Music of the African diaspora
Encyclopedia
Much of the music of the African diaspora was refined and developed during the period of slavery. Slaves did not have easy access to instruments, so vocal work took on new significance. Through chants and work songs people of African descent preserved elements of their African heritage while inventing new genres of music. The culmination of this great sublimation of musical energy in to vocal work can be seen in genres as disparate as Gospel Music
and Hip-Hop. The music of the African diaspora makes frequent use of ostinato
, a motif or phrase which is persistently repeated at the same pitch. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody. The banjo
is a direct decedent of the Akonting
created by the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. Hence, the melodic traditions of the African diaspora are probably most alive in Blues
and Jazz
.
s, a form of social club among African slaves brought to the island. Traditional Afro-Cuban styles, include son
, Batá
and yuka and Rumba
.
, (a type of folk music
now more closely associated with The Bahamas
), the quadrille
(a European dance) and work song
s were the primary forms of Jamaican music at the beginning of the 20th century. These were synthesized into mento
music, which spread across the island. In the 20th century influences from the United States were fused to create the uniquely Jamaican forms dancehall
and ska
. Subsequent styles include reggae
, rocksteady
and raggamuffin.
musical cultures are largely based on the music of African slaves
brought by European traders and colonizers. The African music
al elements are a hybrid of instruments and styles from numerous West Africa
n tribes, while the European slaveholders added their own musics into the mix, as did immigrants from India.
The ex-British colonies
include Trinidad and Tobago
, whose calypso
style is an especially potent part of the music of the other former British colonies, which also share traditions like the Big Drum
dance. Trinidadian folk calypso is found throughout the area, as are African-Caribbean religious music styles like the Shango
music of Trinidad. Calypso's early rise was closely connected with the adoption of Carnival by Trinidadian slaves, including camboulay drumming and the music masquerade processions. In the 1970s, a calypso variant called soca
arose, characterized by a focus on dance rhythms rather than lyricism. Soca has since spread across the Caribbean and abroad.
Steel drums are a distinctively Trinidadian ensemble that evolved from improvised percussion instruments used in Carnival processions. Steel bands were banned by the British colonial authorities. Nevertheless, steel drums spread across the Caribbean, and are now an entrenched part of the culture of Trinidad and Tobago
.
The French islands
of Martinique and Guadeloupe share the popular zouk
style and have also had extensive musical contact with the music of Haiti
, itself once a French colony though not part of the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch colonies
of Curaçao
, Bonaire and Aruba share the combined rhythm
popular style. The islands also share a passion for kaseko
, a genre of Surinamese music
; Suriname and its neighbors Guyana
and French Guiana
share folk and popular styles that are connected enough to the Antilles and other Caribbean islands that both countries are studied in the broader context of Antillean or Caribbean music.
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
and Hip-Hop. The music of the African diaspora makes frequent use of ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
, a motif or phrase which is persistently repeated at the same pitch. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody. The banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
is a direct decedent of the Akonting
Akonting
The akonting is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa...
created by the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. Hence, the melodic traditions of the African diaspora are probably most alive in Blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
.
Cuba and Latin music in the Caribbean
The roots of most Cuban musical forms lie in the cabildoCabildo
Cabildo can refer to:* Cabildo , a former Spanish municipal administrative unit governed by a council* Cabildo , African ethnic associations in colonial Cuba* Cabildo , an Argentine nationalist Catholic magazine...
s, a form of social club among African slaves brought to the island. Traditional Afro-Cuban styles, include son
Son (music)
The Son cubano is a style of music that originated in Cuba and gained worldwide popularity in the 1930s. Son combines the structure and elements of Spanish canción and the Spanish guitar with African rhythms and percussion instruments of Bantu and Arará origin...
, Batá
Bata
Bata or Baťa or Baţa or Batá may refer to:* Bata Shoes , a multinational corporation-Places:* Bat, Afghanistan, a place in Afghanistan* Bata, a commune in Arad County, Romania...
and yuka and Rumba
Cuban Rumba
In Cuban music, Rumba is a generic term covering a variety of musical rhythms and associated dances. The rumba has its influences in the music brought to Cuba by Africans brought to Cuba as slaves as well as Spanish colonizers...
.
Jamaica
Early forms of African-Caribbean music in Jamaica was JunkanooJunkanoo
Junkanoo is a street parade with music, which occurs in many towns across The Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands every Boxing Day , New Year's Day and, more recently, in the summer on the island of Grand Bahama. The largest Junkanoo parade happens in Nassau, the capital...
, (a type of folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
now more closely associated with The Bahamas
The Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...
), the quadrille
Quadrille
Quadrille is a historic dance performed by four couples in a square formation, a precursor to traditional square dancing. It is also a style of music...
(a European dance) and work song
Work song
A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a specific form of work, either sung while conducting a task or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song....
s were the primary forms of Jamaican music at the beginning of the 20th century. These were synthesized into mento
Mento
Mento is a style of Jamaican folk music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music. It has its roots in calypso and other Jamaican folk music. Mento typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums, and the rhumba box — a large mbira in the...
music, which spread across the island. In the 20th century influences from the United States were fused to create the uniquely Jamaican forms dancehall
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...
and ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
. Subsequent styles include reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, rocksteady
Rocksteady
Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor to ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, The Maytals and The Paragons. The term rocksteady comes from a dance style that was mentioned in the Alton...
and raggamuffin.
Lesser Antilles
As is the case throughout the Caribbean, Lesser AntilleanLesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...
musical cultures are largely based on the music of African slaves
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
brought by European traders and colonizers. The African music
Music of Africa
Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions....
al elements are a hybrid of instruments and styles from numerous West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n tribes, while the European slaveholders added their own musics into the mix, as did immigrants from India.
The ex-British colonies
British colonization of the Americas
British colonization of the Americas began in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia and reached its peak when colonies had been established throughout the Americas...
include Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...
, whose calypso
Calypso music
Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...
style is an especially potent part of the music of the other former British colonies, which also share traditions like the Big Drum
Big Drum
Big Drum is a genre and a musical instrument from the Windward Islands. It is a kind of Caribbean music, associated mostly closely with the music of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Carriacou in Grenada and in the music of Saint Kitts and Nevis.-Carriacou:...
dance. Trinidadian folk calypso is found throughout the area, as are African-Caribbean religious music styles like the Shango
Shango
In the Yorùbá religion, Sàngó is perhaps one of the most popular Orisha; also known as the god of fire, lightning and thunder...
music of Trinidad. Calypso's early rise was closely connected with the adoption of Carnival by Trinidadian slaves, including camboulay drumming and the music masquerade processions. In the 1970s, a calypso variant called soca
Soca music
Soca is a style of music from Trinidad and Tobago. Soca is a musical development of traditional Trinidadian calypso, through loans from the 1960s onwards from predominantly black popular music....
arose, characterized by a focus on dance rhythms rather than lyricism. Soca has since spread across the Caribbean and abroad.
Steel drums are a distinctively Trinidadian ensemble that evolved from improvised percussion instruments used in Carnival processions. Steel bands were banned by the British colonial authorities. Nevertheless, steel drums spread across the Caribbean, and are now an entrenched part of the culture of Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...
.
The French islands
French colonial empires
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
of Martinique and Guadeloupe share the popular zouk
Zouk
Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe & Martinique. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the...
style and have also had extensive musical contact with the music of Haiti
Music of Haiti
The music of Haiti is influenced mostly by Europe, colonial ties, and African migration through slavery. European musical influence derived primarily from the French and by the Spanish-infused influence of Cuba and the bordering Dominican Republic. Styles unique to Haiti include music derived from...
, itself once a French colony though not part of the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch colonies
Dutch colonization of the Americas
Dutch trading posts and plantations in the Americas precede the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. Whereas the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 , the first forts and settlements on the Essequibo river in Guyana and on the Amazon date from the 1590s...
of Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, Bonaire and Aruba share the combined rhythm
Combined rhythm
Combined rhythm is a style of popular Dutch Antillean music, influenced by zouk, merengue and soca. The lyrics of combined rhythm are generally in the local Papiamento language.- Performers :*Gibu i su Orkesta*Expresando Rimto i Ambiente*OK Band...
popular style. The islands also share a passion for kaseko
Kaseko
Kaseko is a musical genre from Suriname, a fusion of African, European and American styles. The term kaseko derives from casser le corps which referred to a swift dance during the period when slavery was legal in the region...
, a genre of Surinamese music
Music of Suriname
The music of Suriname is well known for kaseko music, and for having an Indo-Caribbean tradition.-Kaseko:Kaseko is probably derived from the French expression casser le corps , which was used during slavery to indicate a very swift dance. Kaseko is a fusion of numerous popular and folk styles...
; Suriname and its neighbors Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
and French Guiana
French Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...
share folk and popular styles that are connected enough to the Antilles and other Caribbean islands that both countries are studied in the broader context of Antillean or Caribbean music.
Arab world
- Liwa (music)Liwa (music)Līwa is a traditional dance performed in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, mainly in communities of descendants of East Africans from the Swahili Coast...
and Fann at-TanburaFann at-TanburaFann aṭ-Ṭanbūra is a traditional music and dance genre in the Persian Gulf Arab states, especially Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Musically, the tanbura instrument plays a central role, along with several drums and the manjur -- an instrument made of several goat hooves wrapped around the waist of the...
, performed in Arab states of the Persian GulfArab states of the Persian Gulf"Arab states of the Persian Gulf" or "Arab Persian Gulf states" or "Persian Gulf Arab states" or "Arabic Persian Gulf states" or "Arab States of The Gulf", are terms that refer to the six Arab states of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, bordering the Persian Gulf....
. Mizmar (dance)Mizmar (dance)Mizmar is the name of a folkloric dance native to the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. The dance involves moving while twirling a bamboo cane, to the music of drums. The dance and music have strong African influences...
performed in the HejazHejazal-Hejaz, also Hijaz is a region in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia. Defined primarily by its western border on the Red Sea, it extends from Haql on the Gulf of Aqaba to Jizan. Its main city is Jeddah, but it is probably better known for the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina...
region of Saudi ArabiaSaudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
.