.

I found it!
Hours later I am just remembering that I posted this in the sexuality section (beauty of somali women) thread

Anywho...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOaxExKVjDc

I loooooove this.

Only thing is I have no idea what she is saying lol.
What is she singing about?

I'll start by specifically speaking on my Louisiana Creole heritage(which doesn't mean mixed BTW). Then move to other varieties of African-American culture.

[size=13pt]White Eagles Tribe of the Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans[/size]

Mardi Gras Indians are a centuries old tradition that came about from paying Afro-Louisianians paying tribute Native Americans in the Louisiana who provided refuge for escaped African slaves, most of which were Senegalese, especially during the Natchez rebellion(Africans and Natives destroying the white French settlement in Natchez Louisiana), and has carried on till this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBf3Op45NMI

-Today there are many distinct "tribes" of Mardi Gras indians, with there own rituals, histories, and chants, some in English some in LA creole(Afro-Franco hybrid), and some that seem to be full blown West African tongues, like the Iko-Iko song that was first written & recorded in 1953 by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford in New Orleans(the song existed before then, though).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv6grnCvjEM

Mardi Gras indians in New Orleans play one of the FEW varieties of traditional African-American music that retains polyrhythmic African beats. In this case it is based around the chongo beat, originally known as the Bamboula dance & rhythm from where it originated in Congo Square New Orleans, and what it is still known as in the Virgin Islands, by drummers and second liners following the Indians in the ensembles. This beat is stylistically identical to those played in the Kongo region of Central Africa. The name, Second Line, describes the followers of the first line. These are the drummers, dancers and others who follow the primary activity and give it support. The second line and its reflection of Louisiana's Senegambian connection links us to a processional dance called the Saba.

Cont.

Most African-American music isn't polyrhythm heavy like that which is found in among other people in the African diaspora, but mostly derived from the solo, string and wind based, heavily muslim influenced styles of Upper West Africa Sudanic/Sahelian region. More slaves came from this region in Africa to North American than any other place in the New World, due to the cotton, rice, and cattle culture and the land scape 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

It's this Sahelian/Sudanic cultural influence that sets African-Americans culturally apart from Afro-descedants from Latin-America and the Caribbean.


FOR INSTANCE:

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..com/2012/03/african-american-vs-afro-cuban.html
Couple that with the fact that ALL percussion playing music was banned among slaves in North America, largely due to the Stono Rebellion of Angloan slaves in South Carolina, EXCEPT in 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 & Central African styles of music essentially died out in North America for the most part, except among a few key styles & places in North America ie South Carolina geechees, 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. If I have the time I will touch more on that later.

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. Africa is a HUGE 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 & Sudanic savanna regions of Africa which utilizes a lot more simplistic cross-beat rhythm(which gives American music it's swing-feel) to accentuate the highly melosmatic wind and string instruments with a booming vocal/instrument harmony- All aspects of African-American music. While Afro-Cubans take the majority of their influence from Lower West African and Central African bantu music which IS very polyrhythmic & percussion based.

PH.d ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik, who is himself a European and Moya Aliya Malamusi a continental African, both had this to say about the Mississippi Delta blues(the purest form of blues music).....

"I have had difficulty detecting any significant European musical components in this style, aside from the use of Western factory-manufactured equipment."

Some traditional Bambara music from Mali by the late great Bazoumana Sissoko!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trl4MlwtEsM

Now compare that to this blues tune played by Robert Pete Williams in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AdhY7XQn9Q
Now, you tell me where the blues comes from....

You can read a little bit about Bambara captives in colonial Louisiana here.
http://books.google.com/books?id=mYz_THytJ38C&lpg=PA112&ots=xAovam7Tx2&dq=bambara+in+louisiana&pg=PA112#v=onepage&q=bambara%20in%20louisiana&f=false

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 African music to early African-American blues in the south.

I really had no idea that so continental African scholars are taken such an interest in African-American music and it's origins in their home continent of Africa. Proving, the connection was truly never lost, just sub-consciously assimilated into American culture, for the most part.

Side by side comparison of African-American Southern Folk Spirituals with Afro-Argentinian Tango Ballroom Music


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCgJ3esQ81M
Listen specifically to the speakers commentary @5:43

It's too bad most of those Afro-Argentinians died or were killed in the mid to late 19th century due to diseases and being war causalities.

Awesome information Supper, thanks for the posts. I learnt alot thank you. I haven't been on the forum for a long time hence the late reply but it was a pleasant surprise to see when I first logged back on. I hope other's start posting more too

Supper: [size=15pt]Lapin é ti Négrès Kongó[/size]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1kADeg3eyXQ

Old Kreyol Lwiziyen(Louisiana Creole) Folk Tale