Examining Black Music in America is one of the easiest ways to show that our ancestors came from Afrika. Their music traditions survived the Middle Passage and were refined in the South. Along the process there were numerous contributions from other regions of the diaspora.
Before we begin it is important to understand the nature of the inter colonial trade in the Americas as well as the immigration of free Black people to the United States. Nemata Blyden discusses these contributions to the ethno genesis of Afrikan Americans.
There was never a period of history when Black America was completely homogenous. This fact is reflected in the diversity of our music traditions.
Joseph Holloway in his text Africanisms in American Culture cites the music traditions of west and central Afrika as the foundation of Black American music. He specifically lists:
• Style of Delivery
• Sound Quality
• Mechanics of Delivery
The style of delivery encompasses how performers employ body movements, facial expressions, and clothing within the performance context. All of these dimensions of Afrikan American music have Afrikan origins.
Some examples of this are:
• the ring shout
• vibrant clothing worn in worship ceremonies
• bellowing expressions used while singing
The sound quality served to translate everyday experiences into living sound, Afrikan voices adapt themselves to their musical contexts. Sounds are produced via a variety of unique techniques:
• Alternation of lyrical, percussive and raspy timbres
• Juxtaposing vocal and instrumental textures
• Changing pitch and dynamic levels
• Alternating straight and vibrato tones
• Weaving moans, shouts, grunts, hollers and screams into the melody
Instrumental sounds mimic the human voice. These are accomplished by varying timbre, range, texture and shading. They create these sounds by altering traditional embouchers, playing techniques, altering fingerings and distorting devices.
Improvisation and ornamentation are prominent elements of Afrikan music found in Afrikan American music. This is expanding lengths of notes at climatic points, repetition of words and phrases and adding vocal or instrumental cadenzas.
Call and response is a key Afrikan mechanism that allows for the manipulation of time, text and pitch. The call and response structure is used by jazz musicians to establish a base for musical change and rhythmic tension.
Rhytmic complexity is another prominent Afrikan feature in Afrikan American music. Rhythm is organized in multilinear forms. Different patterns are assigned to various instruments to produce polyrhythms which enhance the intensity of music importance.
Some more prominent Afrikan elements of Afrikan American music are:
• syncopation or music played around the beat instead of on it
• offbeat phrasing of melodic accents
• cross rhythms such as the hemiola
• complex rhythms and metronome sense
• medicinal practices and worship ceremonies
• overlapping call and response patterns
• dominance of percussion
• hot elements where each instrument contains their own time signature
When it comes to the genres of Afrikan American music, all roads lead to the work and worship songs created by our ancestors during chattel slavery from the 16th-19th century. This led to the creation of Blues in the mid 1800s.
Some prominent Afrikan elements of blues are:
• Hausa bent or pitch style which features instabilities within a pentatonic framework, and a declamatory voice.
• The ancient west central Sudanic stratum of pentatonic song composition, often associated with simple work rhythms in a regular meter, but with notable off-beat accents that can be found among the Tikar of Cameroon.
• Melisma or the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession.
Some instrumental predecessors that reveal the clear Afrikan origins of the blues are:
• The Kora of Mali
• The Akonting among the Jola of Senegal
• Djembe type drum which accompanied field hollers in the south.
Work songs, protest songs, and dance music are major elements of Afrikan music that were brought to the Americas. Though this music was often linked to spiritual conceptions the secular variant of this music led to the creation of Jazz.
Jazz pulls from a variety of sources and shows the ethnic diversity of late 19th and early 20th century Black America. The Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine) or Afro Cuban dance that came from habanera rhythms was a foundational element of Jazz.
The adoption of this rhythm by early Jazz musicians is indicative of an Afro Cuban presence in the American south. This rhythm was later incorporated and refined by Scott Joplin.
W.C. Handy (1873–1958), a popular blues composer from Tennessee, incorporated Habanera after a Cuban tour with Mahara’s Minstrels, creating a demand for similar sounds across the U.S.
The rhythm of Black music in America also reveals the influence of Haitian migrants in the 19th century as well as the Yoruba ancestry of many Afrikan Americans. We can see this in Juba dance which is a form of body rhythm.
The ring shout dance which is found across the continent from Senegal to Congo also played a prominent role in the development of Gullah Geechee music traditions.
Another prominent contribution to Black Music comes from Afro Mexicans who have a history that goes back to the 16th century. These Black Mexicans migrated to the American Southwest in the 19th century and made numerous contributions to the development of both Blues & Jazz.
This can be seen in late 19th & early 20th century New Orleans, through groups like La Orquesta Tipica Mexicana & the Mexican Artistic Quintet. Musicians like pianist & composer Jelly Roll Morton and his bandmate Lorenzo Tio Jr. combined Afro Mexican and Afro American influences.
The development of Rock and Roll from Rnb gives us more insight on the diverse ethno-dynamics of Black America in the early 20th century. The Habenera rhythm from Afro Cuban musicians can also be found in most of the early Rock hits.
The Habanera can frequently be heard in the pianist's left hand or played on the string bass and saxophone.
It was used as a repeated rhythmic motif for the saxophone section, as in Bill Haley's 1954 version of "Shake Rattle and Roll" or in a more relaxed manner as in Fats Domino's 1955 recording of "Blue Monday".
Another instance where the Habanera was used is Little Richard's 1956 hit "Slippin' `n' Slidin'". The band's saxophone section uses a full eight-note swinging Habanera pattern. The bass plays a syncopated Habanera variation. The background music is Afro-Cuban.
Funk music is another genre that reveals the heavy influence of both Haitian and Afro Cuban ancestry among Afrikan Americans. With the rise of these Carribbean immigrants to the United States the fusion of these unique diasporic sounds in the 1940s led to the creation of Funk.
NOLA musicians Dave Bartholomew and Professor Longhair (Henry Roeland Byrd) incorporated Afro-Cuban instruments, as well as the clave pattern and the two celled figures in songs such as "Carnival Day" (Bartholomew 1949) and "Mardi Gras In New Orleans" (Longhair 1949).
According to Robert Palmer, in the 1940s Professor Longhair listened to and played with musicians from the islands and fell under the spell of Perez Prado's mambo records.
Professor Longhair's particular style was known locally as rumba-boogie.
Haitian Kompa musicians such as:
• Robert Martino
• Michel Covington
• Henry Celestin
• Dadou Pasket
• Jean Claude Jean
also contributed to the development of Funk music in the 1950s and 60s.
Hip Hop is the most recent genre that exemplifies the diversity of Afrikan American music. Hip Hop as a cultural movement developed across the US multi regionally. The style of reciting poetry over a beat can be seen in pre colonial Afrika among griots and oral historians.
An intermingling of Afro Mexican, Afro Belizean, Afro Caribbean and African American communities in Sacramento, the Bay Area and LA laid the foundation for West Coast Hip Hop in the 1960s.
The culmination of these styles can be observed among the Watts Prophets:
• Amde Hamilton
• Richard Dedeaux
• Otis O'Solomon
Who spoke at length about the Pan Afrikan influences of their music.
On the east coast Afro Caribbean and AA musicians also produced a unique Hip Hop style. Some of these early artists were:
• King Charles
• Kurtis Blow
• DJ Cool Herc
• Grandmaster Flowers
• Afrika Bambaata
• Count Machuki
• King Stitt
• U Roy
• Jazzy Jay
The history of Black music is literally Pan Afrikan. This is especially the case when you examine the music of the Afrikan diaspora. If you see someone using music to promote tribalism they are showing you that they have never studied music and are just making it up as they go.
Afrobeats is a musical genre that fuses traditional Afrikan music with New Afrikan genres such as funk soul and jazz. The term was coined in the 1960s by Nigerian legend Fela Kuti.
Population contributions from diasporic communities who emigrated to major Afrikan cities such as Lagos, Monrovia, Dakar, Accra and Freetown amplified the growth of Highlife culture in the 1920s which eventually led to the production of Afrobeats.
Afrobeat generally refers to the classical variant of the genre created in the 1960s which strictly combines jazz, calypso and traditional Afrikan music.
Afrobeats also known as Afropop is the popular subgenre of Afrobeats that is mass produced and accessible internationally.
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