African influence on American music

Travel Cote d’Ivoire: Armchair Edition

Kora

On July 31st, Disney+ released Beyoncé’s Black is King, her musical film that was accompanied by the soundtrack to the live action Lion King. The film was completely influenced by African culture from the styles and colors, to the people and animals. The album itself is rich with African artists who bring some Afro beat into the hit maker’s mix.

This homage to the roots of modern Black culture, especially music, made me think of a much older connection between American music and Africa: The Blues.

Djembé

Heard in the early 1900’s on street corners and vaudeville tents throughout the south, history explains the blues were discovered by W.C. Handy when he heard a “down-and-out guitar player at a train station…sliding a knife along the strings of his guitar and singing about ‘going where the southern cross the dog.’”

However, the blues have far deeper roots, with slaves in levee camps, logging camps and plantations utilizing their oral verse tradition in poetic call-and-response “field hollers” to buoy spirits and communicate across distances in the 1870s-1890s.

Balafon

A mingling of diverse cultures, the rhythms of Africa found their way to instruments such as the American drum, fiddle and xylophone, which share similarities to instruments found in African culture such as Djembé, Kora & Balafon.

Most notable are the “scoops and bent notes,” expressive notes and pitch inflections, and the 12-bar form, which did not conform to European music tradition of the time. Early recordings of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” and Bessie Smith’s “Black Mountain Blues,” are often cited as examples of early blues. For an in-depth study, blues scholars Lynn Abbot and Doug Seroff have authored “The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American Vaudeville” (hardcover: Feb 27, 2017).

For a modern representation of the African influence on Blues, check out the album Kulanjan by Taj Mahal & Toumani Diabate, or Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder’s Talking Timbuktu.

Meanwhile, we’ll be over here just Boogie Chillen’. 

We hope you’re enjoying our weekly blogposts featuring African tradition, news and travel stories. Although the pandemic has postponed our CI tour plans, we continue to work with our CI partners and plan our post-pandemic (vaccinated) tour.

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