How American music has been Africanized
OPINION - In North America, music has been one of the sanctuaries that has allowed for the deepest expression of West African standards of aesthetics...
In North America, music has been one of the sanctuaries that has allowed for the deepest expression of West African standards of aesthetics, and as a vehicle to exorcise the bloody social conditions and the trauma of slavery and lynching experienced by Africans and African-Americans in the New World.
These norms of artistic expression from West Africa, ranging from syncopation, call and response mechanisms, and the sliding blue notes of the vocal pitches expressed by black people in America transformed the hymns of the old Church of England into the revolutionary vibrancy of the African-American Baptist Church, through gospel (Mahalia Jackson), the rural blues (Son House), ragtime (James Reese Europe) and America’s only indigenous art form, jazz (Louis Armstrong).
Nowhere are these West African norms of expression more evident than in the clapping on beats two and four of the African-American Baptist Church, which has led a whole nation with majority European ancestry to learn to clap on beats two and four to be considered hip and American.
No other nation on Earth claps on beats two and four.
The clapping on beats two and four is an expression of an unadulterated West African rhythmic feel, expressed in a metric system of four beats per measure. This induces a palpable sense of “pulse” that America’s greatest composer, Edward Kennedy Ellington (a.k.a. Duke Ellington) called “swing” in his composition entitled “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”.
Today, this West African expression of “pulse” is the American norm and is at the root of the clapping norm for all forms of American music, from gospel to blues to jazz, R&B, funk, disco and rap. Dare anyone in North America attending a church service or music event to clap on the first beat and watch the looks people will give that person!
Why the banjo matters
The oldest American instrument is the banjo. Its texture, blue notes, rhythmic syncopation and harmonics provided the architecture from this new music called “ragtime.” Prior to that, it became the instrument of predilection of another borrowed style of music from the blues called country and western, or bluegrass.
In fact, the banjo is from West Africa. It is called Ngoni in Mali, Xaalam in Senegal and Akounting in Gambia. The banjo is the musical instrument of the people of West Africa and it naturally made its way to North America via the Atlantic Slave Trade.
In his letters to Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson talks about this instrument his African slaves are playing which he calls “Banjar”.
With the banjo came the musical repertoire and centuries old musical norms expressed by West Africans in North America as early as the 16th century, and this repertoire provided the foundation and infused all contemporary American norms of musical expression in sacred and secular music moving forward.
In order to fully appreciate how profound the influence of West African culture is on contemporary American music, we need to first appreciate the cultural depth of the three West African empires that dominated trade and commerce from West Africa to Europe and Asia via the Arabic Peninsula.
These three empires: the empire of Ghana 4th-11th , the empire of Mali 11th -14th and the empire of Songhai 14th-17th centuries, administratively managed vast land areas for trade and commerce, combining an elaborate system of taxation with a military presence exceeding 200,000 men as well as an important navy to ensure peaceful buying and selling on the third largest waterway of Africa; the Niger River.
The city of Timbuktu was the center of the civilization that links these three West African medieval empires. So why don’t we know more about the cultural standards of aesthetics of West Africa and their transfer into our current socio-cultural norms and values in the United States?
The universities of Oxford, England, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Harvard University certainly have libraries full of books depicting the cultural majesty and grandeur of these empires. The answer is simple: academia has had a lengthy bout of amnesia when it comes to acknowledging the cultural contributions of its West African populations who later became African-Americans.
Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D., is a scholar, musician and writer of mixed Senegalese and French heritage who grew up in Mali, Senegal and France. He is the author of From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta: How West African Standards Shaped the Music of the Delta Blues (2011, Cognella, Paperback). Dr. Thiam is on the faculty of the University of San Francisco and the French American International School, where he teaches Jazz and world music courses.
