Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part II of a two part pancocojams series that presents information that explains why enslaved Black people in the Caribbean (i.e. the West Indies) didn't compose songs that referenced Old Testament or New Testament Biblical people or events as was the case with enslaved African Americans (i.e. the "Negro Spirituals" now referred to as "African American Spirituals).
This post presents quotes from some of the online sources that were cited in Part I (AI Overview).
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/09/why-enslaved-black-people-in-caribbean.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents a complete reprint of the Google Search's AI Overview's results of my September 12, 2026 query about this subject.
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-differences-between-african.html for the closely related pancocojams post "The Differences Between African American Spirituals And African American Gospel Songs (2026 reprint of a 2016 pancocojams post),"
SELECTED QUOTES FROM ONLINE SOURCES ON THIS SUBJECT
These sources are numbered for referencing purposes only.
SOURCE #1
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2289&context=masters- Liberty University School of Music Masters thesis by Jana Dara Jones, January 2025: "The Shared Roots and Divergent Paths of African American Spirituals and AfroCaribbean Music (Liberty University is located in Lynchburg, Virginia.)
..."[page 10]
Differing Regional Contexts of Slavery
To better understand how the music shifted between slaves of
the Caribbean and North America, a background in their regional context is
necessary. Examination of the slave
transportation process, the kind of treatment they received,
and the spiritual components of these areas will be critical as further background, as these all
influenced the trajectory of the music.
In the seventeenth century and years prior, a vast majority
of slaves were transported directly from West Africa to the Caribbean, and from here
enslaved people were further
transported to neighboring regions. The Caribbean was
considered a “major market”, and transatlantic traders expected “speedy sales at stable
prices”.26 Intercolonial traders profited by selling slaves from larger markets to secondary ports in
North America at higher prices, via intercolonial trades such as the Caribbean-North America
trade. 27 Gregory O’Malley, professor
[page 11]
of history at the University of California, states that two
largest slave-importing colonies in America, Virginia, and South Carolina, relied on the
Caribbean-North America trade for their supply of slaves.28 The Caribbean was, therefore, considered
the “heart of the slave economy” of the Americas.
[…]
The slaves transported to North America from the Caribbean
islands via the CaribbeanNorth America trade were recent African arrivals or
“unseasoned” slaves. Caribbean planters did not want to sell slaves that
already lived through the first few years of adapting to the plantation
[page 12]
life and overcoming new diseases. Additionally, North American slave purchasers preferred to buy recent African immigrants because they feared that the Caribbean owners sought to get rid of the stubborn and rebellious slaves in this way. Finally, unseasoned slaves tended to have lower value as they were not familiar with the language used nor did they know how to perform required tasks on the plantation.30 These unseasoned Africans would carry with them fresh cultural traditions, languages and musical influences from Africa which kept some of the heritage alive in North America. However, the North American slave population became one of the few self-reproducing slave populations in history and the slaves became further removed from Africa, being third, fourth or fifth generation Americans.31They became a different people as their culture morphed into a blended fusion of traditions. Thus, slaves brought to North America saw a quicker assimilation into plantation life ruled by the European culture of the slave owners.
As the number of Africans with no direct ties to Africa grew
in North America, the opposite occurred in the Caribbean.32 Slavery in both the
Caribbean and North American regions was brutal, as both regions regarded slaves as “non-human
property”. However, the treatment of slaves often took a more extreme cruelty in the Caribbean
proven by a significantly higher death rate. Slaves lived shorter lives and died more frequently.
Brutal punishment such as the amputation of a leg, an ear, or an arm for a minor offense
was commonplace in the Caribbean, so much so that a law was eventually passed in Jamaica in 1781
banning the use of mutilation as
[page 13]
punishment.33 While mutilation did occur in the United States, they were much less frequently documented compared to the Caribbean.
This harsh treatment is further proven by the significantly lower birth rate among the enslaved in the Caribbean than in North America.
34 The slaves were overworked in the sugar plantations and severely malnourished, making it almost impossible for natural reproduction. As a result, slaves were constantly being transported from Africa to replace the slaves who were dying and replenish the workforce. Therefore, in the Caribbean, there was not much removal from the African heritage and history as most of the slaves were born in Africa and maintained their African background.
Caribbean music remains closely tied to its roots due to the
continuous arrival of Africans in the region.
In contrast, North America had an automatic feeding system of workers as slaves gave birth a and raised children who were immersed in European culture from birth. This can explain why there are variations between the music of the enslaved people in North America and the Caribbean, even though they all belong to the same homeland and culture.
Christianity
Christianity for slaves was promoted in both the Caribbean and North American regions. However, those in North America had a greater and earlier exposure to Christianity than those in the Caribbean, and this is reflected in the themes of African American Spirituals. There was a growing number of slaves born in America who were more familiar with European culture, so Christianity became more appealing and easier for them to understand than African religions.
[page 14]
The North American Great Awakening during the 1730s, greatly impacted the slaves’ view and experience of Christianity.35 This revivalist movement led by Protestant ministers favored emotional and participatory worship over ceremonial duties and book reading. This appealed to slaves as it aligned with African tradition and did not require literacy. Key revivalists like George Whitefield preached about a personal faith where anyone including the slaves could obtain salvation. All souls, whether black or white, were seen as equals, and this new version of faith planted seeds of hope and resistance within the slaves.36 Many spirituals contained coded messages of hope and escape using biblical themes and stories. Although Whitefield himself was an enslaver, he advocated for them to be educated and receive better treatment by their owners.37 History professor and researcher Fred Witzig states that the first slave school was started in 1740 in Charleston by the persuasion of Revivalist George Whitefield.38 As they witnessed a leader of the faith take a stand for them, they may have also been inspired to embrace the faith.
On the other hand, there was more resistance to faith in the Caribbean by both slaves and slaveowners. For example, in 1681, the Barbados Assembly opposed the Christianization of enslaved Africans arguing that it could be used as a basis for claiming freedom. Similarly, the Jamaican code of 1664 supported this stance, declaring that the African slaves were “heathenish”
[page 15]
and incapable of accepting Christianity.39 Eventually, a revision of the slave Code of Jamaica in 1696 stated that masters and owners ought to facilitate the conversion of their slaves and prepare them for baptism. 40 However, this practice was completely disregarded and according to Ivor Morrish, Christianity was largely inaccessible to slaves in the Caribbean, as religion was not their primary concern.
41 The author of an account of slavery in Jamaica stated that “The planters seem to have no religion at all…,” and the few places of worship were mainly attended for burials.42
Slave masters actively discouraged the slaves from being involved in Christian or African religious practices, leading many of them to turn to secret forms of African witchcraft, particularly the practice of Obeah which is still common in the Caribbean today. 43 These factors may help explain why calypsos lack strong biblical themes."...
****
SOURCE #2
From https://www.history.com/articles/slave-bible-redacted-old-testament "Why Bibles Given to Slaves Omitted Most of the Old Testament"
The so-called “Slave Bible” told of Joseph’s enslavement but
left out the parts where Moses led the Israelites to freedom.
Becky Little, Published: December 11, 2018; Last Updated: January 31, 2025
"When slavery was legal, its proponents often justified it
with the Bible; specifically, a verse that tells servants to obey their
masters. There were also a lot of verses that abolitionists could and did use
to argue against slavery. But you wouldn’t find those in the heavily-redacted
“Slave Bible.”
Most of the Old Testament is missing, and only about half of the New Testament remains. The reason? So that the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua couldn’t read or be read anything that might incite them to rebel.
[…]
The Slave Bible was actually titled Parts of the Holy
Bible, selected for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India
Islands.
It’s not clear who exactly directed these changes. British planters in the Caribbean had long been weary of missionaries, and could’ve demanded that they only teach enslaved people certain parts of the Bible. But some missionaries may have also believed that it was only appropriate to teach enslaved people excerpts that reinforced their enslaved status.
Whoever the Slave Bible’s editors were, “they’re really highlighting portions that would instill obedience,” says Anthony Schmidt, a curator at Washington, D.C. Museum of the Bible, which has a copy of the Slave Bible on display. There are only two other known copies.
The first Slave Bible was published in 1807, three years after the Haitian Revolution ended. That revolution was the only slave revolt in history in which enslaved people successfully drove out their European oppressors to formed a new nation, and it increased American and European paranoia that the people they oppressed would one day rise up against them.
The Haitian Revolution could have been a motivation for publishing a Bible without the part where Moses tells the Pharoah to “Let my people go.” Missionaries and planters may have thought that Christianity—at least, certain parts of it—would protect against revolutions by teaching enslaved people to respect their masters"….
****
SOURCE #3
From https://www.quora.com/When-did-Afro-Caribbean-and-African-American-music-diverge-and-turn-into-distinct-traditions-What-drove-those-differences "When did Afro-Caribbean and African-American music
diverge and turn into distinct traditions? What drove those differences?"
Latest activity: Apr 18, 2026 [This is a complete reprint of this comment that was retrieved September 12, 2026. There is no other comment on that page.)
SepiaGlyphs, Apr 18, 2026
"American blues and Cuban rumba share identical West African
roots. Their split wasn't a musical choice—it was driven by colonial death
rates, Catholic saints, and a 1739 ban on drums.
One of the most decisive factors was the religious framework of the colonizers. In Catholic-dominated colonies—such as those ruled by Spain and France in the Caribbean—enslavers were often more tolerant of syncretic religious practices. Enslaved Africans masked their deities as Catholic saints, creating traditions like Santería in Cuba and Vodou in Haiti. These religious practices relied heavily on traditional African drumming and polyrhythms, keeping percussion at the heart of Afro-Caribbean music.
In contrast, Protestant colonists in North America viewed African drumming as pagan and deeply subversive. Following the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, where drums were used to coordinate a violent uprising, the British colonies largely banned enslaved people from owning or playing drums. Stripped of their primary instruments, African-Americans innovated by using their bodies—through stomping, clapping, and "pattin' juba"—and heavily developed vocal traditions. This restriction forced the evolution of intricate vocal harmonies, spirituals, work songs, and field hollers.
The demographic makeup of plantations also drove a wedge between the two traditions. Caribbean sugar plantations had astronomically high mortality rates. To maintain the workforce, enslavers constantly imported newly captured Africans right up until the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This continuous influx served as a constant refresh of direct African cultural and musical memory. North American plantations saw a self-reproducing enslaved population relatively early on. By the 1800s, the vast majority of enslaved African-Americans were born in the United States, separated by generations from the African continent. This isolation accelerated the blending of African musical sensibilities—like call-and-response and flattened "blue notes"—with European folk songs, Protestant hymns, and Western instrumentation.
The results of these divergent paths laid the foundation for modern global music. The Caribbean retained the complex, interlocking polyrhythms and clave patterns that would eventually birth calypso, reggae, and salsa. Meanwhile, the North American reliance on vocal expression, stringed instruments like the banjo (an African descendant), and European harmonic structures forged the blues, gospel, and jazz. Both branches survived unimaginably harsh conditions, but the distinct constraints of their environments shaped them into two entirely unique sonic landscapes."
****
SOURCE #4
From https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/1w8bpnw/how_much_of_african_musical_culture_survived/
"r/LetsTalkMusic
1. HourAd6679, September 2026
"How much of African musical culture survived slavery, and
what does it look like in music today?
especially when looking at the development of
African-American and Caribbean and Latin music. Enslaved Africans came from
many different regions and ethnic groups, but despite being separated from
their homelands and subjected to forced assimilation, certain African musical
traditions seem to have survived and influenced the music that developed in the
Americas.How much of what we hear in African-American, Caribbean, and other
forms of diasporic music today can be connected to pre-colonial African musical
traditions? And which aspects were preserved relatively directly versus being
transformed through interaction with European and Indigenous musical
traditions?"
**
2. moochy_cyoutie, September 2026
"actuall A surprising amount survived, but usually not in the
sense of individual songs being preserved unchanged for hundreds of years. What
survived most strongly were musical systems and habits: ways of organizing
rhythm, singing, improvising, and making music collectively.
Probably the clearest example is rhythm. West and Central African traditions often used layered rhythms, syncopation, repeating patterns, and different rhythmic parts interacting with each other. Those ideas survived extremely strongly in the Americas. You can hear their descendants in blues, jazz, gospel, funk and eventually hip-hop, as well as samba, rumba, son, reggae, calypso and countless other Caribbean and Latin American traditions.
Call-and-response is another major continuity. A leader sings or plays something and the group responds. That was widespread in many African musical cultures and became fundamental to African-American work songs, spirituals, gospel and blues. It's still everywhere in modern music, from a gospel congregation answering a singer to a rapper getting a crowd to respond to a phrase.
There are also continuities in improvisation, repetition, polyrhythm, emphasis on percussion, dancing being closely connected with music, and treating rhythm as something that can be manipulated rather than simply following a rigid beat. Certain instruments have clearer genealogies too. The banjo, for example, developed from West African lute traditions brought across the Atlantic.
The Caribbean and parts of Latin America arguably preserve some African elements even more visibly because African-derived religious and musical traditions sometimes survived in recognizable communities. Afro-Cuban music, Haitian Vodou music and Brazilian Candomblé traditions can retain specific rhythmic patterns, percussion practices, songs, languages and religious functions with identifiable West or Central African connections.
But it's important not to talk about "African music" as though Africa had one musical tradition. Enslaved people came from an enormous range of societies—Yoruba, Kongo, Akan, Igbo, Mandé and many others—with different musical cultures. The Atlantic slave trade then mixed people who might never have lived near one another in Africa. So the diaspora wasn't simply preserving one African musical culture; it was also creating new African-descended cultures out of many different traditions.
European influence was enormous as well. European harmony, church music, instruments and musical notation mixed with African-derived rhythmic and performance traditions. Indigenous American traditions contributed too, with the exact mixture varying dramatically by region. Jazz, blues, samba, reggae or Cuban son aren't "African music preserved in America." They're new musical traditions created in the Americas, but with African musical principles embedded very deeply in their DNA.
So I'd say the most remarkable thing isn't that particular
pre-colonial African songs survived intact. It's that after centuries of
slavery, forced conversion, cultural suppression and separation from Africa,
fundamental ways of making music survived strongly enough to become
foundational to huge portions of modern popular music."
-snip-
These words were written in italics in that comment. I corrected the spelling for the word "making".
****
This concludes Part II of this two part pancocojams series.
Visitor comments are welcome.
