It is important to commemorate slave achievements because many of their essential practices have created art forms, styles of music, ways of religious worship, and traditions that are with the American culture to this day.
Montgomery 2.
Storytelling/folklore.
The African tradition of professional entertainment dates back to ancient times. Storytelling, music, and dance have all played a central role in African culture, because they help preserve history and religious and social customs. Traditional drama in Africa combines storytelling, songs, and dances with costumes, masks, mimes, traveling entertainers, and persons called griots. A griot is a form of storyteller who creatively illustrates the history of a village, family, tribe, or other historical entity to a listening audience for the purposes of entertainment and the passing down of knowledge. When the African slaves were brought to the new world, they wanted their children and future generations to know about Africa, and its splendor, and how wonderfully Africans lived and thrived before the onset of slavery. The first wave of slaves to the country recalled and continued the griot tradition of storytelling for entertainment and informative purposes. Through the telling of stories, folklore and fiction these slaves illustrated for other slaves an array of experiences including, pre-slavery Africa, the "middle passage" (period of time that the slaves traveled in horrible conditions in a ship to get to the new world), the underground railroad/runaway experience, working on the plantations, the hope of being freed and vindicated, and general daily hardships. But not all stories were shaded with gloom some stories were of happiness and rejoicing, those were usually associated with gaining freedom. An example of a storytelling atmosphere goes as follows: .
Instances of dancing in a circle occur during storytelling time in the villages as the storyteller sits in the middle while the listeners sit around him and listen attentively.
