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2.2African American Dominance2.2.1 African American Music In the History of American Music
At the time Columbus “discovered” America, the Americas were fully populated, like Europe, with tens of millions of people. The native inhabitants had been making their own music for thousands of years before Europeans invaded the Americas and, with diseases and guns, killed the mass of indigenous Americans. Native American music throughout the Americas has struggled to be heard ever since.
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.