Chapter 3 - A Capital Chop

Summary

As resistance to British legislation grows in the American colonies, song intensifies as a political force. Amidst continued white perplexity over the meanings of African music, Occramer Marycoo – also known as Newport Gardner – inaugurates Black American formal composition with his “Promise Anthem” of 1764, a resounding condemnation of slavery. Meanwhile, the Stamp Act, Tea Act, and other British “Intolerable Acts” produce more than riots and organizations like the Sons of Liberty: they produce a store of protest song fronted by the likes of John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, and the balladeers of the “Boston Massacre.” Loyalist songwriters fight their own losing battles through balladry, and the defeated British troops depart with the strains of “Yankee Doodle” ringing in their ears. The War of Independence may be over; but the songs of class war, women's rights, abolition, and Indigenous lament continue to infiltrate the soundscape of the newborn USA.