Music of the African Diaspora

This article presents a dialogue with authors of the so called Black Atlantic to introduce in the debate about a musical education based on the philosophical and aesthetic pillars and knowledge of African (diaspora) musical arts. It points to a historical gap in the studies of African-American music in Latin American countries, as well as the need to elaborate procedures and methodological foundations applied to the teaching of African (diaspora) musical arts with emphasis on the Brazilian context. The author seeks to encourage an epistemological debate, referenced by various authors from the musical and historical contexts of Africa and Diaspora, and to outline a theoretical framework for music education on the bases of African matrices for the most of countries and regions with black cultural and musical expressions, that in future may lead to African (diaspora) musical and performance education and training.

Resumo: O artigo traz um panorama sobre as festas negras e suas formas,
adaptações, inserções e sonoridades, no contexto do Brasil do século XIX, com
ênfase na Bahia. As tensões em torno das reuniões festivas dos negros,
escravizados e libertos, entre proibição e permissividade ou até mesmo incentivo,
ocorrem ao longo desse século em várias fases, que por vezes se revelam como
contraditórias, a depender da instância de poder ou da sua liderança. Em geral,
percebe-se uma certa divisão visto de fora, entre as rodas, batuques e sambas como
divertimentos dos africanos e descendentes entre si, geralmente perseguidos,
difamados e reprimidos, e por outro lado, os cortejos, cucumbis e congadas, os
quais, em geral,são descritos como inofensivos, adaptados, folclóricos ou de forma
infantilizada na visão dos cronistas brancos que não compreenderam seus
significados milenares na cosmovisão, musicalidade e ritualidade dos povos,
sobretudo de origem centro-africanos.
Palavras-chave: Festas negras em territórios brancos; Batuques, cucumbis e
congadas; Sonoridades africanas no Brasil oitocentista;

Abstract: The article provides an overview of the Black festivities and their forms,
adaptations, insertions and sounds, in the context of 19th century in Brazil, with an
emphasis on Bahia. The tensions surrounding the celebrations and gatherings of
blacks, enslaved and freed, between prohibition and permissiveness or even
encouragement, occur throughout that century in various phases, which sometimes
prove to be contradictory, depending on the instance of Power or its leadership. In
general, a certain division is seen from the outside, between the circle forms, like
batuques and sambas as amusements of Africans and descendants among
themselves, generally persecuted, defamed and repressed, and on the other hand,
the processions, cucumbis and congadas, which in general are described as
harmless, adapted, folkloric or childish in the view of White chroniclers, Who did
not understand the irage-oldsignificance in the Cosmo-vision, musicality and
rituality of these Africans, especially from Central Africa background.
Keywords: Black festivities in White territories; Batuques, cucumbis and
congadas; African sounds in 19th century in Brazil.

In eastern Jamaica live two distinct groups of people who characterize themselves as belonging to African nations.  The Windward Maroons, who are concentrated in the Johncrow Mountains and Blue Mountains of the interior, are descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped from plantations and formed their own alternative societies in the forest during the 17th and early 18th centuries.  The other African nation in this part of the island, known as the Bongo Nation, is dispersed across the coastal plains below the Blue Mountains.  They are descended primarily from indentured African laborers who arrived in Jamaica following the abolition of slavery in 1834.  The discussion focuses on how these two clearly distinct "nations," which have been in contact for well over a century, have used broad musical commonalities to bridge the many cultural differences that still exist between them.

The Aluku (also known as Boni) are one of the six present-day Maroon peoples living in Suriname and French Guiana (the others being the Saamaka, Ndyuka, Matawai, Pamaka, and Kwinti). The ancestors of the Aluku escaped from Dutch slave plantations on the coast of Suriname during the 18 th century and built new Afro-American societies and cultures in the interior forest that have survived until today. Their music and dance traditions are among the most African in the Americas. In 2018, the Aluku heritage of music and dance was registered in France' s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage (a precondition for official recognition by UNESCO). The author was invited to the Aluku territory in 2019 to participate in the celebration of this honor and to discuss the recordings of traditional Aluku music he made there as part of a long-term anthropological and ethnomusicological study that began in 1984. This contribution is an expanded version of the talk he gave on that occasion. It discusses the role of several Aluku music and dance genres in traditional social life in the past and reflects on changes to these traditions over the last few decades. It also addresses some of the challenges previous generations have faced-and the current younger generation continues to face-in attempting to maintain the integrity of this cultural heritage following the incorporation of the Aluku territory into the French state in 1969.

This article explores the ways in which less fashionable, less mobile immigrants– agricultural and service sector workers, the undocumented, the refuge and asylum seekers – create bulwarks of support in order to solidify their footing in the most transient moments of their lives. Specifically, I address the ways in which second- and third-generation children of those less mobile immigrants reference and resignify old – almost obsolete – technologies, as well as embarrassingly kitschy ‘Africa’ ephemera that their parents brought with them in an attempt to refashion our ownplaces in the world. These diasporic, ‘semi-politan’ generations amalgamate old technologies – through which their parents transported and archived fragments of home – with digital technologies. They reframe and reutilise this ephemera – evidence of loss, longing and lack of mobility – in order to redefine, rewrite, and resound selfhoods. In particular, I focus on the ways in which the mixtape, containing pop music, recordings of performed (or oral) poetry, and sermons by beloved imams and preachers, became pathways along which subsequent generations relocate selfhood, and how thesounds that older generations carried with them infiltrate the ways new generations situate themselves in the world.

The so-called West African standard pattern<2212221>is a ubiquitous rhythm that serves as a temporal reference for dozens of genres across the Black Atlantic. But this pattern also appears in rotated versions—i.e. with other onsets of the pattern perceived as the reference point. This occurs in specific traditional genres (e.g. Nigerian Yoruba drumming <2212212>) and in experimental Afro-diasporic musics (e.g. “Das Arabias,” [Orkestra Rumpilezz, 2016] <1222122>). In fact, some musicians deliberately aim to increase rhythmic complexity by using various types of rotations of the pattern (Diaz 2017). How do musicians and audiences who are familiar with the standard pattern in its version <2212221>react when the point of reference is shifted in time? This paper engages this question from an empirical standpoint with three psychological experiments on rhythm realized in Ghana. The experiments measure perceived, metric, and performance complexity of the standard pattern in its 12 possible rotations and in three contexts: the rhythm alone, and in conjunction with a 12/8 and a 3/2 pulse. The results are compared to analysis of rhythmic complexity based on syncopation and metric strength (Agawu 2003, Diaz 2017). The paper argues that that familiarity with the “base” rotation <2212221> is crucial to studying rhythmic complexity of other rotations of the pattern.

Key Words: Timeline-music, West African Standard Pattern, Rhythmic Complexity, Empirical Analysis, Black Atlantic