A Long Road to Freedom

Black slaves played a major, though unwilling and

generally unrewarded, role in laying the economic
foundations of the United States (especially in the South).
Blacks also played a leading role in the development of
Southern speech, folklore, music, dancing, and food. This
and many other elements are well explained in the movie
“Twelve Years a Slave”, based on the 19th-century
memoir of Solomon Northup. As this movie explains and
shows how racism affected African-American people at
that time, it is absolutely related with (for example)
Rhythm and Blues, and the famous speech “I have a
dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. First of all, it is important
to mention that the blues was a creation of black slaves
who adapted their African musical heritage to the
American environment. And though taking many forms
and undergoing many changes throughout the years, the
blues formed the basis of jazz, rhythm and blues, and
rock-and-roll. This music was complete unique and
involved calculated repetitions, which could be seen in the
movie when one slave would call or play a lead part, and
fellow slaves would follow with the same phrase or an
embellishment of it until another took the lead. Also,
another good representation of this kind of music in the
movie is easily seen when the slaves dance and sing to
the beat of drums, emphasizing the rhythm in their music.
For instance, in a single song they would clapped, danced,
and slapped their bodies in several different rhythms,
compensating for the absence of drums, which were
outlawed by plantation owners (which is also shown in the
movie). In fact, African-Americans used these African
musical traits in their religious ceremonies. For this
reason, such African-inspired church music, later known
as spirituals, became the basis for the blues. As a
consequence, during the early 1950s, more and more
white people began to become aware of R&B and started
to purchase this important type of music. However, before
this, music by African-Americans (black music of any kind)
was simply not played on the radio. In other hand, Martin
Luther King’s speech talks about how one hundred years
after slavery; the Negro still is not free. Plus he calls the
people asking them to make real the promises of
democracy and racial justice. And he has a dream: that
one day the nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: " that all men are created equal",
and all this injustices that black people once had, which
are absolutely well represented in the film, will completely
disappeared. Finally, some states that also appeared in
the movie are mention in the speech: for example
Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, as at the end Martin
Luther King Jr. wishes the oppression that this places once
possessed, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice nowadays.