DYNAMICS OF THE MUSIC CULTURE AMONG THE AMERICAN BLACK SLAVES: A LESSON FOR INCULTURATION TODAY

Abstract

Paradoxically enough and in spite of all its negative consequences, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade seems to have gifted humanity with a particular positive legacy. This came in the form of the serendipitous cross-pollination of elements of African and Western musical cultures. The enduring results of these culture-contacts are with us today in the forms of the extant Negro Spirituals and Jazz Music; thanks to the ingenuity of those Black Slaves, then genuinely responding to their human natural urge and need for musical expression of their souls. In all these, there are certainly many lessons in acculturation as well as for practical inculturation in the Church today. Inculturation, for instance, is a natural response to a natural but religio-cultural stimuli, of the wish to contextualize, appropriate and adapt the Gospel of Christ to a given society, situation, age or culture.