The Blues
The earliest African American secular music consisted of chants and field hollers, with stylistic traits that trace back to traditional
music of Africa. Vera Ward Hall and Dock Reed, of Sumter County, were the most celebrated performers of this type of music, and they were featured prominently in the collections of musicologists John Lomax, Alan Lomax, and Harold Courlander. By the end of the nineteenth century, African American secular music styles had coalesced into an influential new form called the blues, which wedded
African musical traditions with popular European musical instruments such as guitar and piano. Blues became a staple of African American secular life and was associated with performances in small clubs called juke joints. Blues also was adapted for stage performance in minstrel and traveling shows and developed an urban style associated with theatrical performance. During the
1920s, commercial record companies popularized both blues forms, sometimes distinguished as urban blues and country blues.
Alabama's most celebrated blues proponent was W. C. Handy of Florence, who earned the title "the Father of the Blues" during the Progressive Era. Trained in the classical tradition, he worked as a band and choral director and toured extensively with African American ensembles. Handy had a profound grasp of the musical and cultural significance of the blues, and his compositions and promotional efforts brought blues into prominence as a legitimate American cultural form. Florence celebrates his life and work with its annual W. C. Handy Music Festival.
Blues is most often associated with the Mississippi Delta, and that region was deeply influential in fostering urban blues traditions and providing the foundation for rock and roll. But Alabama has made significant contributions to this music form, and the Alabama Blues Project now serves as the organizational hub of a modern-day blues revival in the state.
SOURCE: "Traditional Music" by John Beale from the Encyclopedia of Alabama
music of Africa. Vera Ward Hall and Dock Reed, of Sumter County, were the most celebrated performers of this type of music, and they were featured prominently in the collections of musicologists John Lomax, Alan Lomax, and Harold Courlander. By the end of the nineteenth century, African American secular music styles had coalesced into an influential new form called the blues, which wedded
African musical traditions with popular European musical instruments such as guitar and piano. Blues became a staple of African American secular life and was associated with performances in small clubs called juke joints. Blues also was adapted for stage performance in minstrel and traveling shows and developed an urban style associated with theatrical performance. During the
1920s, commercial record companies popularized both blues forms, sometimes distinguished as urban blues and country blues.
Alabama's most celebrated blues proponent was W. C. Handy of Florence, who earned the title "the Father of the Blues" during the Progressive Era. Trained in the classical tradition, he worked as a band and choral director and toured extensively with African American ensembles. Handy had a profound grasp of the musical and cultural significance of the blues, and his compositions and promotional efforts brought blues into prominence as a legitimate American cultural form. Florence celebrates his life and work with its annual W. C. Handy Music Festival.
Blues is most often associated with the Mississippi Delta, and that region was deeply influential in fostering urban blues traditions and providing the foundation for rock and roll. But Alabama has made significant contributions to this music form, and the Alabama Blues Project now serves as the organizational hub of a modern-day blues revival in the state.
SOURCE: "Traditional Music" by John Beale from the Encyclopedia of Alabama
Gospel
Gospel Sing, 1997
Courtesy of Daniel Kennington
The early religious music of African Americans reflects their widespread adoption of Christianity, with evangelical conversion as a metaphorical spiritual liberation that contrasted sharply with the harsh reality of everyday life in the South. Worshippers incorporated African musical and choreographic elements into their services that became distinctive features of African American Christianity. The spiritual—which blended various influences from African American music with the theological and musical artifacts of Christianity—was the chief sacred musical expression from this period. In the 1870s the spiritual was introduced on the concert stage by such groups as the Fisk Jubilee Singers, providing an influential performance model and reinforcing, in their "Jubilee" name, references to liberation theology. Collectors such as Byron Arnold, Robert Sonkin, Alan Lomax, and Harold Courlander, often with assistance from Sumter County native Ruby Pickens Tartt, documented examples of spirituals during their travels.
African American gospel music is related to European American gospel tradition mainly in its adoption of the predominant stylistic traits and its association with evangelical religion. It is considered a twentieth-century modernization of the spiritual, the chief musical form of early African American Christianity, and it ultimately developed into two forms. As a form of worship, it evolved from congregational singing, featuring call-and-response musical patterns, into performances by choirs. By the mid-twentieth century, gospel worship had developed a distinctive form associated with urban churches, with large choirs and virtuoso solo vocalists. A second gospel music form was the gospel quartet, an ensemble style featuring a capella singing, close harmony, precision arrangements, and performance in both display and worship settings. Alabama is noted for its virtuoso ensembles: in the 1920s the Birmingham area produced groups such as the Sterling Jubilee Singers. From the quartet tradition emerged important ensembles such as the Blind Boys of Alabama (which originated at the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind in Talladega), Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes of Birmingham, and contemporary groups like the Birmingham Sunlights and Take 6.
SOURCE: "Traditional Music" by John Beale from the Encyclopedia of Alabama
African American gospel music is related to European American gospel tradition mainly in its adoption of the predominant stylistic traits and its association with evangelical religion. It is considered a twentieth-century modernization of the spiritual, the chief musical form of early African American Christianity, and it ultimately developed into two forms. As a form of worship, it evolved from congregational singing, featuring call-and-response musical patterns, into performances by choirs. By the mid-twentieth century, gospel worship had developed a distinctive form associated with urban churches, with large choirs and virtuoso solo vocalists. A second gospel music form was the gospel quartet, an ensemble style featuring a capella singing, close harmony, precision arrangements, and performance in both display and worship settings. Alabama is noted for its virtuoso ensembles: in the 1920s the Birmingham area produced groups such as the Sterling Jubilee Singers. From the quartet tradition emerged important ensembles such as the Blind Boys of Alabama (which originated at the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind in Talladega), Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes of Birmingham, and contemporary groups like the Birmingham Sunlights and Take 6.
SOURCE: "Traditional Music" by John Beale from the Encyclopedia of Alabama