ABSTRACT
Music is a fundamental aspect of every human culture. It does not matter where one goes in the world, there will always be music, song and dance. To understand fully a past society or culture, one needs to know something of that culture's music, song and dance. Music is so important that people take their music with them to wherever they are transported, as slaves or prisoners; or as emigrants seeking a better life or fleeing from religious or racial persecution. One obvious example is that of the black African slaves shipped to the Americas, bringing with them their African rhythms, song and dance traditions. These in turn became synthesised into country and urban blues using the guitar, an instrument which was introduced to parts of America from Spain through that country's exploration, conquering and dominance over the native indigenous cultures. From this rich melting-pot sprang rhythm and blues, rock and roll, Elvis Presley (the first white singer with a ‘black voice’), rock music, reggae, and ultimately much Western popular music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, far removed though it may seem in some of its more sugary or formulaic manifestations. Music fulfils a basic human need for self-expression through sound and rhythm. It can also act as a vehicle for communication when other forms are banned or frowned upon, serving a political and social purpose, as in the case of the black South African miners, who, forbidden to drum in the traditional way by their white mine-owner bosses, devised a form of drumming on their gumboots which they wore in the mines. Thus the gumboot dance was born, a highly intricate form of dance in which the miners beat out traditional rhythms in patterns of movement. Their bosses could not punish them for this, since they were not using drums! These same miners also sing in the kind of four-part harmony — soprano, alto, tenor and bass — learned from white Christian missionaries in their schools and churches, an aspect of white high (and low) art culture transported to Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wherever people go, in time and place, they take their music with them.
