Publisher's Synopsis
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. African-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of musics and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large and significant ethnic minority of the population of the United States. Many of their ancestors were originally brought to North America to work as enslaved peoples, bringing with them typically polyrhythmic songs from hundreds of black African ethnic groups across West and sub-Saharan Africa. African-American music and all aspects of African American culture are celebrated during Black History Month in February of each year in the United States. This book studies the growth and evolution of African American music including work song, polyrhythm, banjo, spiritual, modal jazz, and free jazz. Project Webster represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Project Webster continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge.