e of advancement in the

Helstrom Reins protoplasm at deprinsessen.nl
Mon Dec 28 12:39:18 UTC 2009


Om the Afro-American peasant class that an indigenous American folk
culture was to emerge. When minstrelsy and jazz spread around the world,
they were seen as American productions. They were, at the same time,
Afro-American creations. The Afro-American folk culture must be seen as
the product of the African's experience in America rather than as an
importation into America of foreign, African elements. Although the
content of the Afro-American folk culture grew out of the American
scene, its style and flavor did have African roots. It was based on the
artistic sense which the slave brought with him--a highly developed
sense of rhythm which was passed from generation to generation, and an
understanding of art which conceived of it as an integral part of the
whole of life rather than as a beautiful object set apart from mundane
experience. Song and dance, for example, were involved in the African's
daily experience of work, play, love, and worship. In sculpture,
painting and pottery, the African used his art to decorate the objects
of his daily life rather than to make art objects for their own sake.
The African could not have imagined going to an art gallery or to a
musical concert. Art was produced by artisans rather than by artists.
This meant that slave artisans in America could continue to produce
decorative work, and slave laborers in the field could continue to sing.
Art and life could still be combined, though in a restricted manner.
However, while the African brought his feeling for art with him, the
content of his art was actually changed as the result of his American
slave experience. The dominant African arts were sculpture,
metal-working, and weaving. In America, the Afro-American created song,
dance, music, and, later, poetry. The skills displayed in African art
were technical, rigid, control disciplined. They were characteristically
sober, restrained and heavily conventionalized. In contrast, the
Afro-American cultural spirit became emotional, exuberant, and
sentimental. This is to say the Afro-American characteristics which have
been generally thought of as being African and primitive--his naivety,
his exuberance and his spontaneity--are, in reality, his response to his
A
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