This website talks about music in the Caribbean from the African slaves brought over by the slave trade. “Musical Passage,” talks about this topic through the diary of a man named Hans Sloane. In his diary, that is mainly botanist research based, he also briefly speaks of the native inhabitants and their music.
The website opens up with a page of sheet music and an audio reflection of that music being played. On the left side of the diary/ sheet music the user can see the inscription that Hans Sloane wrote about the sheet music. Once the user places their mouse over a key word it reveals a question on the far left of the page. On the right side of the page with the musical composition, the user can choose one of five songs to listen to. Those songs are listed as Angola, Papa, Koromanti 1, 2, and,3.
After the user is done looking at the front page they are able to browse the options on the right hand side of the page. The drop down menu has three options that include explore, read, and about. The explore section is the first tab where the user can look once again at the opening page. The next tab of “read,” is a page that tells you the information that is known about Hans Sloane who was taken to the island as a doctor to take care of the Caribbean governor. Quickly the governor died and Sloane stayed on the island to study the environment. The page continues with more descriptive information about Sloane. It then transitions to the history of the slave trade in the islands. Of those slaves the author talks about the musicians within the free slave communities.
The author does point out the downfalls of the research. Explaining the music could have been from a man who did not follow the traditional slave journey. Another key note is the audio file of the music that is playing in the background are interpretations of what musicians and historians believe to be correct.
The author of the page brings on a historian by the name of Richard Rath who speaks about the historical perspective. All of this is then cited in the about page with the rest of the authors references.
The points that were somewhat a hindrance in learning about this history and interacting with the website is the length of information, the scroll bar, and the information given on the opening explore page. The read tab really is a read with a huge amount of information and argument. The author proves his argument like they would with a thesis paper. It does not use a digital history to the best of its abilities. The scroll bar is a user friendly problem for the fact that if the user uses the up and down arrow keys then the page scrolls slowly. Once the user finds the scroll bar to the right, the mouse when moved down the page scrolls up. The information on the entrance page looks very appealing. Yet, it is in old English and needs some translation as well.
