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What goes around comes around and yes, musical forms from Africa that were remembered in the US and branched from over time feed back into their mother lode. I

• tolerance 1y ago
  My comment was specifically about Burna Boy, a contemporary artist. Granted I’m indifferent to the musical heritage of Black (as in native to the African continent and its diaspora) music and will yield considerable ground to people more interested in that than I am because of this. But speaking about culture in general, I think it’s “goofy” (to borrow a term from the grandparent comment) to brush away the influence that Black (as in US) culture has on Blacks (everywhere else) today. Not 50 years ago. Right now. I’m specifically referring to acts who may be equal in relative notoriety to the one’s you named, but are popular today like Burna Boy. We can split hairs about the influence that Black (as in African) music had on Black people in the US. I’m sure there’s arguments to be had that vary in how appreciable they are to this premise. It’s probably equally “goofy” to wave off the idea that the “degrees of separation between Burna Boy and Chuck Berry” extend further to Berry’s great(N)-grandparents who carried the remnants of what was to be “remembered” on US soil after crossing the Middle Passage. But I don’t think that it’s as linear a process as we’d like to imagine, at least it isn’t anymore. Bangs (and external agents independent of Black people) disrupted the matrix and the “mother lode” is no longer centralized at the “mother land”.
  • defrost 1y ago
    > I think it’s “goofy” (to borrow a term from the grandparent comment) to brush away the influence that Black (as in US) culture has on Blacks (everywhere else) today. You'd probably best argue that point with someone that thinks US Black culture has had zero global travel and influence then. What isn't 'goofy' is the notion that US and African Black culture have had a near continuous back and forth interchange throughout history, the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival featured a strong 'Back to Africa' thread that highlighted contemporary African music, polyrhythmic forms, call and response, specific artists, etc. all of which can be found in the US Black Culture musical production of today .. WhoSampled highlights sources of many drum beats used in early hip hop recordings of the 1980s that are now considered iconic, and so on. > Bangs (and external agents independent of Black people) disrupted the matrix Who or what is 'Bangs', to which matrix do you refer? <insert relevant Samuel L. Jackson quote> > and the “mother lode” is no longer centralized at the “mother land”. Not a great turn of phrase, mother lodes can be exhausted but they don't move. To the point buried within, Africa may have been the point of origin of all humanity but it was never the point of genesis of all musical form, Gamelan is almost unique to the Sundanese peoples (Indonesia) with tenuous backlinks to Indian forms at best .. it's a long way from there to any prior African drum or percussion influences. In greater human history people have made their own unique forms and variations across the globe, post near instant global communication, recording and playback, these forms all mutually intertwine and influence each other.
    • tolerance 1y ago
      Well here I am thinking that a mother lode just meant a lotta stuff kept somewhere, and simultaneously surprised that you aren’t familiar with South Sudanese-born artist “Bangs” and that you didn’t catch on to “matrix” as a reference to Africa being the developmental environment for Black music [but were keen to pick up on the aforementioned mother lode gaffe that short circuited our little game of language surrounding the origins of Black culture]. Explaining a joke or a wry remark is about as deflating as either fallen flat. So you’ll have to pick up on the grander point that I was trying to make by yourself. Suffices to say that you’ve managed to do that already anyhow in a manner far more sophisticated than my own. I had a great time, you?