33 African American music

African-American music is an umbrella term covering a diverse range of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans. Their origins are in musical forms that arose out of the historical condition of slavery that characterized the lives of African Americans prior to the American Civil War.

Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era (1930s–present), is a style of a cappella close harmony, or unaccompanied vocal music, characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture. Each of the four parts has its own role: generally, the lead sings the melody, the tenor harmonizes above the melody, the bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone completes the chord, usually below the lead. The melody is not usually sung by the tenor or baritone, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate embellishment can be created. One characteristic feature of barbershop harmony is the use of what is known as "snakes" and "swipes". This is when a chord is altered by a change in one or more non-melodic voices. Occasional passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.

A Bayou Legend is an American opera composed by William Grant Still, with a libretto by his wife and frequent collaborator, Verna Arvey.

Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States, which features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.

"Bethena, A Concert Waltz" is a composition by Scott Joplin. It was the first Joplin work since his wife Freddie's death on September 10, 1904 of pneumonia, ten weeks after their wedding. At the time the composer had significant financial problems; the work did not sell successfully at the time of publication and was soon neglected and forgotten. It was rediscovered as a result of the Joplin revival in the 1970s and has received acclaim from Joplin's biographers and other critics. The piece combines two different styles of music, the classical waltz and the rag, and has been seen as demonstrating Joplin's excellence as a classical composer. The work has been described as "an enchantingly beautiful piece that is among the greatest of Ragtime Waltzes", a "masterpiece", and "Joplin's finest waltz".

Black Performance of Jewish Music has a long, studied, history of Black and Jewish musicians, songwriters, and performers influencing each other through their unique cultures that helped provide both groups with inspiration. Along with this collaboration, there is also the element of Jewish songs having a direct impact on Black musicians. Throughout musical history there are many iconic moments where Black artists performed Jewish music, including notable figures such as Paul Robeson, Cab Calloway, and Aretha Franklin. Many of these Black artists claim to feel a connection to the Jewish songs and people from their shared desire for freedom and sadness from leaving their ancestral lands.

The Catacombs Nightclub was a gay after hours nightclub in Philadelphia that played underground dance music which became the precursor to house music. Additionally, Catacombs was responsible for the creation of the dance music genre "Philly Classics," and as a cultural center the club was a haven for music industry professionals and artists of diverse backgrounds in the early 80's.

Champion is an opera in two acts and ten scenes with music by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Michael Cristofer. Based on the life of African-American welterweight boxer Emile Griffith, this opera is a joint co-commission by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) and Jazz St. Louis. It received its premiere at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, Webster University, on 15 June 2013. The opera received its second production, with a revised orchestration by Blanchard, by Opera Parallèle in San Francisco, in collaboration with SFJAZZ, on February 21, 2016. The third production of the opera was on March 5, 2017 by Washington National Opera at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A 2020 production scheduled at Michigan Opera Theatre was cancelled due to COVID-19.

Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta, and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the style. Vocal styles in Delta blues range from introspective and soulful to passionate and fiery.

Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars.

Doo-wop is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated among African-American youth in the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, and Washington, DC. It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple, usually about love, sung by a lead vocal over background vocals, and often featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables is a common characteristic of these songs. Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop was "artistically and commercially viable" until the early 1960s, but continued to influence performers in other genres.

Electro is a genre of electronic music and early hip hop directly influenced by the use of the Roland TR-808 drum machines, and funk. Records in the genre typically feature drum machines and heavy electronic sounds, usually without vocals, although if vocals are present they are delivered in a deadpan manner, often through electronic distortion such as vocoding and talkboxing. This is the main distinction between electro and previously prominent genres such as disco, in which the electronic sound was only part of the instrumentation. It also palpably deviates from its predecessor boogie for being less vocal-oriented and more focused on electronic beats produced by drum machines.

The field holler or field call is mostly a historical type of vocal music sung by field slaves in the United States to accompany their tasked work, to communicate usefully, or to vent feelings. It differs from the collective work song in that it was sung solo, though early observers noted that a holler, or ‘cry’, might be echoed by other workers. Though commonly associated with cotton cultivation, the field holler was also sung by levee workers, and field hands in rice and sugar plantations. Field hollers are also known as corn-field hollers, water calls, and whoops. An early description is from 1853 and the first recordings are from the 1930s. The holler is closely related to the call and response of work songs and arhoolies. The Afro-American music form ultimately influenced strands of African American music, such as the blues, rhythm and blues and negro spirituals.

Frederick Douglass is an opera in three acts composed by Ulysses Kay to a libretto by Donald Dorr. Its story is a semi-fictionalized account of the final years in the life of Frederick Douglass after his marriage to his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass. The opera premiered on April 12, 1991, at Newark Symphony Hall performed by the New Jersey State Opera in a production directed by Louis Johnson and designed by Salvatore Tagliarino.

Golden age hip hop is a name given to mainstream hip hop music created from the mid-1980s to early-mid 1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. An outgrowth of the new school hip hop movement, it is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the old-school era, and is associated with the development and eventual mainstream success of hip hop. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic.

In music, groove is the sense of an effect ("feel") of changing pattern in a propulsive rhythm or sense of "swing". In jazz, it can be felt as a quality of persistently repeated rhythmic units, created by the interaction of the music played by a band's rhythm section. Groove is a significant feature of popular music, and can be found in many genres, including salsa, rock, soul, funk, and fusion.

Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans, Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans in the Bronx, New York City. The origin of the name is often disputed. It is also argued as to whether hip hop started in the South or West Bronx. While the term hip hop is often used to refer exclusively to hip hop music, hip hop is characterized by four key elements: "rapping", a rhythmic vocal rhyming style (orality); DJing, which is making music with record players and DJ mixers ; b-boying/b-girling/breakdancing (movement/dance); and graffiti. Other elements are: hip hop culture and historical knowledge of the movement (intellectual/philosophical); beatboxing, a percussive vocal style; street entrepreneurship; hip hop language; and hip hop fashion and style, among others. The fifth element, although debated, is commonly considered either street knowledge, hip hop fashion, or beatboxing.

A jazz band is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a horn section.

A jazz club is a venue where the primary entertainment is the performance of live jazz music, although some jazz clubs primarily focus on the study and/or promotion of jazz-music. Jazz clubs are usually a type of nightclub or bar, which is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Jazz clubs were in large rooms in the eras of Orchestral jazz and big band jazz, when bands were large and often augmented by a string section. Large rooms were also more common in the Swing era, because at that time, jazz was popular as a dance music, so the dancers needed space to move. With the transition to 1940s-era styles like Bebop and later styles such as soul jazz, small combos of musicians such as quartets and trios were mostly used, and the music became more of a music to listen to, rather than a form of dance music. As a result, smaller clubs with small stages became practical.

A jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of conventional and homemade instruments. These homemade instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, bones, stovepipe, jew's harp, and comb and tissue paper. The term jug band is loosely used in referring to ensembles that also incorporate homemade instruments but that are more accurately called skiffle bands, spasm bands, or juke bands because they do not include a jug player.

This is a complete list of musical compositions by James Scott. James Scott was one of the three leading composers of ragtime.

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American form of racist entertainment developed in the early 19th century. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people in make-up or blackface for the purpose of playing the role of black people. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows lampooned black people as dim-witted, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.

The National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc. is one of the oldest organizations in the United States dedicated to the preservation, encouragement, and advocacy of all genres of the music of African-Americans. NANM had its beginning on May 3, 1919 in Washington, D.C. at a temporary initial conference of “Negro” musicians under the leadership of Henry Grant and Nora Holt. In concert with the Chicago Music Association, its first national convention was held in Chicago, Illinois in the same year. The organization is dedicated to encouraging an inclusive musical culture throughout the country. Within NANM, members lend their support and influence—educators and professional musicians share their musical knowledge, amateurs and enthusiasts grow in their musical enjoyment, and people of all ages come together to share and participate in the musical experience.

The new school of hip hop was a movement in hip hop music starting 1983–84 with the early records of Run–D.M.C. and LL Cool J. Like the hip hop preceding it, it came predominantly from New York City. The new school was initially characterized in form by drum machine led minimalism, often tinged with elements of rock. It was notable for taunts and boasts about rapping, and socio-political commentary, both delivered in an aggressive, self-assertive style. In image as in song its artists projected a tough, cool, street b-boy attitude. These elements contrasted sharply with the funk and disco influenced outfits, novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers and party rhymes of artists prevalent in 1984, and rendered them old school. New school artists made shorter songs that could more easily gain radio play, and more cohesive LPs than their old school counterparts. By 1986 their releases began to establish the hip hop album as a fixture of the mainstream.

The Original Nashville Students, also referred to as the Original Tennessee Jubilee and Plantation Singers, the Nashville Students, and H. B. Thearle's Nashville Students, were an ensemble of eight or nine African-American jubilee singers. The moniker “jubilee singer” was coined by George White for his a cappella group The Fisk Jubilee Singers. This was primarily a reference to the Jewish year of jubilee described in Leviticus 25. Additionally, jubilation elicits connections with emancipation and liberation, drawing on emotions of nationalist pride from both African American and white audiences. Adopting this title allowed the singers to brand themselves as those who were formerly enslaved, but who had triumphantly risen out of their oppression.

Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name.

Rock violin is rock music that includes violin in its instrumental lineup. This includes rock music only and does not include classical style music using melodic motifs from rock.

"Run, Nigger, Run" is an African-American folk song, first documented in 1851, which is known from numerous versions. Growing out of the rise of slave patrols in the slave-owning southern United States, the song is about and follows an unnamed black man who attempts to run from a slave patrol and avoid capture. This folk song was released as a commercial recording several times, beginning in the 1920s, and it was included in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.

Slave Songs of the United States was a collection of African American music consisting of 136 songs. Published in 1867, it was the first, and most influential, collection of spirituals to be published. The collectors of the songs were Northern abolitionists William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, and Charles Pickard Ware. It is a "milestone not just in African American music but in modern folk history". It is also the first published collection of African-American music of any kind.

Terrific Street was a short-lived entertainment district on San Francisco's Barbary Coast during the early 20th century. It consisted of dance halls, jazz clubs, and various kinds of drinking establishments. Terrific Street was centered upon a single block of Pacific Street, which was one of the earliest streets to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove. The district was located between Kearny and Montgomery streets on Pacific Street.

Treemonisha (1911) is an opera by American ragtime composer Scott Joplin. Though it encompasses a wide range of musical styles other than ragtime, and Joplin did not refer to it as such, it is sometimes referred to as a "ragtime opera". The music of Treemonisha includes an overture and prelude, along with various recitatives, choruses, small ensemble pieces, a ballet, and a few arias.

Troubled Island is an American opera in three acts composed by William Grant Still, with a libretto begun by poet Langston Hughes and completed by Verna Arvey. She married the composer following their collaboration.

We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder is an African American slave spiritual based in part on the Biblical story of Jacob's Ladder. It was developed some time before 1825, and became one of the first slave spirituals to be widely sung by white Christians. A number of artists have recorded notable versions of it, and it was used as one of the main themes in the critically praised documentary The Civil War.