African-Derived Music of the Americas: European Effect
Verna B. Green

Abstract
The energy of the music of the Americas comes out of the African American community in the Caribbean, Latin and North America. With African contribution to the music of the region readily recognizable through the syncopation of interlocking, call-and-response organization, duality of songs, use of blue notes, instrumentation, and overall African timbre, this article focuses on the European effect on and relationship to the African’s artistic flowering and cultural preservation in the Hemisphere during slavery to the present time. The discovery has been made that with both cultures co-existing in close proximity to each other, the European effect has been, essentially, the imitation, dilution, superimposition of European aesthetic values on, and, in many cases, the possession of African artistry and culture, like in the case of blues and jazz, and in the ownership of instruments such as the banjo and guitar.

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