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Final project justification

Black culture is the cultural contributions of the African Americans to the United State’s culture. Their distinct identity of their culture is rooted in the historical experience of these African individuals that includes the middle passage. The culture of the black people is influential to the whole of America. This culture is known to be rooted in central and West Africa regions. Thus, understanding its identity within US is conscious of its origins as a blend of both west and central African cultures. The black culture was well established within the slavery period producing a very dynamic culture that has continued to impact on the whole of American culture and that of the globe.

The music presented is a presentation of the evolvement of the black music since the time of slavery. It incorporates various genres of music to reveal how the black American culture music has evolved to incorporate the more modern genres of music. At the end of it, it shows that hip hop remains to be the most outstanding genre of the African American culture. Most rappers and hip-hop artists of the African American culture are widely celebrated in America and around the globe. As a result, the previous forms of discrimination against the African Americans since the slavery period have declined significantly. In fact, most of the audience celebrating these artists from the African American culture is the white audience. Thus, the black culture music has gone a long way in ensuring that the African-American culture is accepted in the USA and beyond.

The African-American music is rooted in the polyrhythmic music of various ethnic groups in Africa. These groups include those in sub-Saharan, western and sahelean regions of Africa. Initially, Africa oral traditions encouraged its members to use music to ensure that they passed history taught various lessons and eased the ongoing slavery’s suffering. Due to the blackface show in the 19th century, their music entered the mainstream society of the American culture. By the early 20th century, various genres of music had been formed which transformed the American music. Through the help of modern technology, there emerged the ragtime, swing, jazz and the blues.

This age became familiar as the jazz age. In the mid 20th century, there emerged rock and roll, soul and R&B. they became very popular in the white audience and influenced other musical genres including surf. In the 1970s, a genre called dozens emerged. It was a form of the black tradition of using a rhyming slang to ensure that they put ones enemies down. The West Indian’s tradition that incorporated toasting developed into a new music form. In south Bronx, the hip-hop force developed which involved half speaking and half-singing known as rapping. It grew into a successful force of culture (Levine 123).

The hip-hop genre has become a multicultural movement in America and it remains important to many of the African Americans. Their cultural movement of 1950s and 1960s propelled the growth of funk and later on hip-hop forms including rap and jack swing. They then created house music in black communities of Chicago in the 1980s. The music of the black culture has been widely accepted in the American culture in the 21st century more than it was before. In addition to innovating new music forms, the modern artists continue to generate older genres of music including neo-soul.

Work Cited

Levine, Lawrence W. Black culture and Black consciousness. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.