While African peoples had migrated from Africa for millenias prior
to the 15th century, it is during the period of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade that the vast majority of African migration took place. Over a
period of almost four centuries, it is estimated that at least ten million
Africans were forced from their families and enslaved in a new world
where everything familiar was absent. The African diaspora is the story
of how Africans managed to retain traditions and reform identities in
spite of persecution. African cultural elements, such as religion, language,
and music, blended over time with other cultures in the United States
to create today's mosaic of American culture.
Voices from the African diaspora can also be found reflected in the
texts of many famous American writers, including Maya Angelou, Frederick
Douglas, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes,
Alice Walker, and Richard Wright. Toni Morrison once said that African
American literature has contributed such a wealth of words, phrases,
literary conventions, and rhythms to American Literature as a whole
that "the literature of America is incoherent without the contribution
of...Black writers."
The history of American music exemplifies the cultural interaction
of Africans with Europeans in America. Many musical instruments in use
today, including the banjo and xylophone, have been adapted from traditional
African instruments. Slave traders allowed slaves to retain their drums
on slave ships as a form of exercise to prevent illness among the slaves
and financial losses for the traders. In 1953, Langston Hughes stated
that American music is soaked in African-American rhythms.Ragtime, jazz,
rock, r&b, hip hop all demonstrate the power of America's melded
cultural legacy.
Perhaps in the swift change of American society in which
the meanings of one’s origin are so quickly lost, one of
the chief values of living with music lies in its power to give
us an orientation in time. In doing so, it gives significance
to all those indefinable aspects of experience which nevertheless
help to make us what we are. In the swift whirl of time music
is a constant, reminding us of what we were and of that toward
which we aspired. Art thou troubled? Music will not only calm,
it will ennoble thee.
— Ralph Ellison
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