Desperatly seeking Islamic sources for American vernacular music
zajal
hail from a West African language?" [http://slate.msn.com/id/2110811/]
linguist Jesse Sheidlower comments on the disturbing media trend of
finding African roots in all kinds of American music. "Wolof" is a
West African language.
I say, "disturbing" because it trivializes the genuine and critical
contributions of African American culture, without which we would not
have ragtime, blues, jazz, rock and roll, salsa, and soul.
This is a bandwagon that is becoming overloaded with trendy
journalists, but it is hardly limited to them. Harvard black studies
icon Henry Louis Gates wrote in the pages of The New Yorker that "the
whites stole the music of black slaves and turned it into a commercial
form, called 'blackface minstrelsy,' from which they then got rich."
This is disingenuous on so many levels, and so misinterprets that
misunderstood phenomenon, that, as they say, it's not even wrong.
Moreover, it's reactionary and race-baiting instead of identifying the
class relationships which would inform the minstrels instead of
demonizing them.
These are johnny-come-lately careerists, who, without the easy
fabrication of word myths that have no basis in historical fact, would
be forced to do the actual work of digging up stuff. As Sheidlower
comments, "When it comes to word origins, plenty of picturesque
anecdotes get waved along without close scrutiny. (The Eskimos, I am
sorry to report, do not have a particularly large number of words for
snow.)"
The particular book he is shooting down is _Hip: The History_, of which
he comments, "Hip isn't the only word in this book that Leland
misattributes. He also asserts that many other words are of African
origin, among them dig, banjo, honky, jive, juke, and jazz. Of these,
only juke and banjo are likely to derive from African languages.
To continue...
"The African etymology of jazz was fabricated by a New York press agent
in 1917. And honky, also supposedly from Wolof, actually derives from
an African-American pronunciation of Hunky, a disparaging term for a
Hungarian laborer; its first recorded use as an insulting term for a
white person is found only in the 1950s, considerably too late for
African influence to be plausible. This linguistic sloppiness does no
one any favors. The African-American contribution to American
culture-and in particular the African-American linguistic
contribution to American popular culture-is robust enough without
reaching back to putative West African borrowings.
"The idea-retailed prominently in Leland's book, its flap copy, and
almost every review of it I've seen-that hip came from Wolof, a
language widely spoken in Senegal and The Gambia, was first advanced,
tentatively, in the late 1960s by David Dalby, a scholar of West
African languages. The word hipi, meaning "to open one's eyes," was the
putative source; Dalby also suggested West African sources for the
American slang words jive and dig. Over time, Dalby's proposal was
taken as fact by many people, particularly those who wanted to find
African origins for English words. Even obvious problems with the
etymology-such as the fact that Wolof does not generally use the
letter "h"-were ignored (the word in question is actually spelled
"xippi.").
"Leland cites as his source _Juba to Jive_, a 1994 dictionary of black
slang written by Clarence Major, which asserts that hip dates from the
1700s in American English. Major is a respected poet and critic, but
his dictionary is widely regarded by linguists and lexicographers as
poor-its etymologies baseless, its dates speculative at best-and no
one has ever discovered a historical example proving his claim about
hip. Leland does not mention more authoritative sources, such as the
Oxford English Dictionary, in which the earliest example of hip dates
from 1904."
This racist scholarly phenomenon is not limited to
linguistics/etymology. There is a current backlash of opinion -
possibly in response to American imperial adventurism in the Middle
East - which seeks to establish Muslim roots in black American cultural
institutions.
In "Muslim Roots of the Blues" (subtitled "The music of famous American
blues singers reaches back through the South to the culture of West
Africa" -
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/15/INGMC85SSK1.DTL>),
one Jonathan Curiel, a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer with zero
nosurvived into the American South. Amazingly enough, this extends to
claims that African Baptist churches are Islamic-influenced because
they face East (so does Chartres and Notre Dame), and that "the modern
guitar is a direct descendant of the oud, an Arabic lute that was
introduced to Europe during Spain's Muslim reign."
This is simply a fabrication. Here is what Grove's Dictionary or Music
says: "The earliest representations of the guitar shape in a
short-necked lute appeared in Central Asia in the 4th and 3rd centuries
BCE. From that time until the 4th century CE Central Asian lutes were
of many kinds; the guitar shape is found in examples dating from the
1st to the 4th century CE." In other words, several centuries before
the birth of Mohammed.
The fact that this article has no value as scholarship has not
prevented it from being reprinted by The New York Times Magazine, and
it is now to be found on American Muslim web pages everywhere.
This kind of thing is a pseudo-scientific attempt to co-opt by coloring
with wishful thinking and emotion a topic we are only beginning to
uderstand. We have a lot to learn about the Islamic role in Western
civilization, but it is not helped by muddying the waters.
zajal
Writing in the <blues> section of wikipedia, a writer named
'deeceevoice' says of it:
"Okay. I've read the link, and it doesn't really specifically address
the Islamic link in any substantive manner. It's just a general ragging
on certain, apparently, contested links between African and
African-American culture and accusing certain writers/commentators of
"black racism" because of their views -- a charge which is ... well,
I'll just say silly, off-the-wall and thoroughly obnoxious. The author
even makes a passing reference to blackface minstrelsy -- which I find
a bit curious. The article seems to be a general rant on several topics
against certain writers in generaal -- which I think weakens its
impact. (Byrd, I invite you to check out blackface, which I rewrote
extensively. Maybe you can talk trash about that one, too. :-p As for
this issue of Islamic influence, I'm still not convinced one way or the
other, and your, IMO, scattershot comments in the article, haven't made
a difference."
I'm going to assume that the writer is serious about scholarship, and
address his remarks with equal seriousness. Clearly, I've left too
much in short-hand. It's only fair to allow the article "Muslim Roots
of the Blues" to speak for itself, and my comments likewise.
This is difficult to do without italics, indentations, underlines, etc.
What I'll do instead is put my comments in caps. Here goes:
"Muslim Roots of the Blues" ("The music of famous American blues
singers reaches back through the South to the culture of West Africa")
by Jonathan Curiel, © 2004 San Francisco Chronicle
Sylviane Diouf knows her audience might be skeptical, so to demonstrate
the connection between Islam and American blues music, she'll play two
recordings: The Muslim call to prayer (the religious recitation that's
heard from mosques around the world), and "Levee Camp Holler" an early
type of blues song that first sprang up in the Mississippi Delta more
than 100 years ago.
***I GRANT THAT DR. DIOUF HAS FOUND AN EXAMPLE OF MUSLIM WORSHIP THAT
IS SIMILAR TO SLAVE SONG/FIELD HOLLER/BLUES. THE CONNECTION OF WEST
AFRICAN MUSIC IS ONE MANY SCHOLARS HAVE KNOWN AND TAUGHT FOR YEARS.
I'M LESS READY TO BELIEVE THAT IT PROVES WHAT SHE WISHES IT TO, A
CONNECTION TO ISLAM. IF THIS NEW IDEA IS WORTHY, IT NEEDS TO BE
PROVED.
"Levee Camp Holler" is no ordinary song. It's the product of ex-slaves
who worked moving earth all day in post-Civil War America. The version
that Diouf uses in presentations has lyrics that, like the call to
prayer, speak about a glorious God. ("Well, Lord, I woke up this
mornin', man, I feelin' bad . . . Well, I was thinkin' 'bout the good
times, Lord, I once have had.") But it's the song's melody and note
changes that closely parallel one of Islam's best-known refrains. As in
the call to prayer, "Levee Camp Holler" emphasizes words that seem to
quiver and shake in the reciter's vocal chords. Dramatic changes in
musical scales punctuate both "Levee Camp Holler" and the call to
prayer. A nasal intonation is evident in both.
***THIS IS INDEED TRUE OF MUSIC OF MOST OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, WHERE
MUSIC IS INTERWOVEN WITH WORSHIP, HISTORY, AND MYTH, IN THE SEAMLESS
FASHION OF COMMUNAL CULTURES. AMONG THE QUALITIES AFRICAN AMERICAN
MUSIC OWES TO AFRICAN TRIBAL PRACTICES ARE COMPLEXITY OF TIMBRE -
INCLUDING NASAL, RASPY, MOANED, QUIVERING, AS WELL AS SCALE CHANGES,
AND THE FLATTED FIFTH AND SEVENTH DESCRIBED LATER. THERE IS NOTHING
INTRINSICALLY ISLAMIC ABOUT IT.
"I did a talk a few years ago at Harvard where I played those two
things, and the room absolutely exploded in clapping, because (the
connection) was obvious," says Diouf, an author and scholar who is also
a researcher at New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture. "People were saying, 'Wow. That's really audible. It's really
there.' "
***HARVARD IS WHERE HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. HOLDS COURT, PREACHING A
REVISIONIST BLACK HISTORY OF WHICH I KNOW ONE PERTINENT MISINFORMED
FACT: HE HOLDS (AS HE WROTE IN A NEW YORKER ARTICLE FOUR YEARS AGO)
THAT "THE WHITES STOLE THE MUSIC OF BLACK SLAVES AND TURNED IT INTO A
COMMERCIAL FORM, CALLED 'BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY,' FROM WHICH THEY THEN
GOT RICH." THIS IS DISINGENUOUS ON SO MANY LEVELS, AND SO
MISINTERPRETS THAT MISUNDERSTOOD PHENOMENON, THAT, AS THEY SAY, IT'S
NOT EVEN WRONG. MOREOVER, IT'S REACTIONARY, RACE-BAITING INSTEAD OF
IDENTIFYING THE CLASS RELATIONSHIPS WHICH WOULD INFORM THE MINSTRELS
INSTEAD OF DEMONIZING THEM. SO CITING A SUCCESSFUL PRESENTATION IN AN
ENVIRONMENT SO HOSTILE TO LEGITIMATE SCHOLARSHIP DOES LITTLE TO
ENCOURAGE ME.
It's really there because of all the Muslim slaves from West Africa who
were taken by force to the United States for three centuries, from the
1600s to the mid-1800s. Upward of 30 percent of the African slaves in
the United States were Muslim, and an untold number of them spoke and
wrote Arabic, historians say now. Despite being pressured by slave
owners to adopt Christianity and give up their old ways, many of these
slaves continued to practice their religion and customs, or otherwise
melded traditions from Africa into their new environment in the
antebellum South. Forced to do menial, back-breaking work on
plantations, for example, they still managed, throughout their days, to
voice a belief in the God of the Quran. These slaves' practices
eventually evolved -- decades and decades later, parallel with
different singing traditions from Africa -- into the shouts and hollers
that begat blues music, historians believe.
***IS THERE ANY PERIOD EVIDENCE POINTING TO THAT? THERE IS CERTAINLY A
LOT OF EVIDENCE OF OTHER FORMS OF AFRICAN WORSHIP, PARTICULARLY
ANIMISM. WHY HAS THIS ISLAMIC HYPOTHESIS NOT BEEN DOCUMENTED BEFORE?
AND WHAT DOCUMENTS ARE BEING OFFERED NOW? (AS OPPOSED TO WISHFUL
SUPPOSITION.)
Another way that Muslim slaves had an indirect influence on blues
music: the instruments they played. Drumming (which was common among
slaves from the Congo and other non-Muslim regions of Africa) was
banned by white slave owners, who felt threatened by its ability to let
slaves communicate with each other and by the way it inspired large
gatherings of slaves. Stringed instruments (which were favored by
slaves from Muslim regions of Africa, where there's a long tradition of
musical storytelling) were generally allowed because slave owners
considered them akin to European instruments like the violin. So slaves
who managed to cobble together a banjo or other instrument (the
American banjo originated with African slaves) could play more widely
in public. This solo- oriented slave music featured elements of an
Arabic-Islamic song style that had been imprinted by centuries of
Islam's presence in West Africa, says Gerhard Kubik, an ethnomusicology
professor at the University of Mainz in Germany who has written the
most comprehensive book on Africa's connection to blues music ("Africa
and the Blues").
An influence on the blues
Kubik believes that many of today's blues singers unconsciously echo
these Arabic-Islamic patterns in their music. Using academic language
to describe this habit, Kubik writes in "Africa and the Blues" that
"the vocal style of many blues singers using melisma, wavy intonation,
and so forth is a heritage of that large region of West Africa that had
been in contact with the Arabic-Islamic world of the Maghreb since the
seventh and eighth centuries." (Melisma is the use of many notes in one
syllable; so, instead of a note that produces, say, a single sound of
"ah," you'd get a note that produces something like,
"ah-ahhhh-ahhh-ah-ah." Wavy intonation refers to a series of notes that
veer from major to minor scale and back again, something that's very
common in both blues music and in the Muslim call to prayer. The
Maghreb is the Arab-Muslim region of North Africa.)
Kubik summarizes his thesis this way: "Many traits that have been
considered unusual, strange and difficult to interpret by earlier blues
researchers can now be better understood as a thoroughly processed and
transformed Arabic-Islamic stylistic component."
***IF THAT'S TRUE, HOW DID VOUDON (VODOO) GET TO HAITI AND THE
CARIBBEAN? THERE IS NOTHING REMOTELY SIMILAR BETWEEN IT AND ISLAM.
The extent of this link between Islam and American blues music is still
being debated. Some scholars continue to insist there is no connection,
and many of today's best-known blues musicians would say their music
has little to do with a religion whose most extreme clerics regularly
deride the evils of Western pop music. Yet a growing body of evidence
-- gathered by academics like Kubik, and by others like Cornelia Walker
Bailey, a Georgia author whose great-great-great-great-grandfather was
a Georgia slave who prayed toward Mecca -- suggest a deep relationship
between slaves of Islamic descent and U. S. culture. To be sure, Muslim
slaves from West Africa were just one factor in the formation of
American blues music, but they were a factor, says Barry Danielian, a
trumpeter who's performed with Paul Simon, Natalie Cole and Tower of
Power.
Call to prayer
Danielian, who is Muslim, says non-Muslims find this connection hard to
believe because they don't know enough about Arabic or Islamic music.
The call to prayer and other Muslim recitations that were practiced by
American slaves had a musicality to them, just as these recitations
still do, even if they aren't thought of as music by Westerners,
Danielian says.
***CITATION OF RELIGIOUS CELEBRITIES DOES NOT CONSTITUTE EVIDENCE.
WOULD YOU CITE JOHN TRAVOLTA ON THE VALIDITY OF SCIENTOLOGY?
"I'm part of the Tijaniyya Sufi order, which is based in West and North
Africa," says Danielian, who lives in Jersey City, N.J. "And I know
that when we get together, especially when the cheikhs (leaders) come
and everybody gets together and there are hundreds of people and we do
the litanies, they're very musical. You hear what we as Americans would
call soulfulness or blues. That's definitely in there."
***THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME REWRITING OF HISTORY HERE. I THOUGHT ARAB
MUSLIMS, WHO WERE RENOWNED FOR SLAVE RAIDS, AND THE PRIMARY SUPPLIERS
FOR THE SLAVE TRADE, WERE VILLAINS IN THIS PIECE OF HISTORY; NOW WE'RE
HEARING THAT THE TRIBAL VICTIMS THEMSELVES WERE MUSLIMS. THE SLAVERS
WERE CAPTURING AND SELLING FELLOW MUSLIMS, THEN? (SEE ANOTHER
SCHOLAR'S COMMENTS AT THE END OF THIS POST.)
What Americans now think of as blues music developed in the 1890s and
early 1900s, in Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama. Blues music was an outgrowth of all the different music that
was then being performed in the South, from minstrels to street shows.
Early blues performers didn't recognize the music's African or Muslim
roots because, by then, the songs had more fully merged with white,
European music and had lost their obvious connections to a continent
that was 4,000 miles away. Also, by the turn of the 20th century, the
progeny of America's Muslim slaves had generally converted to
Christianity, either by force or circumstance. Among Southern blacks in
that period, there were few exponents of Islam. But as more scholars
like Diouf and Kubik research that period in history, they see plenty
of signs that weren't obvious 100 years ago.
Take the case of W.C. Handy, who earned the moniker "Father of the
Blues" for the way he formalized the music over a 40-year career of
writing songs and playing the cornet. In his autobiography, Handy
(whose parents were slaves) writes about a life-changing moment that
happened around 1903. Handy was sleeping at a train station in
Tutwiler, Miss., when "a lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced
plucking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his
feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of
the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the
guitar. ... The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me
instantly. . .. The singer repeated the line ("Goin' where the Southern
cross' the Dog") three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with
the weirdest music I had ever heard."
***UNFORTUNATELY, ONE CANNOT FIND A MUCH BIGGER FRAUD THAN W.C. HANDY,
WHO "EARNED" NOTHING. WITHOUT GOING INTO DETAIL OF HOW THIS SORRY LIAR
AND SELF-AGGRANDIZER STOLE JELLY ROLL MORTON'S REPUTATION (EVEN HIS
MAIN "ORIGINAL" CONTRIBUTION, ST. LOUIS BLUES, IS A THINLY DISGUISED
LIFT FROM THE OLD WHOREHOUSE TUNE, THE DREAM, WHICH I RECORDED WITH RY
COODER IN 1978) LET ME DIRECT YOU TO THE COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY,
_JELLY'S BLUES_ (REICH & GAINES, DA CAPO PRESS, 2003). WHILE YOU'RE AT
IT, YOU WILL LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRUE ROOTS OF THE BLUES.
Singing about everything
The song was about a nearby train station where different trains
intersected. As Handy noted in the autobiography (which was published
in 1941), "Southern Negroes sang about everything. Trains. Steamboats,
steam whistles, sledgehammers, fast women, mean bosses, stubborn mules
-- all became subjects for their songs. They accompany themselves on
anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical
effect, anything from a harmonica to a washboard. In this way, and from
these materials, they set the mood for what we now call the blues."
***AFRICAN TRIBAL CULTURE AGAIN. PEOPLE SING WHEN THEY WORK, PLAY,
WORSHIP, DANCE. THERE IS NOTHING ISLAMIC ABOUT IT WHATEVER; ON THE
CONTRARY IT DEFIES ISLAMIC PRACTICE IN MUCH OF THE WORLD, WHICH IS
SOMBER AND SERIOUS, WITH NO PARTICIPATORY SINGING WHATEVER.
While washboards, in fact, became popular among later blues musicians
such as Robert Brown (known as "Washboard Sam"), the technique that
Handy witnessed -- that of pressing a knife on guitar strings -- can be
traced to Central and West Africa, where, as Kubik points out in
"Africa and the Blues," people play one-string zithers that way. Handy
assumed the technique (which is now called "slide guitar") was borrowed
from Hawaiian guitar playing, but it's more likely that the itinerant
guitar player that Handy met in Tutwiler was manifesting his African
roots. Kubik has traveled to Africa many times for his research and has
lived there.
***WRONG AGAIN. HERE'S GROVE'S ONLINE DICTIONARY OF MUSIC (GROVE'S HAS
BEEN FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, THE FINAL AUTHORITY ON MUSIC, THE
MUSICAL EQUIVALENT OF THE OED): "AROUND 1830 MEXICAN CATTLE HERDERS
INTRODUCED THE GUITAR INTO HAWAII. THE HAWAIIANS TOOK UP THE INSTRUMENT
AND INCORPORATED IT INTO THEIR OWN MUSIC WITH APPROPRIATE 'SLACK
KEY' OR OPEN TUNING IN WHICH THE STRINGS ARE ALL TUNED TO THE NOTES
OF A MAJOR TRIAD. JOSEPH KEKUKU HAS USUALLY BEEN GIVEN CREDIT FOR
INTRODUCING THE TECHNIQUE OF SLIDING A COMB (LATER THE BACK OF A
PENKNIFE) ALONG THE STRINGS OF A GUITAR PLACED ACROSS THE KNEES TO
PRODUCE THE GLISSANDOS FOR WHICH HAWAIIAN MUSIC HAS BECOME KNOWN.
KEKUKU, WHO DEVELOPED AND POPULARIZED THE TECHNIQUE BEGINNING IN 1885,
MAY HAVE LEARNT IT FROM A MAN CALLED DAVION, WHO HAD COME FROM INDIA;
THERE THE TECHNIQUE OF PLAYING STRINGS WITH A ROD OR SLIDER HAS BEEN
USED SINCE THE 19TH CENTURY ON THE GOTTUVA-DYAM." 1885, OF COURSE, IS
BEFORE THE GUITAR WAS INTRODUCED (ALSO VIA MEXICO) INTO THE U.S, AT
LEAST AS AN AFFORDABLE INSTRUMENT, VIA MASS PRODUCTION.
Bailey, who visited West Africa in 1989, says the African and Muslim
roots of Southern U.S. traditions are often mistaken for something
else.
Churches face east
Bailey lives on Georgia's Sapelo Island, where a small community of
blacks can trace their ancestry to Bilali Mohammed, a Muslim slave who
was born and raised in what is now the country of Guinea. Visitors to
Sapelo Island are always struck by the fact that churches there face
east. In fact, as a child, Bailey learned to say her prayers facing
east -- the same direction that her great-great-great-great-grandfather
faced when he prayed toward Mecca.
***EXCEPT THAT ALL CHURCHES IN THE 19TH CENTURY USUALLY FACED THE SAME
WAY, AND HAD FOR CENTURIES. "CATHEDRALS ARE CRUCIFORM, AS A REMINDER
OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CROSS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE; THEY ARE
TRADITIONALLY DARK, WITH THE ONLY LIGHT COMING THROUGH THE WINDOWS,
REMINDING THE BELIEVER THAT IT IS CHRIST THE LIGHT WHO ENLIGHTENS THEIR
DARKNESS. SIMILARLY, CATHEDRALS FACE EAST, SYMBOLIC OF THE CHURCH BEING
ORIENTED TOWARDS THE SECOND COMING."
HEAVEN IN STONE AND GLASS: EXPERIENCING THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE GREAT
CATHEDRALS, QUOTED IN AD2000.
Bilali was an educated man. He spoke and wrote Arabic, carried a Quran
and a prayer rug, and wore a fez that likely signified his religious
devotion. (Bilali had been trained in Africa to be a Muslim leader; on
Sapelo Island, he was appointed by his slave master to be an overseer
of other slaves). Although Bilali's descendents adopted Christianity,
they incorporated Muslim traditions that are still evident today.
The name Bailey, in fact, is a reworking of the name Bilali, which
became a popular Muslim name in Africa because one of Islam's first
converts -- and the religion's first muezzin -- was a former Abyssinian
slave named Bilal. (Muezzins are those who recite the call to prayer
from the minarets of mosques. ) One historian believes that
abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who changed his name from Frederick
Bailey, may have had Muslim roots.
***SIMPLY AMAZING! "BAILEY" WAS A COMMON NAME IN THE SOUTH (SEE CENSUS
RECORDS OF 1850), AND IT WAS CUSTOMARY TO GIVE SLAVES THE SURNAME OF
THEIR OWNERS. MOREOVER, THE THOUGHT THAT SLAVES WERE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE
THEIR OWN NAMES IS BEYOND BELIEF.
"History changes things," says Bailey, 59, who chronicled the history
of Sapelo Island in her memoir, "God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man."
"Things become something different from what they started out as."
A good example is the song "Little Sally Walker." It's been recorded by
many blues artists, but it's also been recorded as "Little Sally
Saucer" (the lyrics describe a girl "sittin' in a saucer"). Frankie
Quimby, a relative of Bailey's who also traces her roots to Bilali
Mohammed, says the song originated during slavery on the Georgia coast,
written by songwriting slaves who took the last name (Walker) of their
slave owners.
"I've seen (people) take the song and use different words," says
Quimby, who sings slave songs with her husband in a group called the
Georgia Sea Island Singers, which recently performed for President Bush
and his Cabinet. "We're educating people about this."
Guitar derived from Arab oud
Because there is little documentation about these slave-time origins,
it's easy to argue about what can be unequivocally linked to Africa and
Islam. Islam and Arab culture have certainly been influences on other
music around the world, including flamenco, which is rooted in seven
centuries of Muslim rule in Spain.
***THERE IS AN ASSUMED IDENTITY OF "AFRICAN" WITH "MUSLIM" WHICH IS
SIMPLY NOT THERE, MUCH THOUGH CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ISLAMISTS MIGHT
WISH IT. OF COURSE, THERE IS A STRONG CHRISTIAN ELEMENT THAT RUNS
THROUGHOUT AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSIC, BUT THIS IS NOT THE STUFF THAT GETS
TENURE.
The modern guitar is a direct descendant of the oud, an Arabic lute
that was introduced to Europe during Spain's Muslim reign. In fact,
there's a connection between Renaissance music and Arab-Islamic
culture, a connection that academics have studied with more precision
than the connection between black Muslim slaves in America and this
country's blues music.
***SIMPLY A FABRICATION. HERE IS WHAT GROVE'S SAYS: "THE EARLIEST
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE GUITAR SHAPE IN A SHORT-NECKED LUTE APPEARED IN
CENTRAL ASIA IN THE 4TH AND 3RD CENTURIES BCE. FROM THAT TIME UNTIL THE
4TH CENTURY CE CENTRAL ASIAN LUTES WERE OF MANY KINDS; THE GUITAR SHAPE
IS FOUND IN EXAMPLES DATING FROM THE 1ST TO THE 4TH CENTURY CE." IN
OTHER WORDS, SEVERAL CENTURIES BEFORE THE BIRTH OF MOHAMMED. WHY, IF
SIMPLE ERRORS LIKE THIS ARE ALLOWED UNQUESTIONED, SHOULD ANYONE TAKE
THE ENTIRE PREMISE SERIOUSLY?
So far, knowledge of Islam's association with blues music seems limited
to a select group of academics and musicians. Books like Kubik's
"Africa and the Blues" (published in 1999 by the University Press of
Mississippi) and Diouf's "Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved
in the Americas" (published in 1998 by New York University Press) are
more geared toward university audiences. Kubik's book, for example, is
weighed down with chapters of dense writing and obscure references.
***THERE IS A PERFECTLY SOUND WAY OF CONNECTING THE BLUES WITH AFRICAN
SOURCES, AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM. THE VENERABLE TAJ MAHAL
TOOK ONE GIANT STEP IN HIS 1999 COLLABORATION WITH THE MALIAN KORA
VIRTUOSO TOUMANI, KULANJAN (HANNIBAL), WHICH WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR
RELIGIOUS APOLOGIES, SHOWS THEIR MUSIC, ON BOTH THE KORA AND GUITAR,
SHARE MANY TRAITS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE. THE KORA IS A HARP,
AND NOT RELATED TO THE LUTE FAMILY, OF WHICH THE OUD IS ONE. ("NOWHERE
IS THERE A LARGER VARIETY OF HARPS THAN IN AFRICA," SAYS GROVE'S.)
Doabate
In terms of popular culture, it's hard to find a single work -- whether
it's a novel, movie, song or other art form -- that covers the topic of
Islam, music and African slaves. "Daughters of the Dust," Julie Dash's
1991 film about life on the Sea Islands of Georgia, features a Muslim
man who portrays Bilali Mohammed, but a scene that shows him in prayer
lasts just a few moments, and the movie received limited release.
"Roots," Alex Haley's novel that was made into a historic TV series in
the 1970s, featured a main character (Kunte Kinte) who is Muslim,
although novelist James Michener and others doubted the authenticity of
Haley's work.
As more people become aware of the connection between Islam and the
blues,
***NO SUCH CONNECTION HAS BEEN SHOWN, BUT NOW IT IS PRESUMED TO BE
PROVED.
there will be an inevitable shift in perception of how the Muslim
religion has spread across continents and influenced other cultures.
The difference between Spain, which once was conquered by Muslims, and
the United States is that African slaves were brought to this country
in chains, against their will, to do hard labor. The slave trade led to
a diaspora unlike any other in human history, with at least 10 million
Africans bought and sold into bondage in the Americas. Those slaves'
pain is evident in American blues music -- a music that's often about
cruel treatment, sad times and a yearning to break free. Blues music is
a unique American art form that went around the world and, in turn,
influenced history. Without the blues, there wouldn't be jazz, wouldn't
be the bluesy music of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
***ALL OF THIS IS PERFECTLY SOUND, IF NOT ORIGINAL. BUT WHY DOES ISLAM
HAVE TO BE THE CONNECTION?
Bending of notes
In his book "Black Music of Two Worlds," author John Storm Roberts says
he can hear patterns of Islamic African music in the songs of Billie
Holiday. Roberts refers to the "bending of notes" that is evident in
Holiday's sad, soulful ballads as well as the call to prayer. This same
note-bending can be heard in the music of B.B. King and John Lee
Hooker. Blues music, with its thriving tempos and many lyrical
references to relationships, has often been described as "the devil's
music" by those on the outside looking in. Even many devout Muslims
think of blues music as decadent and indicative of permissive Western
morals.
***"BENDING OF NOTES" IS A COMMONPLACE IN WORLD MUSIC. UNLESS THERE IS
SOME SPECIFIC WAY IN WHICH AFRICAN AMERICANS CAN BE SHOWN TO HAVE AN
ISLAMIC TRADITION, THIS IS NO MORE MEANINGFUL THAN THE SAME PHENOMENON
IN KLEZMER, VEDIC, OR CHINESE TRADITIONS. IT IS CERTAINLY NOT
SOMETHING THAT OUGHT TO BE ACCEPTED BECAUSE IT IS STATED.
People like Diouf, Kubik and Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor
of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, who has
researched Islam's connection to American music, are trying to correct
the public record. Bayoumi wrote a paper two years ago that examined
African Muslim history in the United States in which he argues that
John Coltrane's best-known album, "A Love Supreme," features Coltrane
saying, "Allah Supreme" in addition to the many refrains of "A Love
Supreme."
"It's about uncovering a hidden past," says Bayoumi, asked about the
spate of new scholarship on the subject of Islam and African Americans.
"You can hear (influences of Islam) in even the earliest days of
American blues music. What you've gotten lately is an ethnomusicology
that's trying to reconstruct that. These are deliberate attempts to
rebuild a bridge, as it were."
***IT'S ABOUT CAREERISM AT THE EXPENSE OF SCHOLARSHIP, AT THE VERY
LEAST. AT WORST, IT IS FINDING A NEW RACE CARD TO PLAY.
*****
This concludes my original response to the article. In a response to
it, Marco Katz wrote:
An Islamic path to jazz through Spain, and thus to the Caribbean, makes
much more sense. The obvious Jewish and Islamic elements in many
Spanish styles of the 15th century did make their way west, sometimes
with religious refugees to the Americas. Also, there was traffic in
North African slaves who were once numerous in Sevilla and other parts
of southern Spain. In fairness, it should be noted that North Africans
also captured and enslaved Spaniards, thus accounting for the location
on Mediterranean cities on hilltops rather than down on the coast.
In any case, there is much history to be learned from music, but
somehow we have to figure out how to get people to listen first, and
pontificate after hearing what the music has to tell us.
also
As you note here, Muslims should tread carefully while speaking about
Africa since they were--and continue to be--the largest slave traders
ever to work the continent. And the idea that Coltrane, a well-known
devotee of East Asian religious practices, injected Islam into his
recordings is ridiculous.