Jazz for aficionados

O-10, once you backed off of "it was all gone, nothing remained" and went with "it was significantly depleted," my objections to your theory have turned more "meh."

One nagging thought:

You seem to assume that villages averaging 100 inhabitants were totally wiped out by the slave trade.  I'm skeptical because I think sellers and buyers weren't into rounding up every inhabitant (including frail older folks, infants that were unlikely to survive the voyage, and the physically disfigured).  This was Capitalism at its most vicious, and limited ship capacity meant exporting only the more marketable subjects.  If you have evidence that it was common for entire villages to be taken and thus wiped out, I'm all ears.

This all suggests some degree of survival of music and dance traditions throughout sub-Saharan Africa in spite of the horrors of the slave trade, perhaps explaining why we can still listen to current music and know we're hearing centuries of musical culture that was in place long before Europeans arrived.

Phildbasket, welcome to our group. Phil, since this thread began we have included, along with jazz, every subject under the Sun.  The best way to play that is to simply ignore subjects you don’t want to get into and just respond to jazz.


That album by Ahmad Jamal has been well reviewed on this thread and given the highest rating.

I like her version of "Fly Me To The Moon",


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


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jSlDqHqNOM


That CD is on my order list; thanks for the recommendation.

Keegiam, it will not come as a surprise that I agree with what you wrote and this is not intended to pile on against O-10’s theories on the matter. I’ve done plenty of that already because I simply don’t agree with a premise that, as you suggest, defies logic and to me is inaccurate and incomplete at best. It is a fascinating topic that actually deserves more accuracy since it is actually quite relevant to the subject and history of this thread, Jazz. Ironically, and inaccurately, the universally accepted idea that the influence of African musical tradition is one of the key ingredients of Jazz has been staunchly denied by O-10 and another participant here on many occasions. Ironically, this opposing view is in direct contradiction to the much more accurate premise discussed now that those traditions were transplanted to Brazil where they became part of the cultural mix that created “Brazilian music“. Why anyone would think that the same would not happen in America is a mystery to me. Of course, it did happen.

Personally, I think that a closer look at all this is important because the music and the culture of a people deserve a more complete and honest look and not one romanticized by unverifiable personal notions and incomplete “facts“. A very interesting actual fact is that in many African cultures there is no word for “music” or “dance”. One of the main reasons that the way this topic is being discussed here is incomplete at best is that it is being discussed through a Western lens and a Western theoretical framework. Our notion of what music and dance are is a Western abstraction and in many ways is not applicable to a discussion of African music since “music” in Africa was inextricably linked to every day life and utilitarian in nature in many ways.

The idea that there were 120,000 different African rhythms is....well, to quote O-10, “I don’t want to be offensive”; but, then, I don’t have the musical acumen to be able to identify 120,000 different rhythms ☺️. I am reminded of driving North through Portugal to cross the border into Spain’s North Western tip in order to visit distant relatives in the small town of Verin where my maternal grandfather was born. It was fascinating to experience how at every stop along the way from Lisbon to Verin the Portuguese language literally morphed closer and closer to Spanish until just over the border in Verin it was identifiable as Spanish. With many remnants of Portuguese still, but (obviously) still using the same alphabet and syntax . This is probably very similar to what happened from village to village in Africa. The rhythms (inextricably linked to language) in the various villages in Africa while having different “accents” or even being different dialects shared the same “alphabet” and “syntax”. They survived.

As always, O-10, I appreciate your passion for all this and I hope there can be disagreement without drama.

"Ironically, and inaccurately, the universally accepted idea that the influence of African musical tradition is one of the key ingredients of Jazz has been staunchly denied by O-10 and another participant here"

Frogman’s statement is not universally accepted nor does it jibe with anybody who has ears for music. Clearly, African music can be heard all over the Caribbean and South America, but not in the United States of America; Why is that?

Give me just one example of music that is clearly African in origin, during, or just after slavery? Why does African music exist everywhere that slaves were sold except here?



Music was a way for slaves to express their feelings whether it was sorrow, joy, inspiration or hope. Songs were passed down from generation to generation throughout slavery. These songs were influenced by African and religious traditions and would later form the basis for what is known as “Negro Spirituals”.


That’s what was in "Google". Has anyone been to Africa and heard them sing "Negro Spirituals"? Has anyone heard anything from Africa that sounded like "Negro Spirituals"?



Negro Spirituals are the songs of Africans imported to the US and stripped of everything including their dignity and their culture. They were given the King. James version of the Bible and told to pray. That’s why all of those "Negro Spirituals" refer to stuff out of the Bible. If they were African songs, they would refer to stuff out of Africa.


Since this argument can be audibly refuted, I will give you an example of African music, and let you compare that to "Negro Spirituals" and see if you hear any resemblance.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8tXMEe30ZM


I even tried to find something as close to Western music as possible, all the music in my collection is extreme African with absolutely no resemblance to most music here.



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



I even tried to help your case Frogman with the music, but I don’t think I succeeded; nothing about this "Negro Spiritual" sounds African to me.

O-10, it runs much deeper than that and I have previously given you several specific examples of, among other things, the origin of “blue notes” in Jazz, the origin of the idea of “call and response” in music, the origin of “swing feel” as it is defined in Jazz; all with roots in African musical tradition.  Theshe concepts are most certainly universally accepted. Read any authoritative musicological text, tome, book, treatise...whatever, for ample explanation and evidence; not to mention, the opinions of just about every Jazz musician that has been discussed here. Those opinions are well represented as well. Influence as part of the cultural mix, just as in Brazil. Influence, O-10, INFLUENCE.

Anyway, I’m moving on.