AFRICA. Encyclopedia of Blues

A familiarity with Africa is necessary to reach a full
appreciation of African American music, especially of
the blues and black sacred music. In recordings of
blues through 1970, including the 1933–1942 Library
of Congress field recordings of black southern singers
and instrumentalists, listeners hear a number of vocal
inflections and effects, and instrumental rhythms and
timbral colors, that do not fit within Anglo-American
culture. These include vocal growls and moans; polyrhythmic (if not polyphonic) percussion; vocal calls
and responses or, for that matter, vocal calls and
instrumental responses; or the percussive ax-fall rests
at the beginning of a field-holler or work-song phrase.
Such characteristics may be retentions from African
music, passed across generations to the present.
Africa is an unfathomably large continent, and
casual references to it are hardly mindful of this expanse and diversity. It is the second largest continent
in the world. It is about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles)
long and 7,000 kilometers (4,375 miles) wide, encompassing 28 million square kilometers (17.5 million
square miles). The Sahara Desert takes up much of
north Africa, and the Kalahari much of the south.
Yet a staggering array of regions can be found:
Morocco and Algeria to the northeast, the west
coast including Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Congo,
and Angola. The south tip is south Africa, with
Zimbabwe and Mozambique just north. The
further north one travels along the west coast,
from Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya, through
Somalia, to Sudan and Egypt, the greater the impact
of Arabian trade and culture.
The heart of the continent includes Chad, Central
African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo (formerly Zaire), with Rwanda and
Uganda among the countries just east. Reciting
these countries’ names hints at the diversity of the
languages spoken on the continent, the number of
which is estimated to be around 1,000. Among the
peoples are various cultures and histories, far more
than can be packed into any one state in the United
States.
Some areas of Africa are more likely than others to
be relevant to African American blues. Of obvious
pertinence are the west African countries whose Atlantic coastline faces North and South America, especially those from Ghana east to Gabon along which
lies the Guinea Coast (also known as the Slave
Coast), with Mali lying some ways inland north of
that coast. Less obvious, but argued for by Paul
Oliver in Savannah Syncopators, is the savanna
north of that coast where African Arabian traders
from the east may have had some cultural influence.
For example, the griots and jali of the western Sudan
were itinerant musicians, many from the Hausa ethnic
group in the sahel and savanna belt of the southern
Sahara in northern Mali and Nigeria. They traveled
throughout west Africa performing songs of praise,
organizing festivals, and carrying the news. Some
researchers believe that some African musical practices were strongly influenced by the Arabic-Islamic
music they heard as the result of the conversion to
Islam of the area and the ‘‘Arabization’’ of many of
its customs. It is likely that it was, in turn, adapted by
the people of other villages and tribes that they visited
on their musical travels throughout much of west
Africa.
Even if west Africa and western Sudan were the
primary areas where slaves were taken and sent to the
Americas, it must be acknowledged that there were
large multitudes of villages where they had once lived,
each with its own history and customs, and there
would have been many dialects. The gathering of
such diverse people into a small area, even a holding
dungeon such as those on Goree Island or at Elmina
Castle, Ghana, did not automatically mean their cultures instantly meshed into one. Also, the African
slave trade was conducted for several centuries
through 1860, during which an estimated 10 million
Africans were captured, sold, and led away. So
in addition to the variety of local languages and customs, generational beliefs and customs changed
every 15 years or so.
If the Africans sent to the Americas were far from
homogeneous, then it is equally difficult today to
make sweeping generalizations about the Africans
whose ancestors were not captured, and who exercised their particular languages and customs according to their village and to their surrounding land. To
state clearly: Not all Africans, then or now, share the
same customs, nor do they all, then or now, speak the
same language. Even how one language may be spoken is subject to misunderstanding by those marginal
or outside to that culture. For example, some west
African languages are ‘‘tonal’’ languages, that is, the
meaning of a word or syllable can have as many as
four different meanings, depending on the pitch in
which it is spoken. How well someone understands a
speaker depends on one’s familiarity with the ‘‘how’’
as well as the ‘‘what’’ of an utterance that is being
spoken. There is also the possibility that Africans of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including
those captured as slaves, were accustomed to ‘‘microtonal inflections’’ and probably used them in normal
speech and perhaps also in their music, including the
antecedents to the blues.
If similarities in African speech are subject to misunderstanding, even among two Africans of different
cultures, they are even more subject to misunderstanding between an African and an African American.
With regard to music in particular, most if not all
similarities between African American blues and
African music may be regarded simply as similarities,
with no direct or even indirect connection between the
similar things. For example, the pentatonic scale (see
figure), C–D–E–G–A, is very widely used in blues, and
this is found in much African vocal music. Whether the
scale is retained from African practice is subject
to research. Another African characteristic found in
blues is the call-and-response pattern of much African
vocal music, with the first two lines of the blues verse
resembling the call and the third the response. This too
would have to subject to scholarly affirmation.
Much research would be needed to demonstrate
that such a similarity is the result of an African
American retention of an antecedent African practice.
From the end of American slavery in 1865 to the
earliest datable blues songs stretch 30 to 40 years
of oral, informal retention of African practice, years
that possibly entail distortions of memory and oral
communication. When the time period is extended to
the initial period of blues sound recordings
(1920–1932), then there are at least 70 years of
African retention, and the oldest and earliest African
American musicians on 78-rpm records were Daddy
Stovepipe no. 1 (born 1867) and Henry Thomas (born
1874), both of whom were born in the United States.
If one were to extend the period of retention to 1801,
when the cotton gin enabled the increase of cotton
production and hence raised the demand for slaves on
cotton plantations, then there are 140 years from
then to the end of the pre–World War II era. Over
such a range, the transmission of African practices
becomes more subject to distortion of memory or of
communication.
In recent decades, especially since 1945, the influence on the blues has gone in the opposite direction,
from African American to African. When big band
swing, boogie-woogie, jive, progressive jazz, bebop,
soul, disco, rock and its various derivatives, and R&B
became popular and in turn faded in their popularity in
the United States, recordings of them were imported to
Africa, where they were widely distributed and consequently heard in urban centers. As of the mid-2000s,
huge numbers of pirated audio cassettes of numerous American and English rock groups are widely
available in west Africa at surprisingly low cost.
Blues, especially southern acoustic guitar blues,
has had some impact on African musicians. For example, Ali Farka Toure, a contemporary guitarist
and singer from Mali, has shown much interest in
blues singing and playing since the 1960s as evidenced
in his CD African Blues (1990, Shanachie). He popularized the idea that the roots of the blues were in the
western Sudanic belt, that is, the sahel. As a youngster
he was discouraged from becoming a working musician because music was considered to be inappropriate other than for young people and griots, traveling
professional music makers somewhat similar to the
troubadours of the Middle Ages. The griots were held
in low social esteem. However, after hearing recordings of American blues singers such as John Lee
Hooker, Albert King, Otis Redding, James Brown,
Wilson Pickett, and Ray Charles, he became deeply
involved in the idiom and made it his life’s work. But
in African Blues, he does not use standard blues harmonies and rarely twelve-bar phrases although he
does use the pentatonic scale. The African-music
scholar Gerhard Kubik says in his book Africa and
the Blues that he feels Toure’s music is only vaguely
related to any type of blues. But he captures the vocal
and guitar style of African American blues musicians
and his lyrics reflect similar feelings. He has toured
the United States as the ‘‘Malian Bluesman.’’ His
popularity has motivated the production of recordings by other musicians from the savanna and the
sahel such as Kankan Blues by Kante Manfila &
Kalla (Popular African Music, Out of Africa Series
OA 201, Frankfurt, through World Circuit), and
Desert Blues—Ambiances du Sahara (Network LC
6795).
Yet many purported blues in present-day Africa
turn out to be anything but the blues on examination.
‘‘Ebony’’ from the LP Voices of Africa (Nonesuch
Explorer Series) by Saka Acquaye and his African
Ensemble from Ghana is called ‘‘blues’’ in Acquaye’s
liner notes, but the only slight resemblance to blues is
a short passage in the middle of the piece when the
winds (trumpets and saxophones) briefly play a progression of repeated I–IV–V–I block chords over
which the vibraphone performers improvise, but without the characteristic ‘‘blue notes.’’ From his perspective, Kubik feels that the label ‘‘blues’’ seems to
be used for anything that comes from the west central
African Sudanic belt, regardless of any link with the
blues. This appears to be a valid judgment considering the large number of recording artists from Mali
and Sudan, including such names as Abdel Gadir
Salium, Afel Boucoum, Bajourou, and Habib Koite
who have recorded ‘‘blues.’’ A promotional statement
for Distance Music’s CD African Blues states after
its subtitle, ‘‘Color in Rhythm Stimulates Mind Freedom’’ and that the album ‘‘showcases a deep, moody
sound. It is a very personal project aimed at the
mature open-minded listener, utilizing live percussion
& keys and combining vocal, spoken word and instrumental tracks for an organic, earthy feel. Music with
longevity & soul in the true sense of the word.’’ This
would appear to be stretching the traditional meaning
of ‘‘blues’’ considerably, even in Africa.
There is a belief that the blues have made a ‘‘round
trip’’ from Africa to the Western nations and back to
their perceived homeland in a more or less unaltered
state. Although there may be elements of truth in this
belief, the diverse roots of blues and jazz are
geographically and sociologically complex, and the
manner of their ‘‘return’’ to the African continent is
equally so. Various writers on the subject have
oversimplified the characteristic and histories of
these styles in the United States, and they have
drawn superficial conclusions based on skimming
the surface of the evidence of their ‘‘return’’ to various
African nations through recordings and festival
concerts in Africa.
On other matters, individual authors disagree on
assumptions and conflicting use of scholarly language. An example is in Oliver’s epilogue to the reprint of Savannah Syncopators, where he contrasts his
word ‘‘acculturation’’ with Evans’s preferred term
‘‘syncretion’’ with regard as to how individual
practices could have been retained in a culture.
Confusion in discussion and application sometimes
prevails over disagreement on semantic matters. One
example is scale. African melodic practices, including
the widely used pentatonic scale, when superimposed
on European-style harmonies, seem to produce the
flatted (by a half-step scale degree) third and seventh
steps of the diatonic scale. Blues and jazz are often
characterized with this scale. However, we should
observe, and be mindful, that the folk and traditional
music of several other cultures also employs variable
pitched scale thirds and sevenths, notably that of
India, the Arab world, and Great Britain; in these
settings the major and minor thirds and sevenths are
not simultaneously sounded as they are in blues, but
in immediate melodic juxtaposition. Some scholars
have even disagreed on the African provenance of
the flatted-seventh diatonic scale tone. The African
music authority Kwabena Nketia, a native African,
says in his African Music in Ghana, ‘‘The flatted seventh is frequent and well established in Akan vocal
music.’’ To the contrary, Bruno Nettl, a widely recognized ethnomusicologist, says in his Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, ‘‘A frequently
mentioned characteristic of U.S. Negro songs is the so
called ‘blue note,’ the flatted or slightly lowered third
and seventh degrees in a major scale. The origin of
this phenomenon is not known, but it probably cannot be traced to Africa.’’
Because of these disagreements among expert
scholars, it is difficult to state any research finding
with certainty. Such ambiguity and scholarly diplomacy are illustrated by Kubik’s statement in Africa
and the Blues that ‘‘blues is an African-American
tradition that developed under certain social conditions on U.S. American soil, in the Deep South. It did
not develop as such in Africa. And yet it is a phenomenon belonging essentially to the African culture
world.’’
The bibliography at the end of this article offers to
the interested reader citations of various books and
articles about African music and its likely retentions
in African American blues. We should be thankful that we have as much research in general about African music as we do. In addition to the excellent items
cited here, various sound recording series and videotape resources can be found in libraries. Although the
amount of scholarship regarding African retentions in
the blues in particular is fairly limited, the most
encompassing of them are Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators, Gerhard Kubik’s Africa and the Blues,
and selected articles by David Evans and Richard A.
Waterman.
EDWARD KOMARA/ROBERT WASHBURN
Bibliography
Bailey, Francis. African Music: A People’s Art. London:
George G. Harrup and Co., 1975.
Evans, David. ‘‘Africa and the Blues,’’ Living Blues no. 10
(1972): 27–29.
———. ‘‘African Contributions to America’s Musical Heritage,’’ The World and I 5, no. 1 (January 1990): 628–639.
Kebede, Ashenafi. Roots of Black Music. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982.
Kubik, Gerhard. Africa and the Blues. Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1999.
Manuel, Peter. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Nettl, Bruno. Folk and Traditional Music of the Western
Continents. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. The Music of Africa. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1974.
Oliver, Paul. Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in
the Blues. London: Studio Vista, 1970. Reprinted with
an afterword in Paul Oliver et al., Yonder Come the
Blues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Roberts, John Storm. Black Music of Two Worlds. New
York: Praeger, 1972.
Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Stone, Ruth M., ed. Africa. Vol. 1 of Garland Encyclopedia
of World Music. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
Summers, Lynn S. ‘‘African Influence and the Blues: An
Interview with Richard A. Waterman,’’ Living Blues
no. 6 (1971): 30–36.
Waterman, Richard A. ‘‘African Influence on the Music of
the Americas.’’ In Acculturation in the Americas, edited
by Sol Tax, 207–218. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1952.
———. ‘‘On Flogging a Dead Horse: Lessons Learned
from the Africanisms Controversy.’’ Ethnomusicology
7, no. 2 (May 1963): 83–87.

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