Music #30 - The Roots of Jazz (1)

The Roots of Jazz can extend backward over 500 years ago, when black slaves were brought from West Africa to Middle America, by Portuguese, then Spanish, French, Dutch and British merchants. Jazz thus synthesized many cultural influences.

* History of slavery in America - 10-minute narrative

* Field hollers or call-response (plantation songs)
* Song from a Cotton Field - by Bessie Brown --- feel ‘free’ to sing along.  African societies emphasized in mass participation. A leading performer called out rhythmic words or phrases; the participating audience would shout a response, in addition to hand-clapping and body-moving.

"... A lead singer would use heavy rhythmic accents, and the workers would join in with shouts at regular intervals throughout the song.  The shouts or grunts signaled the moment of coordinated effort.  Their hypnotic rhythms made them even more effective.  When plantation bosses and prison guards saw how effective work songs were, they encouraged their use."

[rammers' workchant] (夯歌 /hānggē/)：打夯时一人领唱、众人和唱的歌

* Work Songs in a Texas Prison

* Prison Songs - Black Woman

* Gandy dancers working on railroads 
Enjoy the music, but feel their pain!!

A  summary (in Chinese) of the

Amazing Grace (2006 movie)

“In 18th-century England, House of Commons member William Wilberforce and his close friend and a future prime minister, William Pitt, begin a lengthy battle to abolish Great Britain's slave trade.....”