hip hop
Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (/nɑːˈsɪər/; born September 14, 1973), better known by his stage name Nas /ˈnɑːz/, is an American hip hop recording artist, record producer, actor and entrepreneur. The son of jazz musician Olu Dara, Nas has released eight consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums and has sold over 25 million records worldwide. He is also an entrepreneur through his own record label; he serves as associate publisher of Mass Appeal magazine and is the owner of a Fila sneaker store. He is currently signed to Mass Appeal Records.
His musical career began in 1991 as featured artist on Main Source‘s “Live at the Barbeque”. His debut album Illmatic (1994) received universal acclaim from both critics and the hip hop community and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. Nas’ follow-up It Was Written debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, stayed on top for four consecutive weeks, went double platinum in two months, and made Nas internationally known.
The term “beatboxing” is derived from the mimicry of the first generation of drum machines, then known as beatboxes. “Human beatboxing” in hip-hop originated in the 1980s.
Alex Miller (possibly December 5, 1912 — May 25, 1965), known professionally as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills. He recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s, and had a direct influence on later blues and rock performers.
African-American work songs
African American work songs originally developed in the era of captivity, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Because they were part of an almost entirely oral culture they had no fixed form and only began to be recorded as the era of slavery came to an end after 1865. Slave Songs of the United States was the first collection of African American ‘slave songs.’ It was published in 1867 by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison. Many slave song origins are found in African song traditions, and may have been sung to remind the Africans of home, while others were instituted by the captors to raise morale and keep Africans working in rhythm. They have also been seen as a means of withstanding hardship and expressing anger and frustration through creativity or covert verbal opposition.
A common feature of African American songs was the call-and-response format, where a leader would sing a verse or verses and the others would respond with a chorus. This came from African traditions of agricultural work song and found its way into the spirituals that developed once Africans in bondage began to convert to Christianity and from there to both gospel music and the blues. Also evident were field hollers, shouts, and moans, which may have been originally designed for different bands or individuals to locate each other and narrative songs that used folk tales and folk motifs, often making use of homemade instruments. In early African captivity drums were used to provide rhythm, but they were banned in later years because of the fear that Africans would use them to communicate in a rebellion; nevertheless, Africans managed to generate percussion and percussive sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies.
Spoken Word
Spoken word is an oral art that focuses on the aesthetics of word play and intonation and voice inflection. It is a ‘catchall’ that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including hip-hop, jazz poetry, poetry slams, traditional poetry readings and can include comedy routines and ‘prose monologues‘.
Some American spoken-word poetry originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance,[18] blues music, as well as the 1960s Beat Generation.[19] Spoken word in African American culture drew on a rich literary and musical heritage. Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by the feelings of the blues and spirituals, hip-hop and slam poetry artists were inspired by poets such as Hughes in their word stylings.[20]
The Civil Rights Movement also influenced spoken word. Notable speeches such as Martin Luther King‘s “I Have a Dream,” Sojourner Truth‘s “Ain’t I a Woman?” and Booker T. Washington‘s “Cast Down Your Buckets” incorporated elements of oration that influenced the spoken word movement within the African American community.[20] The Last Poets was a poetry and political music group formed during the 1960s that was born out of the Civil Rights movement, and helped increase the popularity of spoken word within African American culture.[21]
Spoken word poetry entered into wider American culture following the release of Gil Scott-Heron‘s spoken-word poem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised on the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970. The Nuyorican Poets Café on New York’s Lower Eastside was founded in 1973, and is one of the oldest American venues for presenting spoken-word poetry.
In the 1980s, competitive spoken word poetry competitions emerged, labelled ‘poetry slams.’ The poetry slam movement reached a wider audience following Russell Simmons‘ Def Poetry, which was aired on HBO between 2002 and 2007.