Student Work Page
Allyssa Thornton Student Work Page
Rihanna: Musician to Businesswoman
Rihanna: Musician to Businesswoman Rihanna has become a worldwide pop icon and has been involved in two decades of music creating hit after hit. As of recently, her album 2016 ANTI has made her the first black woman to ever stay on the Billboard 200 list for a consecutive 200 weeks. In the past few […]
Ragtime
RagTimes Ragtime is a genre names after “rag” times and it’s known for its broken piano melodies that work together to make a fun jig. It originated in the late 19th century stemming from Negro Spirituals and evolved from African American bands with musical styles known as jig piano and piano thumping. By time the […]
Musical Theater
African American Musical Theater Before the early 20th century, African American theater was white people in racist blackface mocking and disrespecting the African American image. In 1898, Will Marion Cook and Bob Cole introduced African American written comedy to Broadway. Their shows grew popularity and were shown in prestigious halls including the shows Clorindy, or […]
Techno
Techno Techno is a genre very popular today in white music scenes and especially at festivals and raves such as Coachella and The Burning Man. Originally techno was a form of protest by middle class Detroit African American teenagers. Juan Atkins created the genre in the 80s and even gave it it’s name. Unlike the […]
Disco: An Era of Self Expression
Disco Queens to the Front Disco music has roots in soul and funk music which makes it another genre that was created by African Americans. Disco was popular in the 1970s and it was a way for people to express themselves through music, but also through fashion. It shaped culture in the 70s and helped […]
Negro Spirituals: The Cries of Our Ancestors
The Emotional Expression of The Slave For hundreds of years, Africans were kidnapped and sold as slaves in a stolen land named America. The colonizers took everything from these people from their land, their culture, their native tongue, but one thing they couldn’t take away from them was music. African Americans have such a large […]
Jazz Music: America’s Classical Music
America’s Classical Music Jazz is arguably one of the most iconic genres of music. It combines many genres of music including ragtimes, marches, blues, negro spirituals and many other genres. It was founded in the great city of New Orleans Louisiana right by the opening of the Mississippi river. Jazz was originally meant for dancing, […]
Jubilee Quartet: 4 Voices are Better Than One
Jubilee Quartets What’s better than one talented singer? How about four talented singers all singing together at once. This is the basis of Jubilee Quartet. Jubilee Quartet was named after the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group organized by George L. White at Fisk University which gained popularity in the early 20th century. Many other Universities […]
Blues: Singing Their Miseries
I Got The Blues When someone tells you they have the blues or they’re feeling blue, you automatically know they are feeling melancholy. This term comes from the music genre, Blues. The Blues was created in the 19th century in Mississippi by slaves, ex-slaves, and sharecroppers that chose to express their feelings through music. The […]
Folk Music: The Start of Country
Folks Love Folk Music The beginning of what we now know as country music and rock and roll. Folk music was the seed that blossomed in to many genres of modern day music. Folk music came from the rich culture of the south and gained popularity in the 1960s. Folk music used instruments like the […]
Gospel Music: Praising the Lord with Voice
Sing With Your Soul Gospel music was derived from negro spirituals when the enslaved wanted to start making music, but it couldn’t be secular. Gospel music didn’t receive its title till the 1930s to describe it’s style of music. It’s used as religious expression usually in African American communities, but a mini genre of white […]
Oh So Funky
Funk Funk music is one genre, out of many, that was evolved from Jazz. The term Funk or Funky was describe the Black experience and struggles throughout American history. The odor, the tragedy, it was all pretty funky. In the late 1960s, James Brown’s Band created what everyone knows as the funk beat and modern […]
The Sound of Black Sisterhood
Allyssa Thornton Black women are the backbone of America because Black women fight not only for themselves, but also for others. In modern times, Black women have continually fought to have a voice in feminism, but white women have taken over the movement and turned it in to their own. Which is why many Black […]
