Sound, Voice, and Spirit: Teaching in the Black Music Vernacular

Cheryl L. Keyes

The study of African-American music and culture flourished during the twentieth century. Its varied approaches and perspectives earned its inclusion as a vibrant area of interest in the study of American music as well as its respectability in the academy. Prior to the 1960s, the bulk of studies on black music focused on field recording collections ranging from worksongs and spirituals to the rural blues and addressed questions regarding its continued connections to an African past. As such, scholars often characterized African-American music in terms of selected features that were, by varying degrees, present or absent in Western European music. For example, syncopation, a term derived from the discussion of European classical music, was most commonly used by music educators to underscore a salient feature of black music characterized by a preponderance of "off beat" feels or the layering/juxtaposition of various melorhythmic pulses in comparison to Western-derived music.