African Oral Tradition Analysis
Herbert Martin's speech "The African American Oral Tradition" is about how African American writers imply oral forms in their literary works. African American literatures use several different types of genres to form its basis about slavery. Genres such as, spiritual, folk songs and gospels are all intertwined together to form each individual work. Martin begins by explaining the language of the African Americans. The law forbade anyone to teach the slaves standard English; therefore, they learned solely by ear. When they transferred the language that they heard to paper, a new style of language was formed which was referred to as dialect. Dialect was not Standard English because it was what the African Americans perceived they had heard or how they thought the word was spelled, since they were forbidden to learn Standard English. Dunbar is celebrated as the first African American writer. His literacy is still alive, however with a stigma attached. Dunbar was introduced to the public, whom despise
From blues came rhythmic blues, a genre that showed how well African Americans could adapt. Anderson is a prime example of a woman who was created by the African American culture then came to the metropolitan Opera later in her life an sang phenomenally in Four Season. Jazz took over for the blues to form a million-dollar industry. Singers such as Elvis Presley siphoned songs from blacks such as "Sittin on the Dock of the Bay." d dialect, but celebrated Dunbar whom used dialect. Gospel, another genre used, is like the spiritual except in a gospel the author is known and it tends to be more upbeat. Spirituals are said to belong to the collective community because of the various different forms of each one. Because of the bad stigma attached to dialect, African Americans did not like to be associated with this style of language. They wanted to learn proper English. Wheatley, Dulaney, along with Walker were among the first to use formal verses in their writings. Folk poems are known as the lesser child to formal verses.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 703
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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