Refuting the myth that Black American music/culture is "Europeanized".

Bawon Samedi

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This is going to be a long ass thread with me trying to debunk some many misconceptions. And not trying to cause any division, but what made me want to create this thread is because I see a lot online that Africans, Caribbeans and whites have this big fallacy that Black American culture is largely "Europeanized" due the African traits being erased during slavery. This is not true. One can point to the Gullah's and Creoles as proof of Black American culture not being Europeanized, but I'm gonna go deeper.

Also many(not all of them) of them sometimes assume that Black American don't even have our own distinct culture(music, cusinine, dance, folk tales, ceremonies etc.) or that simply American pop/urban culture is only Black American culture, which couldn't be further from the truth. American pop/urban culture takes bits and pieces from Black American culture(mostly new age) NOT the other way around. But all, not even most, aspects of Black American culture are necessarily mainstream, nor is most of it based in "urbacenters", seeing as Black American culture is largely rooted in rural traditions of the US south, and fairly recently moved and evolved in big urbacenter(NYC,CHI,L.A., etc etc) with the great migration of Black American people to large metropolitan areas.

But the second paragraph is not the point, because we do know us Black Americans DO HAVE our own distinct culture in America that is not only "Urban". But is it "Europeanized?" The answer is no and actually the other way around. The oppressed influencing the oppressing. Yes Black American culture is influenced Europeans/whites in some way, BUT the influence on American culture by blacks in America trumps the European influence on blacks in America. One can point to the many music genre's. To me that does not indicate that Black American culture is "Europeanized." Is Black American culture African? I would say Black American culture evolved into something different, but it is JUST as African influenced as any other black culture of the diaspora; Jamaican, Afro-Brazilian, Haitian, Afro-Dominican, Afro-Cuban, Bahamian,etc,etc,etc...

I'm gonna start with music since:
1. Its easiest for me to address.
2. Music plays a big part in Black American culture.
3. Music seems to be the root of the misconception.

To me the reason why people outside AA's like Africans, Caribbeans and whites think our culture is "white-washed" or "Europeanized" is because Black American music isn't exactly polyrhythm/percussion heavy like that which is found in among other people in the African diaspora. Something like this...




As we know almost all percussion playing music was banned among slaves in North America, largely due to the Stono Rebellion of Angolan slaves in South Carolina, excluding Congo square New Orleans on Sundays(the French and Spanish had a slightly different more lenient system of slavery than did the Anglo-Americans). So, the heavily percussion based Lower West African and Central African styles of music eventually died out in North America for the most part, except among a few key styles and places in North America ie South Carolina Gullahs, Southern Louisiana creoles, Northern Mississippi fife and drum blues(though that isn't Lower West African or Central African derived, but from polyrhythmic Fulani flute and drum music), and African-American southern spirituals.

So with the low amount of African polyrhythm/percussion in North America, one would question HOW IS Black American music African influenced and not just largely Europeanized? :ohhh:


To be continued in next post:
 

Bawon Samedi

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The things...People look passed the part that Africa is a large and diverse continent, but not only that slaves were taken all the way from Senegal all the way down to Angola. First off most the Africans that came to America came DIRECTLY from Africa, just like any other place in the diaspora, I think people sometimes confuse the slave trader stopping in an island such as Hispaniola as a resting point to refuel, before heading to North America, with them dropping off all of the African slaves in the Caribbean, and taking the Caribbean born slaves to America, and such was not the case for the most part. And people also tend to forget that there were plenty of America born slaves(essentially AAs) that ended up in the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th century, but that's another story.

More importantly the thing African-Americans culturally and musically apart from Afro-descendants from Latin-America and the Caribbean is that our music and culture is Sahelian/Sudanic cultural influence. Like I said most slaves in North America can directly from Africa, because certain slaves were needed for their specific skill(not no damn selective breeding, but that's another story). More slaves in North America compared to other parts of the diaspora(like Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti,etc) came from Upper West Africa Islamic influenced Sudanic/Sahelian region. Why? Because the cotton, rice, and cattle culture and the landscape of North America. Thus slaves from this specific region in Africa were said to be more fit for the type of labor to be done in North America.
It is estimated that over 50% of the slaves imported to North America came from areas where Islam was followed by at least a minority population. Thus, no less than 200,000 came from regions influenced by Islam. Substantial numbers originated from Senegambia, a region with an established community of Muslim inhabitants extending to the 11th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States

Of the approximately 388,000 Africans who landed in America, almost 92,000 (24 percent) were Senegambians. In the early decades of immigration to the Chesapeake region before 1700, there were more immigrants from Senegambia (almost 6,000) than from the Bight of Biafra (about 5,000), and they totaled about 31,000 by the end of the migration, representing almost a third of all arrivals from Senegambia. About 45,000 Senegambians were settled in the coastal Low Country of the Carolinas and Georgia, where they constituted 21 percent of African immigrants. Senegambians were also prominent among African immigrants in the northern colonies, accounting for about 28 percent of arrivals, or over 7,000 people. Almost 9,000 Senegambians — often identified as Bambara or Mandingo — went to the Gulf region, especially to Louisiana, where they constituted about 40 percent of the population arriving from Africa.
Hence, people from Senegambia were prominent everywhere in the United States, much more so than virtually anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere,
although there were also considerable numbers of Senegambians in the French Caribbean islands and in French Guiana. Senegambia was strongly influenced by Islam, more so than any other region of origin, which means that many enslaved Africans in the United States had been exposed to Islam, more so proportionately than in the rest of the Americas.
There were many Muslims in Brazil in the nineteenth century, mostly in Bahia, but they came from the central Sudan (northern Nigeria and adjacent areas), unlike those who were sent to the United States. Muslims were clearly present in both the low country of Carolina and Georgia and in the Tidewater region of Virginia and Maryland. Adult Muslim males stand out prominently, while there are very few references to Muslim women. This reflects what is known about the slave trade originating in the interior of West Africa, which was composed almost entirely of males."
--Senegambia, the Gold Coast, and the Bight of Benin

"Thereafter, planters in South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana preferred enslaved Africans from Senegambia because of their experience in rice cultivation. This would explain in part why Americans imported a relatively large proportion of Senegambians. In French Louisiana, a captain was instructed “to try to purchase several blacks who know how to cultivate rice."
http://mana-net.org/pages.php?ID=education&NUM=154

Famous white Natchez Mississippi planter/slaver, William Dunbar, express that Mississippi planters held a preference for Africans from the interior, stating "there are certain nations from the interior of Africa the individuals of which I have always found more civilized, at least better disposed than those from the coast, such as Bornon, Houssa, Zanfara, Zegzeg, Kapina, and Tombootoo regions". "The bornon" are those from the bornu empire, the "Houssa" are the Hausa, "Kapina" refers to those from the Katsina region of present day northern /Vigeria and Southern Niger. "Zanfara" refers to the Zamfara region, another region in present day Northern /Vigeria and southern Niger. Tombootoo refers to the Bambara of Mail. All of these regions had heavy islamic influenced populations.

While an estimated 30%[6] of the slaves brought to colonial America from Africa arrived as Muslims, Islam was stringently suppressed on plantations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States

Genetics:
In this study, we examine Y-chromosome genetic variation in African descendant populations. In addition, we search for genetic evidence of substantial Senegambian “Grain Coast” ancestry in African American males from South Carolina. Finally, we consider the paternal African origins of several African descendant populations throughout the Americas. In doing this we hope to not only provide a genetic perspective to compliment historical investigations into the issue of African geographical origins but also contribute to the understanding of the genetic structure of African American populations. Understanding the variation present in these populations has implicit ramifications on admixture mapping and association studies in this admixed politically defined ‘macro-ethnic’ group.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029687

The study of recent natural selection in human populations has important applications to human history and medicine. Positive natural selection drives the increase in beneficial alleles and plays a role in explaining diversity across human populations. By discovering traits subject to positive selection, we can better understand the population level response to environmental pressures including infectious disease. Our study examines unusual population differentiation between three large data sets to detect natural selection. The populations examined, African Americans, Nigerians, and Gambians, are genetically close to one another (F(ST) < 0.01 for all pairs), allowing us to detect selection even with moderate changes in allele frequency. We also develop a tree-based method to pinpoint the population in which selection occurred, incorporating information across populations. Our genome-wide significant results corroborate loci previously reported to be under selection in Africans including HBB and CD36. At the HLA locus on chromosome 6, results suggest the existence of multiple, independent targets of population-specific selective pressure. In addition, we report a genome-wide significant (p = 1.36 × 10(-11)) signal of selection in the prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) gene.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21907010



Now... Now... For those who may have the wrong idea. I am not saying that AA's are largely of Muslim ancestry. No! Nor am I saying that AA's are ancestry largely come from those areas, BUT that compared to others of the diasporas, more slaves from the Savannah/Sahel/Islamic areas were shipped to North America than Latin-America and the Caribbean and thus largely influenced our culture. And because of that our music is mostly derived from the solo, string and wind based from the Savannah/Sahel areas.

To Be Continued in Next Post:
 

Bawon Samedi

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Back to music... Like I said Savannah/Sahelian Africans had the most influence on Black American music(heck one can argue that rapping came from West African griots from the Sahel). Again the misconception comes due to the lack of percussion/polyrhym in AA music.

Again a lot of people tend to have this ignorant misconception that just because there's not a heavy percussion based polyrhythmic aspect in North American African-American music, that it's not African, but European influenced, which isn't true in the slightest. Once again Africa is a LARGE continent, in which there's not only one type of music cluster or style. The majority of our musical influences comes from the Upper West African Sahel and Sudanic savanna regions of Africa which uses a lot more simplistic cross-beat rhythm(which gives American music it's swing-feel and bluesey feel) to accentuate the highly melosmatic wind and string instruments with a booming vocal/instrument harmony- All aspects of African-American music.

For example Afro-Cubans take the majority of their influence from Lower West African and Central African bantu music which IS very polyrhythmic & percussion based. While we do not. The difference is even noted.
Afro-Cuban and African American music is very similar yet very different. Why? Because “essential elements of these two musics came from different parts of Africa, entering the New World by different routes, at different times, into differently structured societies” (Sublette, 159). These essential elements in African American music do not appear in Cuban music: swing and the blues scale. Cuban music contains elements of the clave (a rhythmic key) and “those undulating, repeating, melodic-rhythmic loops of fixed pitches called guajeo, montuno, or tumbao” (159). The reason for these differences was that they reflected two different musical styles that of Sudanic Africa and forest Africa.
http://soyguajira.blogspot.com/2012/03/african-american-vs-afro-cuban.html

^^^Not understanding the difference like above is the reason why some(still to this day btw) try to claim Blues is largely European influenced, when that false.

Lets take a look at what PH.d ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik had to say about Mississippi Delta Blues(the purest of the blues and root of popular American music), "I have had difficulty detecting any significant European musical components in this style, aside from the use of Western factory-manufactured equipment."

Fantastic interview on the Afropop website by PH.d, ethnomusicologist, Gerhard Kubik, a white European, on the African stylistic orgins of the blues.
http://www.afropop.org/wp/6275/africa-and-the-blues/
Complete with side by side comparisons of Western Sudanic African music to early African-American blues in the south.
 

Bawon Samedi

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This is the first time I'm hearing this myth. Like wtf? Black American music culture is African! Who in the hell would think we got our music culture from white folks?
Really I hear it all the time... Most who are ignorant think urban AA culture represents AA culture. But more importantly they think the African influence in AA culture is largely suppressed because we lack percussion/polyrhym beat. I'm telling you.
 

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One can point to European influence on instruments used by AA's when they played blues, but then they'll have to answer to these early AA instruments bought to America by Africans. The Banjo included...

Banjo
Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_The_Banjo_Lesson.jpg

The banjo is a four-, five- or six-stringed instrument with a piece of animal skin or plastic stretched over a circular frame. Simpler forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in Colonial America, adapted from several African instruments of similar design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo

Mouth bow
1212463_orig.jpg

In the United States, the musical bow was apparently introduced by African slaves. Today, it is primarily found in the Appalachian Mountains, where it is called a mouthbow or mouth bow.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Musical_bow.html

Diddley bow
Steber07_3.jpg

The diddley bow derives from instruments used in West Africa. There, they were often played by children, one beating the string with sticks and the other changing the pitch by moving a slide up and down. The instrument was then developed as a children's toy by slaves in the United States. They were first documented in the rural South by researchers in the 1930s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diddley_bow

The Quills(pan pipes)
P1000950cropped_m.jpg

The Quills are a early American folk panpipe, first noted in the early part of the 19th century among Afro-American slaves in the south. They are aerophones, and fall into the panpipe family. They are assumed to be of African origin, since similar instruments are found in various parts of Africa, and they were first used by 1st and 2nd generation Africans in America.
http://www.sohl.com/Quills/Quills.htm


Kazoo
The kazoo is based on the African mirliton, and was a popular African-American folk instrument during the 1800's. The manufactured kazoo was invented by (an African American named)Alabama Vest.
http://www.kazoos.com/historye.htm

Blues Fife
An old unique blues style in the Northern Mississippi hill country called Northern Mississippi Fife and Drum blues, is an offshoot of Fulani Flute and drum music. In fact, the physical construction of the&#65279; blues fife played in Northern MS is based on an old African model brought over by the transatlantic slave trade. The construction process mimics that of the of Fula flute. A musician typically cuts a piece of cane about a foot inlength, then a heated iron rod is used to bore out the cane, and finally the same rod isused to make the manipulation and embouchure holes of the fife. No formal measure of spacing either between the embouchure hole and the manipulation holes or between each of the manipulation holes is used. Instead, the musicians use their hands as guides forconstruction, resulting in instruments that have slightly individualized scales, none of which are based on a classical Western model.
http://www.academia.edu/922424/_Stu...ship_on_North_Mississippi_Blues_Fife_and_Drum

All of these instruments payed a key role in the early development of the blues...
"The Memphis Jug Band was an American musical group in the late 1920s and early to mid 1930s.The band featured harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, and jugs blown to supply the bass; they played in a variety of musical styles."
 

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Demonstration of a man playing a mouth bow and singing the blues:


Old recording of One-String-Sam playing his trademark Diddley Bow and adding the vocals.


Here's extremely rare old track of Big Boy Cleveland playing his song entitled "Quill Blues" recording in 1926.


So one has to question how much Europeans played in the development of blues via instruments, when string instruments were bought to America by Africans themselves.

Matter fact... You can see the similarities African-American(banjo) blues music and Sahel West African(Akonting-ancestor to the banjo) here.
 

Bawon Samedi

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Thought this was interesting... Gospel/Soul influence on AA's?:ohhh:




Compared to...


Take away the Kora beat and different language the two sound alike...:wow:

IMO

AA's=Sahel/Sudanic influence

Jamaicans= Gold Coast/Cen.West Bantus influence

Afro-Brazilian=Angolan(Bantu)/Yoruba influence

Afro-Cubans=Yoruba influence
 
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Blackking

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Mainly in the way we do church , children, and family is from cacs.

Outside of that, we've transferred and redeveloped African culture. We've even created new aspects to culture, fashion, speaking, music, and ways.... that has been adopted by American and European citizens.... then pushed back out as European
 
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