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JAZZ |
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pattern where European "legitimate" rhythms would remain content with 3/4 time or 4/4 time as the foundation.
But, if we are to economise on space, we are forced to concentrate on the amalgamation which took place in America. We must remember that the inhuman policy of slave owners, instituted to prevent possible uprisings, was to separate tribes each from the other, and to break up any normal contact between the human cattle under their whips. This forced the negro labourers to adopt the English tongue and to exchange at least a part of their own native folk song and folklore for that of their masters.
In other parts of the world, especially in the Latin-American countries where the colour-line was by no means so rigidly adhered to, we can find African culture transplante#vith very little alteration or maltreatment and Cuban and Haiitian musics mould very clearly with African sources.
Had these happy circumstances taken place in America, jazz music would have remained still-born, and the States would have had no culture of their own to boast of. But negro slaves, robbed of their own heritage, began apeing new forms which their overlords sang and played. From the hymns and anthems of Christian slave-owners were born the Spirituals. From European secular songs came the Blues. The tribal dances influenced the Congo Square shuffles in New Orleans, and simple half-African half-European scraps of melody were used in |
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