en seen in the history of colonialism in Africa and in the treatment of blacks throughout the world at various times. Every aspect of African culture was denigrated as being a product of savagery, having little value and never rising above the primitive. This is now known to be a false view, and scholars are presently aware of the contribution that African culture made through the slaves to American culture as a whole.
It is also incorrect to view the black music of today as
being African, but there are many characteristics of African musical styles that have persisted to this day. Among those characteristics are melodic or rhythmic concepts; some relationships between voices, and between voices and instruments; some in concepts of vocal and instrumental sound; in accidental conflicts with Western scales; in motor actions associated with singing and dancing; and in attitudes toward music and music making. Still, black music should be seen as uniquely American, for it could only have come into being in the United States, where elements of specific cultures were brought together under conditions that were not exactly duplicated anywhere else. European and African elements mingled and produced one result in the Spanish islands of the Caribbean, another in the English islands, and another in the French islands; the results were still different in Venezuela and Brazil. Since the first studies were conducted on black music, our knowledge of both the American and the African scenes has increased tremendously. Much of this work has been done by ethnomusicologists, and anthropological researches have added a
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