African Music and Cultural Retention among Slaves

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African Music and Cultural Retention among Slaves

The cultural heritage of the slave Africans in different parts of the world and especially in America eroded to a large degree due to many reasons. Even though the Africans wanted to retain their culture, there were a lot of cultural repressions, which made the culture almost forgotten by the Africans. In the same manner of cultural repression, music that belonged to African culture was also lost. It was challenging for the Africans to hold onto what they believed to be music. Even in some places like the united states, neo-African drumming was effectively outlawed everywhere except in new Orleans (Murrell, 2010). This means that there were too many repressive forces, which made the retention of African culture and music very difficult for most slaves. However, it was not all places that were like this, and some places like Cuba had good retention, and they could even trace their ancestors; for example, Yoruba ones are said to have been able to trace their ancestors from Nigeria.

Most of the factors that made musical retention difficult were political and the desire to make the slaves do what the whites wanted. In places like Cuba, there was an interaction of all kinds of people, and to some extent, the slaves in this area retained their culture and music. The religions contributed to the retention and erosion of African culture and music among the slaves. Catholicism had rituals and did not outrightly ban the cultural practices of most of the people it met as it went towards cultural incorporation (Murrell, 2010). This means that those Catholicism Christianized Africans had better retention of their music and culture than those who Protestants Christianized. The Protestants desired the people to leave their cultures as they were seen to be negative and evil. Creolization is the formation of a different language from the mixture of two languages and the mixing of English and African languages. Apart from just languages, this can also mean how cultures emerge from their mixing leading to the relocation of people.References

Murrell, N. S. (2010). Afro-Caribbean religions: An introduction to their historical, cultural, and sacred traditions. Temple University Press.