keith jarrett fortune smiles transcription

One African rhythmic motif is known worldwide as the habanera rhythm, which was brought to Spain, the islands and all of the Americas by enslaved people. Through assimilation and transformation, the syncopated rhythms of enslaved people took the American popular dance forms by storm. Groups of singers trailed workers, clapping their hands to the rhythms of the songs, encouraging the workers to greater effort.

Plantation owners often encouraged these dances for their own enjoyment, as well as an astutely observed increased productivity. Many of the dances involve the virtuoso alternating and combining of hand clapping hands and feet stamping, with polyrhythms and syncopations. They were not allowed instruments on plantations, and as a consequence, the tradition of clapping hands and stamping feet began. The origins of American syncopated popular music can be traced to the enslaved African people. These were lullabies, songs of work, love, animals, and play songs, as well as those for weddings and funerals. The plantation songs are born from this foundation and the songs that survived middle passage were only those relevant to the Africans’ day to day social realities of plantation life. The instrumental music was evolved and highly complex. There were battle songs and songs sung of heroes and ancestors. Preachers and congregants, camp meetings, and the southern revivalist movement would yield a multiplicity of spiritual and secular songs.Īfricans had rich cultural traditions of functional ceremonial music that accompanied coming of age initiations, weddings and funerals. Ring shouts, spirituals, gospel songs and sermons spread throughout communities as a consequence of shared worshiping experiences. Songs are remembered, resurrected and born as enslaved African people worked together in factories, on levees and rivers, in the cotton fields and sugar plantations. Spiritual songs, work songs, blues and secular dances evolved throughout plantation life and after emancipation, yielding a rich and ever expanding African American cultural experience. With the exception of the rich indigenous musical heritage of the North American Indians, the largest and most important American folkloric body of work arrived on American shores with the first enslaved African people. These composers of concert music are inspired by the melodies, dance rhythms, harmonic inventions and various stylistic elements evocative of the American experience. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”Īmerican Heritage presents piano compositions based on distinctly American themes and musical styles. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass describes the African American spiritual: “They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension they were tones loud, long, and deep they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.

Keith jarrett fortune smiles transcription