₦airaland Forum

Supper: The trailer for an hour long PBS docu-drama about the true story of a Fulani prince named Abdulrahman Ibrahim from Futa Jallon, West Africa who was made a slave in Natchez, Mississippi and freed 40 years later.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukNZizqrrg

Here's the full length documentary in the actual trailer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IVh4kf6By0

Someone uploaded it a couple of weeks ago, apparently. lol

The trailer for an hour long PBS docu-drama about the true story of a Fulani prince named Abdulrahman Ibrahim from Futa Jallon, West Africa who was made a slave in Natchez, Mississippi and freed 40 years later.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukNZizqrrg

KidStranglehold: Interesting.

So AA's are mainly of Saghalien origin?

Well, I wouldn't say "mainly" as in most(>%50), but largely, as in more than from any other region in Africa and more than that of any other group in the African diaspora.

The french Company of the Indies(primarily a colonial and slave trading firm), had monopoly over the colony of Louisiana and also the slave trade of the Senegambian region, with their Fort St. Louis headquarters of the Company of the Indies in Africa, being located in modern day Northern Senegal. This created the slave trading Senegal-Louisiana concessions of the 18th and 19th century, which was the primary reason two-thirds of the slaves brought to Louisiana came through the Senegambian region.

And speaking of the Fulani. Here's a video showcasing some documented famous ethnic Fulani people in America(or what is now the US).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC2124XhYsg

An old unique blues style in the Northern Mississippi hill country called Northern Mississippi Fife and Drum blues, is an offshoot of Fulani Flute and drum music. In fact, the physical construction of the blues fife played in Northern MS is based on an old African model brought over by the transatlantic slave trade. The construction process mimics that of the of Fula flute. A musician typically cuts a piece of cane about a foot inlength, then a heated iron rod is used to bore out the cane, and finally the same rod isused to make the fingering and embouchure holes of the fife. No formal measure of spacing either between the embouchure hole and the fingering holes or between each of the fingering holes is used. Instead, the musicians use their hands as guides forconstruction, resulting in instruments that have slightly individualized scales, none of which are based on a classical Western model.
http://www.academia.edu/922424/_Stuff_You_Gotta_Watch_The_Effect_of_Anglo-American_Scholarship_on_North_Mississippi_Blues_Fife_and_Drum


Otha Turner construting his Blues Fife
[img]http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/poorheartease/images/pictures/canefife.jpg[/img]

Fula Flute
https://baragnouma.com/c/13-category/flute-peule.jpg

Mississippi Fife and Drum Blues Band - 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNqrZUWBXxs
(@ 1:16)

Fulani Flute and Drum Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xEcDHYFo1Q

KidStranglehold: IMO the Caribbean and North America is mainly Yoruba while South America is mainly Kongo

Nah, in North America, IDK about the Caribbean, it's hands down Upper West African Sahelians/Sudanic/Savannah influence that has had the most impact, followed by Central Africa Kongolese/Angolan, then maybe a draw between that of the Yoruba and Rice Coast cultures(Sierra Leonean & Liberian). Make no mistake that any Africa cultural cluster group that had a significant presence in North America contributed at least some to African-American/American culture, but just that certain groups or regions contributed more than others.

https://www.nairaland.com/1338418/tell-me-culture-what-common/1#16810266
^^^I touch specifically on the music here, but I could go in depth on cuisine, spirituality/religion, agriculture, and even architecture as well.

Taking a modern, late 20th, 21st century hip-hop dance like Krumping, and trying to find some link to Africa is extremely flawed, just for the fact that the last batch of African slaves enter the US came in 1860. So, to infer that since then it took until the late 1990s for an "African rooted" dance to just appear out of no where in California(and not the American south) no less is ridiculous to say the least. It just chronologically doesn't make much sense. There's a difference between a long chain of dances that contain bits and pieces of stylistic movements that may have African antecedents via many other ancestral dance types right here in America inbetween then, and an actual direct conncetion(or as close as you can pin point). It's like saying that "Rapping" is a descendant the West African griot tradition. It's a misnomer, rapping itself has NO direct connection to any African musical styles or anything close to it. Rapping/hip hop grew directly out of inner city disco and beat peots, which grew out of the urban up tempo blues & R&B genres, which grew out of rural style of rhyming work song and folk tales traditions of African-Americans in the south..... and *THAT* is the closet thing we have in North America to a direct descendant the Upper West African Griot Tradition. So, in a way, you can say that hip hop music has pre-colonial stylistic African antecedants, but there's is not even close to a direct connection with it and any African music styles. Same thing with Krumping.

Any who, if you want to analyze the influece of African styles on African-AMerican dance you're going to want to look at dances that can be traced back the reconstruction, antebellum, and even colonial eras of North America(mostly in what is today the southern states). Spiritual Ring Shouts, Gullah Knocking and Kicking, and Juba Patting/Hambone would probably provide the best, most concrete viewable examples of African-American dances with direct African roots(there are others, though).

I only feel like going in depth on one example so, I'll give you all that of the Hambone dance. Many of you may or may not have already heard of a chest & thigh slapping old country southern dance called the pattin da juba or hambone as it's more commonly called. This dance originated on the plantations of North America from slaves brought from West Africa, it gained popularity after the banishment drums and anything of the sort after the stono rebellion in South Carolina of Angolan slaves who marched south through the forest to Florida, slaughtering any whites they met with on the way, while beating drums. As a 1755 Georgia colonial law decreed - "What ever master or overseer shall permit his slaves, to beat, blow horns or loud instruments shall forfeit 30 shillings Sterling's for every such offence." Other southern states had similar statutes.. So, Pattin da Juba body slapping became the primary way for the slaves to express themselves rhythmically. These body patting movements & techniques are almost stylistically identical to those practiced in certain areas of West Africa.

To provide a visual representation of the Pattin Da Juba dance or Hambone- here's an African-American woman's in house performance of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iQ7VgSivTE8

Now compare that to this performance of a group of Jola girls in Southern Senegal doing a dance they're referring to as "Pat Pat".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=71RyGbKv0vQ
(Need I say more?)

But, to answers the question of the OP, we African-Americans more so than any other group in the African diaspora possess more Upper West African Sahelian/Savannah cultural influence with a heavy Afro-Islamic touch, due to the cotton, rice, and cattle ranching culture as well the land scape of North America.
https://www.nairaland.com/1338418/tell-me-culture-what-common/1#16810266
^^^See my post here where I delve more into that.

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.

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.

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

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.