Slavery and Music: A Study in the Shared Human Exp
"At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean there's a railroad made of human bones" (Mark, 2006).
Music, as with all things, evolves over time, influenced by the changes going on around those who would compose it. It is an expression that tells a story, describes a moment in time, or carries with it the weight of the burdens of those who bore them. While humanity has faced many trials, no circumstance in human history has had as much influence on the evolution of music as the Atlantic slave trade. This paper will examine how Africans came to be in America, the influence Africa has had on American music, and how the slave trade and its effects on American music have influenced modern music back along the slave routes to Africa.
Before the early 14th century, contact between peoples was very limited and indirect at best in certain parts of the world, and non-existent for much of the rest. Most of the contact had occurred between the people of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Asia and was the result of traders making long treks overland (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, pp13-14). While the institution of slavery has likely existed in one form or another since the beginning of humanity, it was these early trade routes that made slavery a global, as they knew it, endeavor. Initially, different tribes within Africa would take slaves in war raids to serve as servants, wives, or to enhance the status of the slave owner (Wright, 2000). In about the 7th century, Arab Muslims, and later Romans, began making raids into Africa to take black African slaves and use them for trade. There were some obstacles to this world system such as language barriers and dissimilar currencies, but the main thing that separated them was time and distance. It was this barrier above all others that inhibited the intermixing of people and the evolution of music outside local and regional influences. This world system would dominate until about the 13th to early 14th centuries after the Muslim defeat at which time European explorers had discovered trade routes along the coast of West Africa. By the end of the 13th century, limited direct contact had been established between Europe, Asia, and the Mediterranean, which increased the economic environment for all parties. This was the beginnings of a new world system dominated by trade and supported by new markets and new products.
Though not directly related, it was the success of these trade partnerships that fueled the next expansion in the global system. As a direct result of knowledge gained and shared, and of a desire to explore new opportunities, sailors set up trade routes to previously unknown parts of the world, first with West central Africa, and then west to the Americas. These explorations brought Europeans into contact with all sorts of new things, such as cocoa beans, tobacco, and easy silver and gold deposits, but they also brought with them old ideas. These old ideas would lead to the subjugation and mass extinction of whole groups of people, while also creating an influx and intermixing of new people. “Not only did thousands of Europeans move to the Atlantic islands and the Americas, but literally millions of Africans crossed to the Atlantic and Caribbean islands and the Americas, becoming the dominant population in some areas” (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, p19). An indirect consequence of these movements would be an evolution in music changing not only what we listen to, but how we listen to it.
For the purposes of this paper, we will use the plight of the African as a whole and the influence that has had on culture and music in America rather than try to break down the individual geolocations for specific tribes. It is difficult to know what the emotions and thoughts of the slaves themselves were at that time as there were no records kept of such things, but we can get a sense of some of the emotion felt by those who had witnessed the Atlantic crossing and the effect that had on slaves. During a passage back to England after delivering a load of slaves to the new world, slave ship Captain John Newton’s ship encountered a storm so fierce that it made the captain re-evaluate his life choices (Ferguson, 2007). From this experience, he penned the hymn Amazing Grace to atone for his part in the misery and death of so many people during the Atlantic crossing. Today, most people associate this song with the blacks of the southern slave plantations and their fight for freedom and equality. From this we can ascertain that had the slaves been permitted to sing, they probably would have sung pleas of despair to their gods. Their music would certainly have been full of the pain and anguish of being lost to everything they had ever known. In the movie Amistad there is a scene after the slaves had taken control of the slave ship in 1839 and no one was quite sure what to do, but they came together and started on various tasks, and they started to sing (1997). While it can never be truly known, one could surmise that this is what the music of an African slave on the Atlantic crossing would sound like.
On arrival in America, the slaves as well as the whites had to find ways to coexist in a new environment. Slaves were banned from using their native languages, practicing their native religions, and singing their native songs, but they found ways to keep their traditions alive. This was accomplished by adopting the white man’s ways, but some had it easier than others. The first slaves into the new world were like charter groups in that they established the norms by which succeeding groups would have to adapt to. As argued by Sidney Mintz and Richard Price in The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire, “these early blacks successfully created new cultures that were part African and part American” (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, p68). There are examples of both prominent Negros in colonial society that were able to maintain a certain prestige within their community, even as laws were being enacted around them to limit their freedoms, such as Anthony Johnson of Virginia, and those who, if not sympathized with the negro plight, at the least was indifferent to their preference to keep their old ways, such as Thomas Mayhew who helped local Indians maintain their customs. In any event, it is important to note that no matter how many laws were passed or how hard the plantation owners cracked down, it was impossible for the traditional cultures to be eliminated from the African population.
As was mentioned earlier, there are no records of what the black slaves in America sang, but there are songs of the abolitionist movement, and this is when the influence of the African begins to take shape. Popular among these songs were religious hymns that used the gospel to preach about the immoralities of slavery. One of these “Prime deliverance melody” struck a chord with Lewis Lockwood, a missionary from the abolitionist leaning American Missionary Association, who said the repeated chorus of Go down to Egypt, tell the Pharaoh, / Thus saith my servant, Moses / Let my people go rang “Like a warning shot in the ear of despotism” (Sanjek, 1988, p269). When Lockwood published the songs that he had heard as he heard them in the New York Tribune, according to author Dena Epstein, this was the first time that the Negro Spiritual was written down. It was these gospel songs that sustained the souls of slaves and gave them hope of deliverance. It was the pain of these people that would become the backbone of all American music from that point on. Some might argue that western music is the first truly American music genre, but Vaquero’s, or Spanish cowboys had been singing range songs to keep their herds calm for a hundred years before English settlers ever came to the new world. As author W.E.B. Du Bois states it, ““Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas” (Music and the Struggle Against Slavery, 2006).
Karl Marx once wrote that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” meaning that it was the one thing that could unite or tear apart whole groups of people. The plight of the Negro slave brought this point home more clearly than Marx could ever have imagined. This use of the gospel during these early struggles for freedom left an imprint in the “Cultural Memory” of African-Americans ever since (Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals, 2004). Songs that had white origins were given new meanings when taken up by those who called for freedom. Songs such as “swing low sweet chariot” and “This little Light of Mine” became cries for equal civil rights and equal protection under the laws. With the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there were no longer any legal constraints on the African American, and this carried over into their ability to express themselves artistically. It was this soulful sound and the plight of the down trodden former slaves gave rise to what we now know as the blues. With a mix of the rhythmic pulse of Africa left over in the memories of former slaves, and soulful lyrics reminiscent of the Africanized gospel music used to subvert the slave codes, the African American suddenly had their own voice, a new way to express their situation, and a new way to feel good about themselves.
Blues music has had an indelible impact on American music and culture, but nowhere is this more visible than in rock music. Everyone from Chubby Checkers and Elvis Presley to modern bands such as maroon 5 and Metallica owe a lot to the blues. Blues music even had an impact on non-American bands from Europe; most notable among these is the Beatles. Because of the obvious African roots of this new music, politicians and religious leaders made it a point to single out these musicians and harass them at any given opportunity. Elvis Presley was banned from playing a gig in Corpus Christi, Texas because it was felt that “performers worked themselves and the audience into near frenzy with their savage-like playing,” the emphasis being on “savages” as in the Negros from Africa (Hanson, 2011). Just as a note, the show went on gyrated as scheduled to a sold out crowd, undoubtedly even more piqued by the ban. Across the pond in Great Britain, this music was having an effect on musicians as well. It is quite obvious in the music of The Beatles and early Led Zeppelin, but even artists such as Jimmie Hendricks, an African-American himself, found tremendous blues inspirations coming out of the London underground music scenes of the day.
Fed by poverty and a lack of educational and economic opportunities within the confines of the law, young black people of America again turned to music in the late seventies and invented a way to speak out against their oppression. This new music would come to be labeled as hip-hop or rap music. Initially, it was a music reserved for those of color with a language woven in to it that could only be understood by those who had experienced what it was like. It carried the anger of being singled out by police just for walking down the street, at the injustices being carried out in the justice system, about the prejudices they confronted every day in the labor market, and about the sentiments of being the descendants of slaves. It is said that “The music led to an entire cultural movement that’s altered generational thinking – from politics and race to art and language” (Zuberi, 2008).
Modern hip-hop and the story of slavery have influenced the music back along the slave routes. In Jamaica Reggae music has told the story of the longing for freedom from oppression, not the oppression of institutionalized slavery, but more the oppression of not having opportunities based in part on your race. Reggae began in the early 1960s as a combination of African rhythms, American jazz and blues, and Jamaican Ska, a genre found only on the island of Jamaica. Other singers of African descent, American and European, pay homage to their slave roots in their music. “African-American and Black British artists such as Pharoah Sanders and Gary Crosby’s Nu Troop celebrate their African heritage through their music” (How the slave trade affected music: an introduction, 2013). Another way artists give a nod to their past is through their names. The first name of Ashanti Douglas refers to a tribe from West Africa, and the reggae group The Congos gets their name from a region in Africa.
Today, hip-hop is a major influence on the music coming out of Africa. Again being used as a form of non-violent opposition to the situation they find themselves in, whether that is political conflict, starvation, or environmental degradation. African hip-hop groups, like Positive Black Soul, speak out against the inter-tribal conflicts that have laid waste to whole villages and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people while leaving others in economic slavery bound to whatever means they can find to support themselves and their families. This style of music is reminiscent of the black gospel sounds of the American 1800s in that it gives a message of hope and peace. There is also the hip-hop artist Les Nubians from Cameroon who speaks not only of the economic woes of her people, but also the plight of the female in particular in a male dominated society, though she now resides out of country. Hip-hop can also be a tool used to examine the social commentary of a region. As one author notes in African Studies Quarterly, “Hip hop artists in Accra and Dar es Salaam often critically examine government leaders, though they differ slightly in the ways in which they do this. They also deconstruct social institutions and economic oppression in songs that address urban life, migration, and the perceived failure of elders to protect the youth” (Clark, 2012). It is the confluence of people’s experiences across oceans and time that have culminated in the return of African music to its roots back in Africa.
Music has always told a story of the human experience, and for this reason it is no small thing to say that slavery has been the most influential human experience on music in human history. It tells the story of pain and struggle, of anger, and of a yearning for equality in a world of ignorance and prejudice. The music of Africa and the African experience gave birth to the only American music genres, and these changes in music have in turn inspired new sounds on the old slave routes back to Africa. I believe if it can ever be said that something good came out of the misery of the slave trade, it would be the music that has evolved as a direct consequence of it.
References:
Benjamin, T., Hall, T., & Rutherford, D. (2001). The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire. Problems in World History Series. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Belmont, Ca.
Clark, M. K. (2012). Hip hop as social commentary in accra and dar es salaam. African Studies Quarterly, 13(3), 23-46. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1312402178?accountid=32521
Eyerman, R., & Hier, S. P. (2004). Cultural trauma: Slavery and the formation of African American Identity. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2), 317-318. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220561670?accountid=32521
Ferguson, B. (2007, ). Amazing grace 'hymns' up the slacking slave trade. Call & Post. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/238468572?accountid=32521
Hanson, A (2011). Elvis Banned in Corpus Christi; Blamed for Juvenile Delinquency. Elvis History Blog. Retrieved on Apr. 22, 2013 from http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/elvis-corpus-christi.html
How the slave trade affected music: an introduction. (2013). soundjunction.org. Retrieved from http://www.soundjunction.org/howtheslavetradeaffectedmusicanintroduction.aspa
Mark, H. C. (2006, Sep 16). Poet encourages MLK students to dream big. The Tuscaloosa News. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/379193146?accountid=32521
Music and the Struggle Against Slavery (2006). Workers World. Mundoobrero.org. Retrieved from http://www.workers.org/2006/us/music-0209/
Ratliff, B. (2001, Jun 09). The musical connections of the old slave trade. New York Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/431782318?accountid=32521
Speilberg, S. (1997). Amistad [Motion Picture]. DreamWorks Pictures, HBO Films. United States.
Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals (2004). Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement: Slave Spirituals Revived. Retrieved from http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm
Wright, D. R. (2000) Slavery in Africa. Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. Retrieved from https://autocww2.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html
Zuberi, T (2008). Investigations: Birthplace of Hip-Hop. The History Detectives, OPB on PBS. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/birthplace-of-hip-hop/
Music, as with all things, evolves over time, influenced by the changes going on around those who would compose it. It is an expression that tells a story, describes a moment in time, or carries with it the weight of the burdens of those who bore them. While humanity has faced many trials, no circumstance in human history has had as much influence on the evolution of music as the Atlantic slave trade. This paper will examine how Africans came to be in America, the influence Africa has had on American music, and how the slave trade and its effects on American music have influenced modern music back along the slave routes to Africa.
Before the early 14th century, contact between peoples was very limited and indirect at best in certain parts of the world, and non-existent for much of the rest. Most of the contact had occurred between the people of Europe, the Mediterranean, and Asia and was the result of traders making long treks overland (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, pp13-14). While the institution of slavery has likely existed in one form or another since the beginning of humanity, it was these early trade routes that made slavery a global, as they knew it, endeavor. Initially, different tribes within Africa would take slaves in war raids to serve as servants, wives, or to enhance the status of the slave owner (Wright, 2000). In about the 7th century, Arab Muslims, and later Romans, began making raids into Africa to take black African slaves and use them for trade. There were some obstacles to this world system such as language barriers and dissimilar currencies, but the main thing that separated them was time and distance. It was this barrier above all others that inhibited the intermixing of people and the evolution of music outside local and regional influences. This world system would dominate until about the 13th to early 14th centuries after the Muslim defeat at which time European explorers had discovered trade routes along the coast of West Africa. By the end of the 13th century, limited direct contact had been established between Europe, Asia, and the Mediterranean, which increased the economic environment for all parties. This was the beginnings of a new world system dominated by trade and supported by new markets and new products.
Though not directly related, it was the success of these trade partnerships that fueled the next expansion in the global system. As a direct result of knowledge gained and shared, and of a desire to explore new opportunities, sailors set up trade routes to previously unknown parts of the world, first with West central Africa, and then west to the Americas. These explorations brought Europeans into contact with all sorts of new things, such as cocoa beans, tobacco, and easy silver and gold deposits, but they also brought with them old ideas. These old ideas would lead to the subjugation and mass extinction of whole groups of people, while also creating an influx and intermixing of new people. “Not only did thousands of Europeans move to the Atlantic islands and the Americas, but literally millions of Africans crossed to the Atlantic and Caribbean islands and the Americas, becoming the dominant population in some areas” (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, p19). An indirect consequence of these movements would be an evolution in music changing not only what we listen to, but how we listen to it.
For the purposes of this paper, we will use the plight of the African as a whole and the influence that has had on culture and music in America rather than try to break down the individual geolocations for specific tribes. It is difficult to know what the emotions and thoughts of the slaves themselves were at that time as there were no records kept of such things, but we can get a sense of some of the emotion felt by those who had witnessed the Atlantic crossing and the effect that had on slaves. During a passage back to England after delivering a load of slaves to the new world, slave ship Captain John Newton’s ship encountered a storm so fierce that it made the captain re-evaluate his life choices (Ferguson, 2007). From this experience, he penned the hymn Amazing Grace to atone for his part in the misery and death of so many people during the Atlantic crossing. Today, most people associate this song with the blacks of the southern slave plantations and their fight for freedom and equality. From this we can ascertain that had the slaves been permitted to sing, they probably would have sung pleas of despair to their gods. Their music would certainly have been full of the pain and anguish of being lost to everything they had ever known. In the movie Amistad there is a scene after the slaves had taken control of the slave ship in 1839 and no one was quite sure what to do, but they came together and started on various tasks, and they started to sing (1997). While it can never be truly known, one could surmise that this is what the music of an African slave on the Atlantic crossing would sound like.
On arrival in America, the slaves as well as the whites had to find ways to coexist in a new environment. Slaves were banned from using their native languages, practicing their native religions, and singing their native songs, but they found ways to keep their traditions alive. This was accomplished by adopting the white man’s ways, but some had it easier than others. The first slaves into the new world were like charter groups in that they established the norms by which succeeding groups would have to adapt to. As argued by Sidney Mintz and Richard Price in The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire, “these early blacks successfully created new cultures that were part African and part American” (Benjamin, Hall, & Rutherford, 2001, p68). There are examples of both prominent Negros in colonial society that were able to maintain a certain prestige within their community, even as laws were being enacted around them to limit their freedoms, such as Anthony Johnson of Virginia, and those who, if not sympathized with the negro plight, at the least was indifferent to their preference to keep their old ways, such as Thomas Mayhew who helped local Indians maintain their customs. In any event, it is important to note that no matter how many laws were passed or how hard the plantation owners cracked down, it was impossible for the traditional cultures to be eliminated from the African population.
As was mentioned earlier, there are no records of what the black slaves in America sang, but there are songs of the abolitionist movement, and this is when the influence of the African begins to take shape. Popular among these songs were religious hymns that used the gospel to preach about the immoralities of slavery. One of these “Prime deliverance melody” struck a chord with Lewis Lockwood, a missionary from the abolitionist leaning American Missionary Association, who said the repeated chorus of Go down to Egypt, tell the Pharaoh, / Thus saith my servant, Moses / Let my people go rang “Like a warning shot in the ear of despotism” (Sanjek, 1988, p269). When Lockwood published the songs that he had heard as he heard them in the New York Tribune, according to author Dena Epstein, this was the first time that the Negro Spiritual was written down. It was these gospel songs that sustained the souls of slaves and gave them hope of deliverance. It was the pain of these people that would become the backbone of all American music from that point on. Some might argue that western music is the first truly American music genre, but Vaquero’s, or Spanish cowboys had been singing range songs to keep their herds calm for a hundred years before English settlers ever came to the new world. As author W.E.B. Du Bois states it, ““Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas” (Music and the Struggle Against Slavery, 2006).
Karl Marx once wrote that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” meaning that it was the one thing that could unite or tear apart whole groups of people. The plight of the Negro slave brought this point home more clearly than Marx could ever have imagined. This use of the gospel during these early struggles for freedom left an imprint in the “Cultural Memory” of African-Americans ever since (Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals, 2004). Songs that had white origins were given new meanings when taken up by those who called for freedom. Songs such as “swing low sweet chariot” and “This little Light of Mine” became cries for equal civil rights and equal protection under the laws. With the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there were no longer any legal constraints on the African American, and this carried over into their ability to express themselves artistically. It was this soulful sound and the plight of the down trodden former slaves gave rise to what we now know as the blues. With a mix of the rhythmic pulse of Africa left over in the memories of former slaves, and soulful lyrics reminiscent of the Africanized gospel music used to subvert the slave codes, the African American suddenly had their own voice, a new way to express their situation, and a new way to feel good about themselves.
Blues music has had an indelible impact on American music and culture, but nowhere is this more visible than in rock music. Everyone from Chubby Checkers and Elvis Presley to modern bands such as maroon 5 and Metallica owe a lot to the blues. Blues music even had an impact on non-American bands from Europe; most notable among these is the Beatles. Because of the obvious African roots of this new music, politicians and religious leaders made it a point to single out these musicians and harass them at any given opportunity. Elvis Presley was banned from playing a gig in Corpus Christi, Texas because it was felt that “performers worked themselves and the audience into near frenzy with their savage-like playing,” the emphasis being on “savages” as in the Negros from Africa (Hanson, 2011). Just as a note, the show went on gyrated as scheduled to a sold out crowd, undoubtedly even more piqued by the ban. Across the pond in Great Britain, this music was having an effect on musicians as well. It is quite obvious in the music of The Beatles and early Led Zeppelin, but even artists such as Jimmie Hendricks, an African-American himself, found tremendous blues inspirations coming out of the London underground music scenes of the day.
Fed by poverty and a lack of educational and economic opportunities within the confines of the law, young black people of America again turned to music in the late seventies and invented a way to speak out against their oppression. This new music would come to be labeled as hip-hop or rap music. Initially, it was a music reserved for those of color with a language woven in to it that could only be understood by those who had experienced what it was like. It carried the anger of being singled out by police just for walking down the street, at the injustices being carried out in the justice system, about the prejudices they confronted every day in the labor market, and about the sentiments of being the descendants of slaves. It is said that “The music led to an entire cultural movement that’s altered generational thinking – from politics and race to art and language” (Zuberi, 2008).
Modern hip-hop and the story of slavery have influenced the music back along the slave routes. In Jamaica Reggae music has told the story of the longing for freedom from oppression, not the oppression of institutionalized slavery, but more the oppression of not having opportunities based in part on your race. Reggae began in the early 1960s as a combination of African rhythms, American jazz and blues, and Jamaican Ska, a genre found only on the island of Jamaica. Other singers of African descent, American and European, pay homage to their slave roots in their music. “African-American and Black British artists such as Pharoah Sanders and Gary Crosby’s Nu Troop celebrate their African heritage through their music” (How the slave trade affected music: an introduction, 2013). Another way artists give a nod to their past is through their names. The first name of Ashanti Douglas refers to a tribe from West Africa, and the reggae group The Congos gets their name from a region in Africa.
Today, hip-hop is a major influence on the music coming out of Africa. Again being used as a form of non-violent opposition to the situation they find themselves in, whether that is political conflict, starvation, or environmental degradation. African hip-hop groups, like Positive Black Soul, speak out against the inter-tribal conflicts that have laid waste to whole villages and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people while leaving others in economic slavery bound to whatever means they can find to support themselves and their families. This style of music is reminiscent of the black gospel sounds of the American 1800s in that it gives a message of hope and peace. There is also the hip-hop artist Les Nubians from Cameroon who speaks not only of the economic woes of her people, but also the plight of the female in particular in a male dominated society, though she now resides out of country. Hip-hop can also be a tool used to examine the social commentary of a region. As one author notes in African Studies Quarterly, “Hip hop artists in Accra and Dar es Salaam often critically examine government leaders, though they differ slightly in the ways in which they do this. They also deconstruct social institutions and economic oppression in songs that address urban life, migration, and the perceived failure of elders to protect the youth” (Clark, 2012). It is the confluence of people’s experiences across oceans and time that have culminated in the return of African music to its roots back in Africa.
Music has always told a story of the human experience, and for this reason it is no small thing to say that slavery has been the most influential human experience on music in human history. It tells the story of pain and struggle, of anger, and of a yearning for equality in a world of ignorance and prejudice. The music of Africa and the African experience gave birth to the only American music genres, and these changes in music have in turn inspired new sounds on the old slave routes back to Africa. I believe if it can ever be said that something good came out of the misery of the slave trade, it would be the music that has evolved as a direct consequence of it.
References:
Benjamin, T., Hall, T., & Rutherford, D. (2001). The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire. Problems in World History Series. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Belmont, Ca.
Clark, M. K. (2012). Hip hop as social commentary in accra and dar es salaam. African Studies Quarterly, 13(3), 23-46. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1312402178?accountid=32521
Eyerman, R., & Hier, S. P. (2004). Cultural trauma: Slavery and the formation of African American Identity. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(2), 317-318. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/220561670?accountid=32521
Ferguson, B. (2007, ). Amazing grace 'hymns' up the slacking slave trade. Call & Post. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/238468572?accountid=32521
Hanson, A (2011). Elvis Banned in Corpus Christi; Blamed for Juvenile Delinquency. Elvis History Blog. Retrieved on Apr. 22, 2013 from http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/elvis-corpus-christi.html
How the slave trade affected music: an introduction. (2013). soundjunction.org. Retrieved from http://www.soundjunction.org/howtheslavetradeaffectedmusicanintroduction.aspa
Mark, H. C. (2006, Sep 16). Poet encourages MLK students to dream big. The Tuscaloosa News. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/379193146?accountid=32521
Music and the Struggle Against Slavery (2006). Workers World. Mundoobrero.org. Retrieved from http://www.workers.org/2006/us/music-0209/
Ratliff, B. (2001, Jun 09). The musical connections of the old slave trade. New York Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/431782318?accountid=32521
Speilberg, S. (1997). Amistad [Motion Picture]. DreamWorks Pictures, HBO Films. United States.
Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals (2004). Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights Movement: Slave Spirituals Revived. Retrieved from http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm
Wright, D. R. (2000) Slavery in Africa. Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. Retrieved from https://autocww2.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html
Zuberi, T (2008). Investigations: Birthplace of Hip-Hop. The History Detectives, OPB on PBS. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/birthplace-of-hip-hop/
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