the  Nineteenth-­‐   Century  Rural  South,”  Journal  of  Negro  History  80,  no.1  (Winter  1995):  15-­‐29.    

Cruz,  Jon.  Culture  on  the  Margins:  The  Black  Spiritual  and  the  Rise  of  American   Cultural  Interpretation.  Princeton,  N.J.:  Princeton  University  Press,  1999.    

Floyd,  Jr.,  Samuel  A.  “Ring  Shout!  Literary  Studies,  Historical  Studies,  and  Black   Music  Inquiry,”  Black  Music  Research  Journal  11,  no.  2  (Autumn  1991):  265-­‐   287.  

 

Floyd,  Jr.,  Samuel  A.  The  Power  of  Black  Music:  Interpreting  its  History  from  Africa   to  

the  United  States.  New  York  and  Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1995.    

 

Graham,  Sandra  J.  “The  Fisk  Jubilee  Singers  and  the  Concert  Spiritual:  The   Beginnings  of  an  American  Tradition.”  PhD  diss.,  New  York  University,  2001.    

Johnson,  Roxane  V.  “Searching  for  Rhetorical  Functions  in  Negro  Spirituals:  A   Critical  Analysis  from  the  Slaves’  Perspective.”  master’s  thesis,  Central  

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Jones,  Arthur  C.  Wade  in  the  Water:  The  Wisdom  of  the  Spirituals.  New  York:  Orbis,   1993.  

 

Lovell,  Jr.,  John.  Black  Song:  The  Forge  and  the  Flame.  New  York  and  London:   MacMillian,  1972.  

 

Wilson,  Olly.  “Black  Music  as  an  Art  Form,”  Black  Music  Research  Journal,  Vol.  3,   (1983):  1-­‐22.  

References

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