Aight, I think I'm ready to share. I came to the notion a while back that "soul" is the africanisms that survived the middle passage and enslavement. That's what makes it so hard to define-- we're not able to source it most of the time. Googling around, a found this article
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research there's a login wall, but you can register and read it for free with a google account. A few excerpts:
LeRoi Jones considered another aspect of African American musice when he wrote that "The call-and-response form of Africa (lead and chorus) has never left us, as a mode of musical expression. It has come down both as vocal and instrumental form. Herskovitz continues this train of thought with the observation that "The pattern whereby the statement of theme by a leader is repeated by a chorus, or a short choral phrase is balanced as a refrain against a longer melodic line sung by the soloist, is fundamental and has been commented on by all who have heard Negroes sing in Africa or elsewhere." . . . . Every being born in the world has a soul, but not everyone has soul. Soul in this context is the socioethnic phenomenon peculiar to African Americans as manifested in the retention of African elements in African American culture in the United States.
Cool, but it doesn't really mean anything without a tangible example right??? Here's where it gets dope
Maude Cuney-Hare, in here early work "Negro Musicians and Their Music" cites the experience of a Bishop Fisher of Calcutta who traveled to Central Africa:
... in Rhodesia he had heard natives sing a melody so closely resembling "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" that he felt that he had found it in its original form: moreover, the region near the great Victoria Falls has a custom from which the song arose. When one of the chiefs in the olden days was about to die, he was placed in a great canoe together with trappings that marked his rank, and food for his journey. The canoe was set afloat in midstream headed toward the great Falls that rises from them. Meanwhile the tribe on the shore would sing its chant of farewell. The legend is that on one occasion the king was seen to rise in his canoe at the very brink of the Falls and enter a chariot that, descending from the mist, bore him aloft. This incident gave rise to the words of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and the song, brought to America by African slaves long ago, became anglicized and modified by their Christian faith.
Quick youtube search and I find this
The video description says:
"We were greeted by a chorus of 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot" prior to embarking on a Sundowner Cruise. Filmed at the Zambezi River, Zimbabwe"
And where is Victoria Falls located??? On the Zambezi river
That's soul
