Songs in Times of Hardship (CLE)

People have used music and songs as a way to express their feelings for forever. Music has been around forever, "The "oldest known song" was written in cuneiform, dating to 3400 years ago from Ugarit." Music has evolved from tribal chants in the African countries to folk chants in European countries. As it evolved new instruments were invented to have a background to sing to. Current day music is much different to music from many years ago. Now instead of playing instruments by yourself artist have access to all kinds of sounds from their computer. By having this new technology new forms of music such as dub step and techno have been created. Forever music has been bringing people together to match whatever emotions you are feeling.

In the passage Peter J. Capuano says that Toni Morrison had a lot more freedom in how she wrote the story as opposed to Douglas's Narrative in 1845 during slavery. He says that, "she is free to
focus more on song as a point of access into the reverberating effects of slavery's horrors." I felt that Toni definitely did not hold back when going into the gory details and it really helped paint a vivid picture of what life after slavery would actually be like.

In the 1800's when Beloved was written slave songs were a popular way for the slaves to get through the long hard days on the fields. Music is mentioned frequently in Beloved. Sethe, as slave at Sweet Home, probably sang a lot in order to get through the hardships that she faced. We can infer that when her mother died she sang many songs in remorse of the tragic incident. In Beloved when Sethe is talking about how her mother died she says, "Hung. By the time they cut her body down nobody could tell whether she had a circle and a cross or not," referring to her mothers branding on her arm, "least of all me and I did look." (pg 73) All the blacks back then went through a lot of hard ships but Sethe in particular dealt with her own daughter dying and many other close people that she was close with. When Sethe is with Amy Denver, Amy sings her an old song from her mother to calm Sethe. Amy is braiding Sethe's hair like her mom used to hers and singing the same song. This is a very heart warming part that a white woman would sing to a black woman and this shows that not all white people are racist against the blacks. Songs are a way that get people through their struggles much like people do now a day with modern music.