Listening for a story amidst brutality: how African Americans created communication in the transatlantic world

Abstract

The United States was built upon the back of African Americans, and yet, there is little recognition for the immense resilience it took enslaved African Americans to learn how to develop communication between each other to preserve their culture identities and traditions. Given the diversity amongst enslaved peoples on slave ships, often times, African Americans could not communicate with each other as tribes in Africa had different dialects, languages, beliefs and music. With the analysis of some key areas that define African American communication such as rhythms, spirituals, music, and poems, how and why communication formed amongst African Americans becomes linked to the sheer brutality they had to endure when the slave trade started in the transatlantic world.