Topic: West African Music and Country Blues

[doctorpep]

I'm going to try to ask these questions without sounding like an idiot, but I have no knowledge of musical theory or chords or notes, so it will be difficult. Which West African musicians (who have recorded material) are supposedly the roots of the Country Blues? I just listened to Ali Farka Toure's son play some beautiful guitar on Youtube, but the music sounded a lot more like James "Blood" Ulmer than like Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Lemon, etc. I understand that Otha Turner's Fife & Drum tradition is related to West African music, but how do the Country Blues records of the '20s and early '30s relate to Toure and son and musicians from Mali? I saw "The Blues" documentary (the seven part series) and felt that the musicians from Mali were great, but I didn't feel that Corey Harris' covers of Blues classics, or the original versions of the songs he covers, related to traditional West African music. Also, considering the influence of European Classical music, not to mention American Blues, Rock and Jazz, how in the world can we possibly know what traditional West African music sounds like in its "pure" form (hate to use that word, guys; sorry!). I should probably say, "How in the world are we supposed to know what traditional West African music sounds like, without the influence of the Occidental world?" I'm purposely posting this under "Other Musical Interests" because I realize that I'm rambling on and on and have no knowledge of music. Perhaps there is a specific Lomax recording of West African stringed music that I should listen to, followed by a specific Country Blues artist or song, or is this just naive and insane? I hate to say it, but I have yet to make the connection that everyone seems to be talking about. Perhaps it is only the general population that speaks of this connection, and we here at WeenieCampbell.com recognize that this type of work is better left to musicologists and historians? Once again, I'm only knowledgeable about musicians' biographies and song lyrics, so if you guys would tell me about the musical (notes, chords, scales) relationship between West African music and some of the Country Blues artists we know, it'd help me greatly. I feel as if I'm unable to ask my question properly, and also that this connection is an issue which is often talked about in documentaries but not explored in-depth. Thank you (and please take it easy on me!)

[Norfolk Slim]

Thats not so  much a question, as the basis for a thesis...

Paul Oliver has done some work on this type of thing.  At a previous EBA week, he gave a fascinating lecture on the subject.  The essence of it, as I understood it,was that it was very much the tribal music- the complex rhythms and the largely very simple wailing melodies which give the closest apparent connection.  He explained that in fact it was the music of the inland tribes from particular areas that are most relevant, as the coastal tribes actually rounded up their inland rivals to sell / trade to the white men as slaves.

He had some quite eery sound recordings of tribal chants and rhythms from those areas that many of the southern slaves came from and played next to the field hollers and fife and drum stuff, you could really hear the connection.

What I dont think one can really hear, is a direct connection with the more harmonic and melodically complex west african music that we might hear now and what became the blues.

All the above is said with the caveat that the lecture was some years ago now, and my knowledge and technical knowhow about this subject is almost nil:-)

[Parlor Picker]

A couple of thoughts on this:

When I first heard Ali Farka Tour? a good number of years ago, commentators kept going on about the fact that he sounded like John Lee Hooker.  I didn't buy this, and in fact heard more Skip James and Blind Willie Johnson in his music.  I promoted a concert with Ali the first time he came to the UK and talking to him, it was evident he was infuenced by the likes of Hooker (in other words the influence going in the opposite direction across the Atlantic) as he had heard plenty of American artists on the radio and on record.  He said to him Hooker sounded like he was from the Tamashek tribe.  Ali sang in Tamashek, as well as about 10 other African languages.  I communicated with him in French, but his English was already coming along fine.  African people are often fantastic linguists, but think nothing of it, as it comes from necessity and seems a natural thing to them.

When UK slide guitarist Kevin Brown met kora-player Moussa Kouyate, he expected to have plenty in common with him musically, given that blues was supposedly originally derived from West African music.  In fact, he found he had almost nothing in common with him and had to totally adapt his style of playing and learn Moussa's music in order to be able to play with him.  The resulting concerts and CD ("Kora Blues" on Kevin's own Doo-Dah label - see www.mykevinbrown.com) were well worth Kevin's efforts, as they produced some beautiful music, but not blues by any stretch of the imagination.

[Bunker Hill]

FWIW, in 1970 Paul Oliver had published as a blues paperback "Savannah Syncopators:African Retentions on the Blues" (with accompanying LP). This was republished by Cambridge UP in 2001 as a chapter (p. 11-142) in the compendium, "Yonder Come The Blues.

[dj]

Gerhard Kubik also addresses this topic in his article "Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism in the Blues: An Africanist Perspective", which appears in Ramblin' On My Mind: New Perspectives On The Blues (David Evans, ed.).  I've already said a bit about this article and my feelings on the origins of the blues in the forum discussion of this book.  Click on the David Evans tag and go to the end of page 2 if you're interested.   

[Bunker Hill]

FWIW, in 1970 Paul Oliver had published as a blues paperback "Savannah Syncopators:African Retentions on the Blues" (with accompanying LP).

The LP notes can be read at http://www.wirz.de/music/darbyfrm.htm by scrolling down to 1970

[Mr.OMuck]

You can learn a lot by looking at maps and following fish. Two books I've read recently have given me some fresh perspectives on cultural transmission" 1421 the year China discovered America, and The Little Ice Age.
In one we learn that China the greatest empire on earth in the fifteenth century, attempted to colonize or at least start settlements on every continent and at least succeeded in leaving genetic, cultural and I strongly suspect, musical markers wherever they settled, which includes South America, North America and Africa. In the other, that a rapid drop in temperature froze waters south of Iceland and drove Cod south and west where Europeans were bound to follow and thus inevitably encounter North America.
Lately I've been listening to a Chinese music show on WKCR Columbia University's radio station, and have been astonished by the similarity I've heard in some of it to certain Appalachian music. I don't really believe in coincidences or natural affinities to certain musical structures so my mind went immediately to where exposure might have occurred. Certainly during the nineteenth century when American rural music was taking on the familiar forms we know today there could have exposure through Chinese railroad workers. But if we turn back the clock to Genghis Khan's time we have the possibility of one of the largest cultural transmissions in history. We know for certain that Genghis left a huge genetic footprint in his wake , its logical to assume that all of Asia and all of Eastern Europe into Russia were probably also musically influenced.
It gets to be a pretty twisted trail. One of the most interesting verifiable Africa-America transmission stories is Solomon Linda's original Songbirds version of Mbube, popularly known as Wimmoweh or The Lion Sleeps tonight. This song, in the original version, features an African musician playing an American Banjo! How? Well evidently some early twentieth century promoter brought an American Minstrel show to South Africa where local musicians became enamored of the updated version of one of their traditional instruments and acquired one to use on this recording. Pretty wild huh? There are African recordings I've seen on various compilations, the Sam Charters one I think has been mentioned that make the African- Blues connection pretty clear, but in my opinion its what happened next, the accumulation and integration of other influences that is the really interesting and mostly undocumented part of the story. Was there a common thread in African and Irish music for instance that originated in Asia?

[Bald Melon Jefferson]

Don?t know what the more contemporary Malian recording artists are up to but?.

  Having just returned from 2 weeks in Mali, having no previous study of West African music, (Keep in mind I say this all as a simple tourist, not a musicologist)...my own very unscholarly observation is that the traditional music on the streets and in the villages I heard ( and you hear it every day & everywhere) whether it be kora, gnoni, balophone (balafon?), guitar, whistle or a battery of drums accompanying a female chorus?.. is almost without exception a simple melody?5 -7notes or so continuously repeated over a steady rhythm without intro, bridge, outro, or perceived chord change. In that I could understand the John Lee Hooker comparisons.  That and the inherent fashon sense/coolness factor......


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[lindy]

Lately I've been listening to a Chinese music show on WKCR Columbia University's radio station, and have been astonished by the similarity I've heard in some of it to certain Appalachian music.

O'Muck me laddie,

The exact title of the documentary escapes me, but I think it's something very straightforward like "The Chieftains in China." The Irish band was one of the first to do a cultural exchange trip to the Motherland as it was starting to open up to the West. There's a section of the film that talks about similarities between Celtic (one mother of Appalachian) and Chinese music.

DJ mentioned Gerhard Kubik, who wrote a generally inpenetratable book called "Africa and the Blues," published by some university press. The CD that comes with it is good for its field recordings that clearly indicate the roots of what we recognize as blues. The border between north and sub-Saharan Africa seems to be a particularly rich source, but as O'Muck notes, the roots are from all over the map.

When I was doing the public radio thing, one time I found a record whose producer had interspliced two field recordings, one of an Angola Penitentiary inmate and one of a Senegalese farmer. The inmate's song was your basic descending line, "The bluuuuues ain't nothin' but a good wooooo-man feeling bad" (different lyrics, though). It was the same melody sung by the Senegalese farmer, who (according to the liner notes) was lamenting the fact that if the cassava crop wasn't good that year he wouldn't be able to marry his beloved. We've all been there. Sorry to give you this tease without being able to give the specifics of the LP, but it's not in easy reach as I write.

This is going to be a fantastic Port Townsend workshop if you're into this stuff: the faculty includes Cheick Hamala Diabete for his second visit, and first-time visits from Moussa Konate and Mohamed Kouyate. Yeeoooowwwza!

Lindy

(ps I went to the Centrum site to get the right spelling for Moussa and discovered that the Country Blues page has a ton of new stuff on it, lots of video and links to interviews with past faculty. I didn't hang around very long, but y'all may be interested in taking a peek if you haven't been there for a while.)

[Coyote Slim]

I have a large collection of mostly West African music, much of it Malian, so here's my three cents:

Griot music is not the root of the blues, nor is traditional African drumming.  HOWEVER, the cultural musical ideas that are found in those musics can also be found in blues, and this is most likely due to cultural transmission over time and distance.  Other West African traditional musics do sound in some ways like some blues:  for instance music from the Wassoulou in Mali (a group of people whose origin is the Fulani/Peul but who speak a Mande language if I remember what I've read correctly).  Music from the Peul themselves often sounds a lot like blues, as does traditional Sonrai music (Ali Farka Toure was a Sonrai who played music from both of these peoples) and sometimes Tamashek (Tuareg) music.  Music from the Fouta Touro region of Senegal -- Peul or a related people again, I think -- such as the music Mansour Seck plays, also sounds a lot like blues.  The banjo originated in West Africa, where similar instruments are variously called hoddu or ngoni depending on what language people speak.  There is also a one-string gourd fiddle that many different peoples play in West Africa that has a great blues sound.  Other musics from other parts of Africa also can sound bluesy, for instance I once heard some Ethiopian music that I first mistook to be a recording played backwards of a blues man playing the banjo.

But despite these musics sounding a hell of a lot like some blues, particularly blues played by "primitive" players like Robert Pete Williams, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, they are different in content and structure.

My thoughts on this are that no one can point to a single source in West Africa and say "that is where the blues came from."  Instead musical ideas from different traditions came over with the enslaved Africans.  These included the banjo, different drum traditions, and concepts about sound such as different scales and tones not to be found in classical European music.  In the US most drum traditions were wiped out, while some survived in various forms in the Caribbean and South America, usually in African-derived religious settings.  The blues was formed in the US by oppressed people exposed to African musical ideas, and so is "African-American."  It also came out of European musical ideas and possibly American Indian ones (I remain unconvinced about this, but the blues or blues-influenced music have certainly been played by people of all colors since its creation).  Bukka White said that "the blues come from behind a mule" -- in other words that blues came from field hollers and hard work.  I think that there has been an over-emphasis on blues being straight from Africa, without the acknowledgment of the influence of European folk music on it -- particularly Irish, Scottish, and Anglo-Saxon.  As a comparison, look at some other music that developed out of the meeting of Europe and Africa -- like Cajun/Creole and Zydeco.  It's pretty easy to see the influence of French ideas in Canray Fontenot's sound, so I don't know why anyone would say that Charley Patton was playing strictly African music.

As for O'muck's Mongolian hypothesis:  I don't know about that.  But certainly West African music and culture has been influenced by Islam, and the Islamic world was exposed to the Mongolian sphere.

[Mr.OMuck]

and all of Eastern Europe into Russia

Obviously its the other way 'round coming from the east. Sorry.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I like your balanced approach very much, Coyote Slim, and would add that I don't see how recordings made comtemporaneously with blues recordings, or after blues recordings, can be deemed to show the roots of blues, since anything done since the advent of recordings is susceptible to being influenced by other recordings. Another influence on Blues that I've not seen mentioned yet are hymns, both of the African American Spiritual variety and the various Protestant denomination hymns sung by white Americans.  Probably as big an influence on Blues, and in particular Blues harmony, as anything is Pop Music, i.e., music created by professional composers, black and white, for the popular market.
all best,
Johnm

[doctorpep]

I want to thank everyone for answering my complex question with equally complex and fascinating answers. I'm going to re-read this thread many times, simply because there is so much to take in. To me, this thread is one of the most meaningful and interesting that I've ever come across on this site, and that's really saying something.

Mr. O'Muck, for what it's worth, in an Asian American Studies class I took, we watched a film starring a young Chow Yun-Fat (of all people!), who played a recent immigrant from rural China. His character had recently arrived in New York City. When he heard Americans playing banjo and violin, he commented that it sounded like "Chinese funeral music".

[oddenda]

lindy -

          The "A & B"ing of the two hollers is a Lomax creation that I first heard off of a New World LP back in the vinyl day. As I used to tell my students, "None of this shit is 'pure', and cross-fertilization is the norm." Folks love to pinch stuff from other folks... it's a trait of Homo sapiens!! CAVEAT: W.E. also have a tendency to hear what we want to hear.

          The main point of SAVANNAH SYNCOPATORS is that while the slaves were SHIPPED from western African locations, that doesn't mean that the PEOPLE were. Paul indicates that most came from further inland, the savannah or plains region towards the center and north, were taken to western locations by the Black slave traders and sold to European slave shippers from there.

Peter B.

[Brookeswebs]

Hay,

heeso is here. Sorry i dont know about this topic.please guide me more.thanks