To answer the question, there was the French colony Nouvelle-Orleans, now called New Orleans. It was founded in 1718 and part of the initial population was a group of Ursulines nuns; a manuscript was recently discovered in the convent containing sacred texts set to the music of Lully etc. Not far from the convent was Congo Square, where the local slave population were allowed to practice their native music and dance (a major difference between the English and contintental practice of slavery.) Within a couple hundred years, jazz music arose in the surrounding streets.
Both the convent and Congo Square are just a few blocks from where I'm typing this message, btw. -----Original Message----- From: Carl Donsbach [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Renaissance america - a little more lute related, maybe Thoughts, random and disjointed... Early colonial life was hard! The early English and Spanish colonies in North America were not characterized by much musical cultural growth, and there is little evidence of lute playing or making in those times. Musical instruments (lutes included) tended to get left at home by emigrating colonists. By the time much of any kind of musical life was enjoyed by the residents of the colonies, we were pretty well into the Baroque. Would Italian colonists have done differently, brought more lutes and viols with them? Perhaps we would have a slightly different heritage of the lute in the Americas? Who can say... maybe Baroque America would be a more likely topic? On the other hand, slaves often found ways of holding on to their old musical cultures. The banjo is of African-American origin, as are certain vocal traditions, types of hymn-singing, rhythms that developed into jazz, etc. Would this have happened differently if the slaveholding regime had developed from more Italian roots? Would the curious institution have even developed in an Italian America? Democracy developed in the American colonies largely as an outgrowth of the English parliamentary system. What would have been different if the Italian system of government in those times had been the seminal force? Would the lute have survived longer as a contemporary instrument in an Italian enclave? (It may be useless to speculate about any of these things, but as for characterizing R's post as a jab at America... well the world's attitude toward the US has been changing over the past couple of years, and it may serve us well to examine the reasons for this. Soul-searching has never hurt anyone... but I guess that is for another forum.) -Carl Donsbach --On Thursday, December 09, 2004 1:06 AM +0100 rosinfiorini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Would be cool. Like i was thinking recently, what if America was not > conquered and developed under the sign of stiff puritans but by the > Italians (without the Savanarola part though-hehe)just when there was the > Renaissance and everything went renaissancewise...Thiw part of the world > could have been a better palce then--with less stupidity and mutual hate > (everyone suing eachother-lol)..oh well > ------------------------------------------ > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
