Timbuktu, the birthplace of blues

[seeline]

I think she's dug deep into Malian music because she's in Paris and has easy access to music - and musicians - from all over what used to be French W. Africa.

The whole thing is pretty amazing in that she seems to just "get" their music. Lots of different styles and regions represented on the disc, btw. (I just posted another few links to vids above.) and they get her music, too. I've heard other recordings with American jazz musicians and W. African musicians, but never any that work like this one does.

I guess one of the best analogies I can come up with is that black American music and African music are 1st cousins.

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[jeffcrom]

I guess one of the best analogies I can come up with is that black American music and African music are 1st cousins.

I've followed this thread and felt like I should stay out of it, but may I offer this: The music of Africa did not survive the Middle Passage, but African attitudes/approaches to making music did.

[seeline]

Just because someone uses a pentatonic scale or tuning does not mean that they're playing "blues" by default. The "blues came from Mali" and "desert blues" etc. etc. etc. slogans are just that - promotional stuff.

Well according to Bobby McFerrin the whole world is hard wired to use the pentatonic scale:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music.html

Thanks for the link to that - I love it!

I guess one of the best analogies I can come up with is that black American music and African music are 1st cousins.

I've followed this thread and felt like I should stay out of it, but may I offer this: The music of Africa did not survive the Middle Passage, but African attitudes/approaches to making music did.

Agreed.

[seeline]

part of the irony here is that Africans have been listening to - and buying - recordings from all over the world since not long after HMV and other record companies opened sales offices in Africa.

But we have not been listening to their music, until very recently, at least.

Which is why Ali Farka Toure's claims that John Lee Hooker had nothing to teach him (AFT) because all of Hooker's music came from Africa anyway... kind of make me think that AFT had a very inflated idea of himself, and not nearly as much respect for people like Hooker as he should have.

I don't have exact quotes, but I can easily find them if anyone's interested.

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[JSngry]

I guess one of the best analogies I can come up with is that black American music and African music are 1st cousins.

I've followed this thread and felt like I should stay out of it, but may I offer this: The music of Africa did not survive the Middle Passage, but African attitudes/approaches to making music did.

I don't know (as in really don't know) if it's attitudes/approaches, which are more "conscious", as much as it is "instincts", which is more of a subconscious thing, and I'm pretty sure it's not just to making music but more about the individual's relation to time/space/community/self/all that, but any claim that it all came from Africa is no more far-fetched than any claim that we can't be sure that any of it really did, so BACK OFF MISTER AFRICAN AND ALL YOU AFRICAN APOLOGISTS and all that...

And really, I don't know about anybody else, especially those Christian Science Monitor cats, but that's what I think the real issue is, or should be - acknowledging where the basic instincts come from. Not the "style" or anything micro like that, but the macro instinct itself, why the whole world uses pentatonics and a lot of the world uses swing and polyrhythms, and yeah, African-American music & African music aren't identical or even similar, but African-American music has (in the better part of the 20th Century, anyway) shown instincts that are not really like those of any other culture, yet they are closer to those African (and yeah, I know, Africa's a big place with a lot of people) than to anywhere else, and why the hell is that? Surely that's not coincidental, right? Shit's gotta come from somewhere, and if it was from America itself, then "Americans" would not have to go on Camel Caravan or American Bandstand/Idol to prove how well they've learned their lessons, right? If you know what i mean...

I mean, this should not even be a point of even minor contention. Acknowledge it, hell, embrace it, because it is such a beautiful thing, and get about with the business of now. Because in all seriousness, I don't know that either African instincts or African-American culture (which i know, i non-monolithic in a big way) is going to be leading the way in the 21st century like it did in the 20th. It was a much bigger world then than it is now & there ain't all that many of the old secrets left, not really, not for those who need to know them...those who don't won't ever, but same as it ever was, right?

Edited March 7, 2010 by JSngry

[seeline]

Still, I think there's a lot of validity in wanting to find out where things came from, especially when those things are so basic to our humanity - like music, dance, etc.

And our innate curiosity is going to propel us on that search.

[JSngry]

And our innate common sense is - or should - going to tell us where it's most likely to be found.

I mean, I ain't going to Timbuktu to find the roots of George Jones or Ludwig Ruhlhoffer Von Freeman Beethoven.

Then again, I ain't going to Timbuktu for anything, not that i know of..

[seeline]

i think there's a big difference between saying "These things have the same source" and "These things are the same."

1st cousins are very closely related, but they're not identical twins.

part of the irony here is that Africans have been listening to - and buying - recordings from all over the world since not long after HMV and other record companies opened sales offices in Africa.

But we have not been listening to their music, until very recently, at least.

Which is why Ali Farka Toure's claims that John Lee Hooker had nothing to teach him (AFT) because all of Hooker's music came from Africa anyway... kind of make me think that AFT had a very inflated idea of himself, and not nearly as much respect for people like Hooker as he should have.

I don't have exact quotes, but I can easily find them if anyone's interested.

it could be that i'm misunderstanding the context of quotes like these, too...

The Western press all too often called AFT "the John Lee Hooker of Africa," which is very inaccurate. If AFT got fed up with that kind of comparison, well... I can scarcely blame him! The catch is that earlier in his career, he professed a lot of admiration for Hooker.

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[JSngry]

Hey, the reason I posted the thing in the first place was becuase I found the idea of a Christian Science Monitor article on the "African origins" of the blues" popping up on my corporate home page at work to be beyond surreal. I certainly didn't, and still fon't, take the article or any of the quotes therein as anything other than tourist-brochure fodder aimed at people who only feel safe getting into something once it no longer really exists. In other words, pretty much a freakin' joke, like everything else having to do with the "The water's safe now, finally! C'mon in!" Culture of Post-Big Chill American White Folk. But I guess there was fodder for serious consideration in the actual article after all. Sorry I missed it, I guess.

As for the whole "1st Cousins" thing, yeah, sure, although maybe siblings separated by Satanic Soul Fuckers Of All Colors might be more to the point. But once again, semantics get in the way.

[seeline]

Jim, I don't understand all the white people/post-Big Chill stuff in this context.

I thought we were trying to talk about certain kinds of African music and blues....

as for the quote being beyond surreal, I can see that, although it's been a big question (back and forth) for some years now in other circles... like I mentioned earlier, the information on Malian music (and interview with Vieux Farka Toure) on the Afropop Worldwide site (www.afropop.org) might go some way toward making that clearer... at this point, I'm really not sure.

The CSM piece is repeating a lot of canards that have been around since Ali Farka Toure started touring in Europe (and, once, in the US) and making pronouncements about people like JL Hooker to the Western press. I used to cover this music (African, not blues) and have had my own struggles with making sense out of the whole problem, so that's one of the places I'm coming from. the "blues is African music" thing showed up on a lot of press releases, and probably still does. I felt it was really important to learn more and not misrepresent the artists and music in question (in print).

Maybe that clarifies some of what I've been trying to say - or not, as the case may be.

Either way, I'm more than happy to talk about music, but the other kinds of things you're raising, not so much. Seems like that aspect of your posts is more political than anything else (just my impression).

cheers,

e.

Edited to add:

video of some Tuareg from northern Mali dancing the takamba, which is referenced in the CSM article ... I *think* this is Tartit (a women's ensemble), but I'm not 100% sure.

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[JSngry]

Jim, I don't understand all the white people/post-Big Chill stuff in this context.

I thought we were trying to talk about certain kinds of African music and blues....

No, not really. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[seeline]

Jim, I don't understand all the white people/post-Big Chill stuff in this context.

I thought we were trying to talk about certain kinds of African music and blues....

No, not really. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

the thread's title is very misleading, then.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Jesusfuckingchrist, why is it so goddamned difficult to accept that under the circumstances that most African-Americans faced for the first 250 or so years of their existence as African-"Americans" that, since assimilation was aggressively discouraged & "nuturing", where it existed at all, came from within self and community, that some "African-isms" (and if every time a phrase like that is used it ends up being challenged on some "oh, that's insulting becuase Africa is such a DIVERSE continent" condescension, then fine, but FUCK THAT, can we stipulate to that with a gigantic DUH! and them MOVE ON?) would be more likely to survive than not? The only alternatives would be to evolve into some new creature with no memory/identity whatsoever, or to assimilate completely in Master's Perfect Image. No dount, there was that, but why does the "legacy of slavery" that Good White Folk like to go on and on about seem to never entail maybe holding on to some characteristics of the "mother land"? It's like the Good White Folk like to bemoan how we took these Africans and made them into Total Non-Africans With No Identity Of Their Own. The "damaging legacy of slavery".

Well, Good White Folk, maybe we weren't as successful in that regard as we like to think. Maybe we're just too goddamned VAIN to consider the possibility that we tried every which way to get that African OUT of that African and yeah, we tried pretty hard, we did, and we got a good way there, but holy shit, SOME of it still hung in there after all. Maybe we AIN"T the Holy Badasses we fancy ourselves as. Maybe there's SOME shit that we just couldn't get to, no matter how hard we tried.

But no, couldn't be. Weren't never no African in African-Americans. By the time it got to the birth of the "blues", all we had was tabula rasa colored folks on which to skeet all our melting pot American jizz of everything but Africanisms. And that's what the "blues" is, right? RIGHT!

That probably ain't what Vieux Farka Toure and his late father Ali Farka Toure are talking about. Don't know, don't care. It's an age of tourism and it's the Christian Science Monitor. Proceed accordingly. But that is what I'm talking about.

Lest there be any confusion.

It is very strange to me to hear that there are people who think that "By the time it got to the birth of the "blues", all we had was tabula rasa colored folks on which to skeet all our melting pot American jizz of everything but Africanisms." That's ignorant and stupid.

Ignorant because any wide listening of West African music can identify much that DID get transferred, sometimes almost intact. (I met a lady in 2002 who was a senior person at the Senegalese copyright office, and in her private life a member of an informal research group looking into these transfers - unfortunately neither my French nor my musical education were up to me joining in.)

Stupid because to imagine otherwise flies in the face of rationality.

But I suppose that is what it's all about.

MG

[JSngry]

Jim, I don't understand all the white people/post-Big Chill stuff in this context.

I thought we were trying to talk about certain kinds of African music and blues....

No, not really. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

the thread's title is very misleading, then.

The thread's title is the title of the CSM article, nothing more.

Again, sorry for the misunderstanding.

It is very strange to me to hear that there are people who think that "By the time it got to the birth of the "blues", all we had was tabula rasa colored folks on which to skeet all our melting pot American jizz of everything but Africanisms." That's ignorant and stupid.

Ignorant because any wide listening of West African music can identify much that DID get transferred, sometimes almost intact. (I met a lady in 2002 who was a senior person at the Senegalese copyright office, and in her private life a member of an informal research group looking into these transfers - unfortunately neither my French nor my musical education were up to me joining in.)

Stupid because to imagine otherwise flies in the face of rationality.

Exactly.

[AllenLowe]

just a good book I would recommend, edited by John Szwed - "After Africa." And as always, Lawrence Levine.

then, John Pierson, Legacy.

Edited March 7, 2010 by AllenLowe

[seeline]

just a good book I would recommend, edited by John Szwed - "After Africa." And as always, Lawrence Levine.

then, John Pierson, Legacy.

Do you have any further info., like publisher and publication dates for these? They're proving kind of hard to track down.

thanks in advance.

[seeline]

One of the best sources I've come across is Dena J. Epstein's Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War. Very much worth buying, I think, and definitely drawing on quotes from many travelers to the US, from early colonial times onward.

One of the more interesting things she references is a British traveler's account of hearing "the sprightly barafoo" - aka the balafon, one type of W. African marimba - here. Because the instrument died out entirely in black American tradition, while other instruments survived but also changed. (Like the various West African lutes that ultimately morphed into the modern banjo.)

I think that shows one of the ways in which trying to trace survivals is tricky, if only because it points out that many things were discarded, for reasons that we have no way of knowing for certain.

It seems that many things that have been remembered/retained have also changed form, either slightly or a lot. That doesn't invalidate their origins (i.e., as coming from Africa), but it does point to the formation of new cultures (African American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian etc.), during slavery times and later.

anyway...

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[AllenLowe]

the Szwed book is out of print, I fear - the Levine is Black Culture and Black Consciousness - should be on amazon. I'll see if I can locate the Pierson, which is fascinating on issue of speech and even the Klan.

[seeline]

the Szwed book is out of print, I fear - the Levine is Black Culture and Black Consciousness - should be on amazon. I'll see if I can locate the Pierson, which is fascinating on issue of speech and even the Klan.

Thanks, Allen! I've known Szwed's name for a long time, and have likely read some of his work, but am having trouble recalling exactly what titles offhand... And I'm more than happy to go hunting for o.p. titles. Abebooks.com is a great place to shop.

[AllenLowe]

and yes, the Deena Epstein is essential.

It's funny, because in these arguments you get, on one side, the ideologues who think everything is African - and on the other, the more conservative African American viewpoint (which I have seen expressed by Crouch, and even in some ways by Ralph Ellison) which is wary of the way in which African emphasis de-Americanizes black people.

I'm going to have to search on my shelves for the Pierson book. He was killed in a car accident at a very young age, as I recall; the chapters I found most interesting were about how the whole realm of Southern speech is related to the number of white children basically raised by slaves; and another on how the original Klan uniforms were based on those of African secret societies, and were used in order to frighten people who still maintained a lot of old-world superstition.

The Levine book is amazing, in my opinion, just an essential work about African retentions and the whole acculturation thing.

John Szwed, by the way, teaches now at Columbia, is the smartest guy I've ever known at sifting the reality from the mythology, and is a nice, accessible guy -

Edited March 7, 2010 by AllenLowe

[seeline]

and yes, the Deena Epstein is essential.

It's funny, because in these arguments you get, on one side, the ideologues who think everything is African - and on the other, the more conservative African American viewpoint (which I have seen expressed by Crouch, and even in some ways by Ralph Ellison) which is wary of the way in which African emphasis de-Americanizes black people.

I'm going to have to search on my shelves for the Pierson book. He was killed in a car accident at a very young age, as I recall; the chapters I found most interesting were about how the whole realm of Southern speech is related to the number of white children basically raised by slaves; and another on how the original Klan uniforms were based on those of African secret societies, and were used in order to frighten people who still maintained a lot of old-world superstition.

The Levine book is amazing, in my opinion, just an essential work about African retentions and the whole acculturation thing.

John Szwed, by the way, teaches now at Columbia, is the smartest guy I've ever known at sifting the reality from the mythology, and is a nice, accessible guy -

There are KKK-like costumes - in that they feature pointy hat-hoods that cover the entire head and face - in Cuba, in the abakwa (also abacua) secret society (which is African and still exists in Nigeria, where it's called Ekpe; it's also here in the US, in NYC and Miami), and I've seen some photos of Afro-Puerto Rican "devil" costumes for carnaval that also look very similar - trombonist William Cepeda, who lives in NYC, would be able to fill in the blanks, I'm sure. (And there are groups of penitentes in Spain who have processions during the week before Easter, dressed in costumes that look *exactly* like Klan robes, although they have cut-out eye holes, like ghost costumes made from sheets. I think who influenced whom there is open to debate!)

So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised about that at all, nor about Southern speech having been affected very intensely by slaves. (Brazilian Portuguese is very different than Portuguese from Portugal partly because of the influence of the African languages that slaves spoke, and that are still used in some Afro-Brazilian religious and secular traditions - the difference being that Brazilians are open about this, to the point of boasting about the country and people being an amalgam of Africans, Natives and white people... very different than here, on the whole. They have their own problems with racism, but their society never was like Anglo-America, in terms of the "one drop" rule, institutionalized racism, etc. - and intermarriage was/is not uncommon, even from the earliest days of the colony.)

I'd guess the language thing is similar to the impact Yiddish has had on modern American English, in some ways.

Thanks again for your help - and yeah, I'm suspicious of the hardliners on both sides of this debate. Ali Farka Toure was very much of the "it's purely African" school of thought, although he was basing that mainly on recordings, rather than travel here and direct contact with black American musicians, blues and otherwise. (Though he might well have met/heard black American musicians while on tour in Europe.) Banning Eyre (author of In Griot Time) has even quoted AFT as claiming that all blues music came from one specific place in northern Mali. So while I admire AFT's music, and I can see his side of things, I also think he wasn't necessarily the most reliable source, in some ways, at least.

* Edited to add: Great interview with Ivor Miller - an Ekpe and Abakwa initiate (maybe the 1st person to belong to both societies), here.

Edited March 9, 2010 by seeline

[seeline]

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I thought some actual music might be helpful here.

Ali Farka Toure, performing in northern Mali not long before his death -

Oumou Sangaré (from Wassoulou, in southwest Mali near the Guinea border) and Ali Farka Toure - he's doing the takamba dance, from northern Mali -

Edited March 7, 2010 by seeline

[AllenLowe]

now that's interesting, because if I was going to hazard a guess I would posit a reverse influence - USA to Africa (listening to the performance of Ali Farka Toure) -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Well, there are all sorts of reverse influences and maybe in blues, too. I read somewhere years ago that WLAC could be picked up in West Africa and that Ernie's and Randy's got orders for their blues packages from there.

MG

[seeline]

yes... i agree (about record sales and much more).

I think the various interactions are far more complex than any of us could ever begin to imagine, let alone fathom!

Maybe it goes without saying, but I do think the fact that we're so monolingual has caused us to become isolated from the rest of the W. hemisphere, in terms of both influences and seeing larger patterns and interactions at work. I know that The Magnificent Goldberg has written lots of good stuff about the back-and-forth between Senegal and Cuba on other threads, though I don't have the links handy at the moment.

Edited March 9, 2010 by seeline