Interpretation of Black Culture by Maya Angelou Through Music Poetry

Juan DU

Abstract


African American music covers wide ranges of music and musical genres largely developed by African Americans. Negro spirituals, ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, rock and roll, soul, funk, and disco constitute the principal modern genres of it. Maya Angelou successfully applies to different styles of music in her poetry. With work songs, spirituals, souls, funk, jazz and blues, her poetry reveals African Americans’ withstanding hardships and expressing frustration as well as personal love and concerns. Through the analysis of the themes and the effect of the application of music merged with of her poems, the paper attempts to reveal the interpretation of black culture in Angelou’s poetry.


Keywords


Interpretation; African American; Music; Poetry

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References


Abernethy, B. (2005, August 26). African-American spirituals. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. PBS.

Angelou, M. (1994). The complete collected poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, Inc.

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Floyd, S. A. (1996). The power of black music: Interpreting its history from Africa to the United States. Oxford, US: Oxford University Press.

Henderson, S. (1973). Understanding the new black poetry (p.30). New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc.

Levine, L. (1977). Black culture and black consciousness: Afro-American folk thought from slavery to freedom. New York.

Stepto, R. B. (1979). The phenomenal woman and the severed daughter (Maya Angelou, Audre Lourde). Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 8(1), 313-315.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/8533

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