Historic Traits
As well as bringing harmonic and rhythmic features from Western and Sub-Saharan Africa into European musical styles, it was the historical condition of chattel slavery experienced by black Americans within American society that contributed the conditions which would define their music. Many of the characteristic musical forms that define African-American music have historical precedents. These earlier forms include:
- field hollers
- work song
- call and response
- vocality (or special vocal effects): guttural effects, interpolated vocality, falsetto, melisma, vocal rhythmization
- improvisation
- blue notes
- polyrhythms: syncopation, concrescence, tension, improvisation, percussion, swung note
- texture: antiphony, homophony, polyphony, heterophony
- harmony: vernacular progressions; complex, multi-part harmony, as in spirituals and barbershop music
Read more about this topic: African American Music
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