Enslaved Africans seeking to reconnect with their lost cultural traditions brought African concepts to instruments in the American musical mainstream, creating popular new American music genres ...

Black American music is music of the spirit, a profound diversity of lessons to be enjoyed. Never duplicated but often imitated, its drumbeats are heartbeats of the inner person that ignites ...

Explore musical instruments ... one of several instruments collected by Howard University professor Lorenzo Dow Turner. His groundbreaking research told stories of sounds and songs transported from ...

The Mississippi Delta gave birth to a blues style that links most directly to the work songs and field hollers of slaves on Southern plantations. The slaves brought the musical traditions of their ...

White minstrels would perform these songs using banjos, fiddles, tambourines, and even animal jaw rattles — instruments popular with African American players. In turn, white music influenced ...

Mbira is a musical instrument traditionally from Zimbabwe in Africa. It's sometimes called a thumb piano. Mbira is made from a wooden block, about the size of an adult hand. On top of the wood are ...