The Influence of Black Slave Culture on Early America

The Black slaves of colonial America brought their own culture from Africa
to the new land. Despite their persecution, the "slave culture" has
contributed greatly to the development of America's own music, dance, art,
and clothing.

Music
It is understandable that when Africans were torn from their homes and
families, lashed into submission , and forced into lifelong slave labor,
they would be, on the most part, resentful and angry. Various forms of
expression, clandestine yet lucent, developed out of these feelings.
One such form was music. Native African music consisted mainly of wind
and string melodies punctuated by hand clapping, xylophones, and drum
beats. Along those lines, an early type of slave music was the
spiritual, which has its roots in Protestant hymns taught to the slaves.
Spirituals were "long thought to be the spontaneous creation of
African-American slaves and the only original folk music of the U.S."
Spirituals told tales of suffering and str...