In the reading from Inhuman Bondage<\/i>, a section in chapter 4 relates to a subject that we have discussed in another of my classes, Popular Music of the United States.\u00a0 This section refers to the fact that the Portuguese enjoyed hearing the native African music.\u00a0 They \u201cenlisted the slaves to perform at plays and other types of public entertainment, even at royal functions\u201d (94).\u00a0 In contrast, the British forced the slaves to dance to bagpipe music on the ships in an effort to force cultural assimilation.\u00a0 Ironically, the British as well as other European nations became much more interested in authentic African culture and music, especially from the mid 1800s to 1920s.\u00a0 In New York City, young Scottish and Irish men imitated African culture as a means of social critique in a form of musical theater called minstrelsy.\u00a0 They used the African American\u2019s situation to highlight the discrimination they faced as Scotch-Irish.\u00a0 However, the original purpose of minstrelsy changed to fit an upper middle class audience in both America and Europe.\u00a0 Minstrelsy troops attempted to portray an authentic view of slave life on plantations through skits and music, but often there was more Scotch-Irish and European influence than African, and life on plantations was always idealized.\u00a0 It is interesting that the Portuguese displayed this interest in African culture so much earlier than the emersion of minstrelsy and that this interest remained prominent in both America and Europe until the early 1900s.\u00a0 It is also ironic that although the British attemped to assimilate the Africans\u2019 music, their ancestors were later intrigued by an imitation of authentic African culture.<\/p>\n

On a separate note, I think the issue that \u201cmihan\u201d raises the in post about the \u201cCurse of Ham\u201d is very interesting.\u00a0 It seems common for Europeans to use religion as a means of justifying slavery as well as colonization, but it also appears that in this way, they possibly twist the meaning of their religious texts merely to suit their own intentions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the reading from Inhuman Bondage, a section in chapter 4 relates to a subject that we have discussed in another of my classes, Popular Music of the United States.\u00a0 This section refers to the fact that the Portuguese enjoyed hearing the native African music.\u00a0 They \u201cenlisted the slaves to perform at plays and other … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Inhuman Bondage, Chapters 4 and 5”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[91,195,203],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-curse-of-ham","tag-minstrelsy","tag-musical-influence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}