h the principall persons do hold as an ornament of their state, so as when we come to see them their musicke will seldom be wanting" (Segal 1995 375).
The philosopher Nietzcsche pointed out that the Greeks, who gave us the rational philosophy that led to science, also felt the need of tragic dramatic ritual as its necessary complement (Chernoff 1979 2). He thought that music was a form of wisdom not subject to rational analysis, because it dealt with and emanated from the fundamental mysteries and contradictions of life. When one deals with human experience logically, there comes a point where it is a futile undertaking; "this tragic perceptionà requires, to make it tolerable, the remedy of art" (ibid.).
Such observations are an apt way to approach an understanding of the role of music in the lives of the African slaves brought here against their will, and their descendants. Deprived of everything to express their free will except music and dance, they imbued it with all their frustrated, passionate desire for personal, legal, and political freedom, and used it as the only avenue to express their intolerable condition.
From this basic impulse came a true folk music that centuries later has left its mark through its diverse but related forms on the music of the world in a way unmatched by any other. The depth of their suffering, and the ecstasy so desperately wrenched from their domination by the whites through moments of musical inspiration, gave their music such a visceral feeling and universal humanity that it has struck responsive chords in millions of people around the world to this day.
To approach an understanding of African-American protest music from the 1960s, one must look backward. Although the Civil Rights Movement, the counterculture, and resistance to the Vietnam War were unique conditions that shaped the form that protests took in the 60s, the roots of rebellion against oppression started with the cap...