" While the black man's paintings or carvings were considered works of the Devil, music, on the other hand, did not cause much inconvenience. The plantation owners in Cuba, for example, allowed their slaves to beat their drums and dance every evening because this showed that they were in good health and that their "ebony flesh' was fit for hard labour. Meanwhile, the slaves listened to what they heard around them. During the sixteenth century, when they were first taken to America, they assimilated Spanish ballads, songs from Portugal and even French square dancing. They discovered musical instruments unknown in their own lands and learned to play them." --The Author
Epstein, an assistant music librarian at the University of Chicago’s Joseph Regenstein Library, worked independently for 20 years gathering evidence that African slaves had a rich musical culture. In 1973 she submitted her article “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History” for publication in Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. The article was published in a special issue devoted to black music.
Examines the play The Case of Miss Iris Armstrong and documentary film Sweet Sugar Rage. Looks at the way the sexual division of labor on Jamaica's sugar plantations was based on the following gendered myths: women's labor capacity is lower than their male counterparts; and men are the breadwinners for their families.
