Conclusion

This lesson covered the analysis of the plantation melody and connected various rhythmic patterns in the context of the work patterns of the slaves. The work became an intrinsic part of the music and vice versa.

The music analysis of specific plantation songs deciphered embedded meanings in their text. Furthermore, these analysis highlighted the diatonic sequence as it appears in the style and structure of the songs.

As quoted in People Get Ready, Booker T. Washington states that in the beginning, African American music was "spontaneous," a joyful eruption at marriages, a mournful dirge at funerals: "Wherever companies of Negroes were working together, in the cotton fields and tobacco factories, on the levees and steamboats, on sugar plantations, and chiefly in the fervor of religious gatherings, these melodies sprang to life" (Darden 2004, n.p.).