It’s impossible to overstate the importance of African and African American music to the United States’ musical traditions. Steven Lewis, a Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian, notes that “African American influences are so fundamental to American music there would be no American music without them.”
Jon Beebe, a Jazz pianist, professional musician, and an interpretive ranger at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, leads us on an exploration of how and why African rhythms and beats came to play important roles in the musical history and musical evolution of the United States.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.
Episode Summary
Jon Beebe, a Jazz pianist, professional musician, and an interpretive ranger at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, leads us on an exploration of how and why African rhythms and beats came to play important roles in the musical history and musical evolution of the United States.
As we explore the history of African and African American music in Early America and beyond, Jon reveals the origins of New Orleans music and how and why New Orleans developed into a musical hub of colonial America and the United States; How the everyday life activities of enslaved Africans and African Americans influenced the creation of new songs and musical genres; And, how and when African American music went mainstream throughout the United States.
What You’ll Discover
- New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
- Connections between New Orleans and jazz
- Jazz as North America’s “indigenous artform”
- How French New Orleans’ Code Noir promoted cultural freedom
- Music in the Senegambia region of Africa in the 16th through 18th centuries
- How Africans recreated Senegambia music in North America
- Role of music in enslaved Africans’ lives
- The role of everyday life in enslaved people’s music
- How enslaved people in New Orleans built instruments
- African and African American music clubs
- The conditions in New Orleans that promoted African musical development
- New Orleans music after 1803
- Religion and the development of African American music
- How African American music went mainstream in the United States
- Jass vs. Jazz
- Contributions of African & African American music to the music of the United States
- The Blues and its connections with Jazz
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
- Jean Lafitte National Historical Park
- New Orleans Jazz Museum
- The National World War II Museum
- Laurent Dubois, The Banjo: America’s African Instrument
- Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’”
- HBO’s Treme
- Smithsonian, Field Holler Recordings
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Field Holler,” From Ear To Ear
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Bring Me Half a Hoe (Field Version), From Ear to Ear
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “Gonna Beat Dis Corn,” From Ear to Ear
- The Fisk Jubilee Singers, “Wade in the Water,” Smithsonian Folkways: African American Spirituals
- Elvis the Movie
- Scott Joplin, “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899)
- Buddy Bolden, “Dixieland”
- Transcript
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Complementary Episodes
Time Warp Question
In your opinion, what would American music sound like today if Africans had not been enslaved and forced to move to North America?
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