Music, performing and art is in deep seeded in the blood of African Americans, brought over from Africa by their enslaved ancestors. In Africa, music and dance have long been used as a method of communication, in celebrations, in death and to tell time. They say drums talked. Woman and children sang as they performed their daily routines and men as they marched toward battle. Enslaved people continued this tradition as they sang in the cotton fields to survive brutal back breaking manual labor. Their songs spoke of despair and pain and sometimes they were up-beat to lift each other up. Eventually the music would speak about injustice.