CHAPTER 2:
  What the Popular Music Industry
  REALLY Is, and Where It Came From
  _______________________________
  
  2.2 African American Dominance

 
PAGE INDEX
   

2.2.1 How America Became the Capital of Western Popular Music

2.2.2 Why African American Music Tends to Dominate Popular Music Generally

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2.2.1

HOW AMERICA BECAME THE CAPITAL OF WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC

     Europeans also colonized large parts of Africa and forced generations of Africans into slavery abroad. They shipped millions of Africans to America to work as plantation slaves.

     After the Civil War and the assassination of America’s greatest president by a white Southerner, virulent institutionalized racism and legislated segregation became entrenched in many American states. It stayed that way for more than 100 years.

     Shut out of mainstream American life, African Americans developed a number of new musical genres, composites of their own African traditions and various European forms, genres that stood out from those of the white majority.

     The Europeans who colonized America, initially from the British Isles, France, and Spain, brought with them a variety of musical traditions. Before the advent of the popular music industry, music of white America consisted of European forms such as operetta songs, marches, and dances such as the waltz, schottische, and polka. Music of the Old Country.

     From about 1880 to World War I, huge numbers of people crossed the Atlantic to settle in America. Among them were Jews fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, many of whom settled in New York. They were to have an enormous impact on American popular song.

     American popular song started to come into its own in the 1880s. No other single nation had such a musically fortuitous combination: large population, economic wealth, and, above all, an extraordinary diversity of musical roots. A large, economically prosperous population (today, almost 300 million), with one dominant language has historically meant a huge market for popular songs with lyrics in a single prevailing language

     If you were to remove all the popular music genres still going strong today that did not originate with African American and Jewish songwriters and performers, what would be left? Some folk, classical, country, and some world music That’s about it. Today, genres that originated with African Americans pervade or at least inform the popular music of many if not most nations of the world.

     The descendants of African American slaves have always created music and musical genres so innovative and potent that they have tended to dominate popular music, both in America and abroad. Hip-hop is only the latest.

2.2.2

WHY AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSIC TENDS TO DOMINATE POPULAR MUSIC GENERALLY

Over the past couple of centuries, African Americans have combined the versatile melodic and harmonic aspects of European tonal music with their own polyrhythmic and improvisational traditions to create a number of irresistible genres that have spread around the world. Practically everywhere you go on the planet, a large proportion of the recorded and live popular music you hear consists of genres that originated with African Americans—hip-hop, rock, electronica, jazz, blues.

     The secret of the global success of popular music genres of African American origin is that they tend to emphasize numerous powerful musical universals simultaneously—so many universals that non-African Americans in nations worldwide can relate to the music.

     Human nature does not vary from culture to culture. If a human takes a liking to something technical or artistic from another culture, said human will adopt it, without bothering too much about where it came from. If it’s an artistic element, and it’s emotionally powerful, nothing else matters much.

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 TABLE OF
 CONTENTS

 PART I

 The Big Picture
   Introduction

   1. W-5 of Music
   2. Pop Music
       Industry
  
 PART II
 Essential
 Building Blocks
 of Music
   3. Tones/Overtones
   4. Scales/Intervals
   5. Keys/Modes
 
 PART III
 How to Create
 Emotionally
 Powerful Music
 and Lyrics
   6. Chords/
        Progressions

   7. Pulse/Meter/
        Tempo/Rhythm
   8. Phrase/Form
   9. Melody
 10. Lyrics
 11. Repertoire/
        Performance

 PART IV
 Making a
 Living In Music
 12. Business of
        Music
 
 Appendixes

 Notes

 References

 Index
  

   Top

 TABLE OF
 CONTENTS

 PART I

 The Big Picture
   Introduction

   1. W-5 of Music
   2. Pop Music
       Industry
  
 PART II
 Essential
 Building Blocks
 of Music
   3. Tones/Overtones
   4. Scales/Intervals
   5. Keys/Modes
 
 PART III
 How to Create
 Emotionally
 Powerful Music
 and Lyrics
   6. Chords/
        Progressions

   7. Pulse/Meter/
        Tempo/Rhythm
   8. Phrase/Form
   9. Melody
 10. Lyrics
 11. Repertoire/
        Performance

 PART IV
 Making a
 Living In Music
 12. Business of
        Music
 
 Appendixes

 Notes

 References

 Index
  

   Top