Arakin 4 kurs new 001 176. indd

b) Team up with your partner who will be ready to give critical remarks on 
the statements given above.
7. Let’s talk about the Beatles!
THE BEATLES, an internationally famous British pop group 
whose members during their most successful period in the 1960s had 
their names John ……… Paul …………. George …………….. Ring …………… 
1. Who were the members of the Beatles group?
2. What song became their first hit? Have you ever heard it?
3. How important was it for the Beatles to break into the USA 
musical market?
4. Why did the group change their name?
5. What was the secret of the group’s sensational success across 
the Atlantic ?
6. What makes people around the world enjoy and admire the 
music of the Beatles nowadays?
8. Read the text and extract the necessary information. Prepare and act out 
dialogues
AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC
This text is being made especially for the students who are inter-
ested in Afro-American music. This text is being made by Portia 
Maultsby Ph. D., of Indiana University in America.

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The first thing I would like to say is: Afro-American music has its 
roots in African music. The blacks in America came from Africa and 
therefore their culture is rooted in that of African traditions. For many 
years Americans didn’t acknowledge the African heritage of the black 
population, but instead wanted to describe the culture of this group 
as being an imitation (and a poor one at that) of Euro-American 
cultures. But today it is widely acknowledged that the traditions and 
customs and, in general, the culture of Afro-Americans is based on 
the cultures of Central and West Africa, the two regions from which 
most of the black people came to America.
Because the culture was very different, it was described in negative 
terms. European travellers — the missionaries from Europe as well as 
the slave holders who were from Europe but living in America — of-
ten described the music, the traditions and activities of slaves as 
barbaric, pagan, indecent, and all sorts of other negative terms were 
used. This culture again being an African culture was aesthetically 
very different from that of Europe. Because the culture was seen as 
pagan and barbaric and primitive the Europeans decided that black 
Americans should learn to be more like them and act like them. They 
therefore introduced various aspects of their culture into that of the 
slaves.
One of the first traditions introduced to slaves was that of their 
western ways of worship, meaning Christianity. They instructed the 
slaves in the principles of Christianity, which involved teaching them 
the Christian psalms and hymns.
Blacks, however, or the slaves, did not sing the songs as taught to 
them by the Euro-Americans, nor did they worship in the way that 
they were taught by these people. What they did was to reinterpret 
the religious culture of the Europeans to conform to an African way 
of religion and an African way of singing.
This African way may be described as the use of call-and-response 
structures, or what is known as a leader-chorus structure. In using 
this structure, which we also refer to as a form, an individual impro-
vises one line of text, and the group of singers — or in this case the 
congregation — responds with a line of text which is repeated as a 
response after each improvised line of text.
The whole notion of improvisation is African in its origin. The 
other characteristic that distinguished African and slave singing from 
that of their European counterparts was the addition of hand clapping 
and foot stamping to the music, as musical accompaniment. In Africa, 
drumming and hand clapping were the major sources of instrumental 

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accompaniment. But in America, whites forbade blacks after period 
of time to play drums.
The reason for this was that the slave holders realized that these drums 
were being used to communicate messages for slaves to gather and revolt 
or run away. So laws were enacted to forbid slaves from playing drums or 
illegally gathering without the supervision of whites. But there were too 
many slaves to be controlled by whites, and at night they would slip away 
in the forest regions and meet and discuss their plans. Or there were too 
many slaves to be instructed by the few white ministers that were avail-
able. And in time slaves began to conduct their own religious services.
So it is in this context and away from whites that American black 
slaves were able to develop a culture that in its earlier stages was very 
African, and then later, as slaves interacted more with European 
cultures, the culture that eventually evolved among blacks was known 
as Afro-American.
It is important to keep in mind that the Afro-American culture is not 
purely African, but yet is derived from African values, aesthetics and a 
way of thinking. And because it is not purely African we cannot call it 
an African culture in America. Whereas, the distinction can be: in ear-
lier days, for example in the early 1700s and throughout the 1600s, blacks 
were celebrating African holidays; they were singing African songs; they 
were doing purely African dances; they were electing African kings. But 
by the 1800s they were required to participate in the holidays of their 
masters, of the Europeans in America, and what they did do was to take 
these holidays, to take the European culture that they were forced to 
leam and adopt it from an African frame of reference, so that it made 
sense to them. Which is what they did with Christianity. It was a way in 
which they adapted and survived in their new environment.
Another example would be that the slaves did not have access to 
African instruments. So they were not playing African instruments. 
But what they were doing was playing instruments that they had 
made based on an African tradition.
They played them in an African fashion. When they learned to 
play European instruments they played those instruments in an Af-
rican fashion.
This, then, is what we call an African frame of reference for playing 
instruments or an African frame of reference for doing something, 
doing anything. So our relationship to Africa can best be described 
in terms of the conceptual approaches to the way we do things.

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One of the most distinguishing features in Afro-American culture 
which again is tied to African cultures is various cultural values, that 
give use to certain sounds and behaviours associated with the black 
music tradition. One such value is that music making is considered, 
to be a participatory communal activity, meaning that everyone par-
ticipates in the event. There is not a concept of a performer and audi-
ence; the audience becomes a part of the performance.
Another characteristic that is representative of culture values is 
the kind of sounds that we make with our voices. We like distorted 
sounds again, not pure sounds. Our sounds tend to be influenced by 
animal sounds and sounds in nature. And our approach then to a 
melody or creating sound to sing a note is based on certain kinds of 
nuances with the voices that we do. We like changes in the colourings 
of sounds; we like changes in being in a high register and moving to 
a low register. In essence we like variation in our musical perfor-
mances; we don’t like purity. That is not a culture value with us, a pure 
sound or a sound that is a homogeneous sound or a one like excite-
ment and we like colour.
Many of you may be familiar with blues and jazz. And in these 
traditions the instrumentalists try to make their instruments sound 
like voices. That is why we play western instruments in a way that is 
different from European and white American performers.
Another feature that is common to the Afro-American music tra-
dition is the embellishment of the melody, and the interjections of 
various kinds to the melody. For example, grunts (ugh... ugh), screams, 
and hollers and moans.
These sounds capture the feelings and emotions of black people. It 
should not be considered as extra to the music. These sounds become 
intricately woven into the melody, even though you may say, “Well, I don’t 
hear melody, I just hear an insertion of a scream or a grunt”. Well, that, 
in essence, is a part of the melody. When you take these subtleties and 
nuances away from the Afro-American tradition then you really don’t 
have an Afro-American sound. They are intricate to what makes the sound 
unique to black people. Therefore these features that I have just described 
give rise to the distinctive quality of Afro-American music.