especially when looking at the development of African-American and Caribbean and Latin music. Enslaved Africans came from many different regions and ethnic groups, but despite being separated from their homelands and subjected to forced assimilation, certain African musical traditions seem to have survived and influenced the music that developed in the Americas.How much of what we hear in African-American, Caribbean, and other forms of diasporic music today can be connected to pre-colonial African musical traditions? And which aspects were preserved relatively directly versus being transformed through interaction with European and Indigenous musical traditions?

The rhythm section, for much of it. The shining through line of American music is slave spirituals, that when combined with the Appalachian Methodist hymns tradition created gospel, is the primary source of American pop. R&B, Country, Soul, Rock, Jazz, Blues, all based in the transformed church music of the formerly enslaved and indentured servants.

As someone both into african ethno and early blues music, just from my ears I would say not much, I just dont hear much connection.

I think if people think they hear some connection, my take is that its more of a 'suis generis' quality, that rawness and earthiness you get in early blues is more what any rural people come up to if left to their own devices.

I think a good reference would be if you compared early blues music to 20th century rural balkan music. Call and response vocals, pentatonics, complex rhythms including polyrhythms, everything you would see as a connection to africa you would also find in the rural balkans, a place that has obviously zero connection to black american music.

I think you are in a much more esoteric and hard to argue about realm, what kind of music people come up "naturally" and organically, what might be really more in our DNA rather than some cultural lineage. The world of lullabies and just beating on some drum in a trance state.

Years ago I remember reading someone who claimed certain blues traditions could be tied to particular regions of Africa. I specifically remember them talking about John Lee Hooker and that super repetitive, droning, groove oriented style of blues and some particular tribal group. I can’t remember where this was but I suspect it was a copy of Guitar World in the 1990s.

Apparently that has been totally debunked by modern genetics and musicology.

Your last point is excellent; it’s very easy for people to independently invent musical ideas that sound very similar. Also, this makes me think of the Italian vs Italian American cuisine debate. Italian American cuisine is somewhat based on Italian cuisine circa 1900, whereas most of the dishes currently popular in Italy are from the 1920s-1950s. Point being, who the hells knows what Africans were jamming on 400 years ago, or even 100? How many recordings of traditional African music from the era of slavery exist?

Obviously there are some very basic elements we can trace to Africa because of physical instruments, but hell, think about how many different ways you can play a guitar?

I agree, it’s simply impossible to know for sure. Unless someone finds a way to precisely date musical ideas. There’s a guy (d’Huy) who claims to do this with mythological motifs and his approach is very methodical, but a lot of people find it unconvincing for similar reasons.

Jazz and gospel are influenced by African traditions.

Compare those to traditional European folk and church music. The elements in jazz and gospel that are absent from the western music forms generally are rooted in African forms, such as the call and response elements in gospel. A lot of that also ended up in pop and rock music.

Honestly, not much and even without slavery and colonisation, there would not have much more survived than we have today because Africans weren’t the people that wrote their music down on paper.

The reason why the European musical culture is such a rich and massive music tradition is because we had began developing a highly advanced music notation system which was fully realised in the 17. century. Since around 1600 Europe begann to write down their music in a precision that was unmatched in other cultures. That is the reason why we know how European music of 1600 sounded like and even before that we can make some conclusions on how European music sounded, e.g. the earliest surviving European musical adjacent piece was written in the 12. century by Bingen (Ordo Virtutum).

There's two really good books about this, Amiri Baraka's "Blues People" and "The Power of Black Music" by Samuel A Floyd Jr.

It's interesting because in the United States where drums were outlawed and a lot of the directly African cultural expressions were too, they still carried over aspects or translations of African culture. In "The Power of Black Music" Floyd talks about what he calls the 'Ring characteristics' that he traces back to Africa and encompasses some foundational aspects of blues, funk, R&B, etc. I think he does a good job even if at some points there's a _bit_ of a stretch. Overall it's good reading though. I think especially when you get into the very intentionally African music of the 60s/70s in Jazz, R&B, etc. it comes out the most.

One thing that muddies is up though is socially many formerly enslaved Africans were in a hurry to drop off a lot of those artifacts of African culture in the belief that if they presented themselves as fully American they could assimilate and get their fair shake at a good life (of course they had no idea that racists were never acting in good faith). So even things like the more rough bluesy singing was frowned upon as was the blues in its entirety instead of things like classical music, etc. You even see that carry on with stigmas towards rap/hip-hop, and even modern day "R&B artists" who try to distance and move away from that label because of the connotation it has (and to not scare off a larger market of white listeners); Almost weekly a rapper or R&B artist comes out talking about how they dont make rap "they make art" and shit like that.

All of that is to say, the social environment played a major complicating factor in not seeing traditions perfectly and institutionally protected and passed on. Especially in the 20th century as black people made more social progress.

I haven't read as much about through the rest of the disapora (if anyone has any books touching on this drop the names!) but I know at least the drums and rhythms of African music got to survive more directly in places like Brazil especially, which is reflected in the music.

There's a huge tradition in Brazil directly tied to African music, especially in Samba.

It's not a coincidence, since Brazil is the country which received most Africans during the slave trade.

Genres like Côco Pernambucano, Choro, Maracatu and Lundu.

For OPs question, they can trace it back to Africa too. Samba, for example, is said to have come from Angola and Jongo from Banti people.

I see the point you're making but I don't really agree that there's no connection at all. We know for a fact that African Americans were brought _from Africa_ here to this country and any sort of link would and could be attributed there.

Sure, are their similarities rhythmically, call and response, etc. with the Balkans? Yeah I don't doubt it at all. I listen to Archie Shepp on 'Hungarian Bebop' and the way he's able to inject that language very naturally proves the point that there's a lot of common ground in music even if the origins aren't the same. But in this case it seems more a reason to once again just tear away any sort of cultural origin or larger picture away from African Americans, which has been done for a very long time for largely racially motivated reasons (people without a culture, people without origin, etc.)

This isn't some ho hum hunch about where the roots of those stylistics come from, we _know_ where black americans came from, it's not a leap to say that some of those things survived. We would never deny the European origins of music in this country, but when it comes to Africa and black Americans now all of a sudden its a big stretch and we may as well be looking in the balkans?

There's already pretty well documented cultural relics in common daily life expressions and behaviors shared between black americans and can be traced back to Africa I don't see why the idea that the music would have _anything_ survive is some far out hard to believe thing. I've already said elsewhere the reasons why, socially, those connections would get muddied over time (racism and a desire for assimilation), but I don't believe they're nonexistent and should otherwise be attributed to nothing

Call and response exist as antiphony in classical music.

The banjo is actually one of the clearest, most direct lines you can draw from traditional African music straight into modern American commercial music.It didn’t start in Appalachia; it arrived here via the transatlantic slave trade.

Enslaved people recreated instruments they remembered from West Africa—specifically lute-like instruments like the akonting (from the Jola people) and the xalam. These original African instruments used a hollowed-out gourd for the body, a wooden stick for the neck, animal skin stretched over the top as a membrane, and strings made of gut or fiber.

When you look at a modern banjo, even with all its metal hardware, it still keeps that exact, fundamental African design: a drum-like skin membrane stretched over a frame. That’s what gives it that distinct, plunky, percussive sound.

For a long time, the banjo was strictly an African-American instrument. In the 1800s, it was co-opted by white performers in minstrel shows, which is how it spread to white working-class musicians. From there, it became the literal backbone of early American mainstream music:

Bluegrass & Country: You can't have bluegrass or traditional country without the banjo. Early Black musicians taught white musicians how to play, completely shaping the foundational sound of what we now call Appalachian or country-western music.

Rock & Roll: Early blues and country directly birthed rock and roll. Because the banjo heavily influenced the rhythmic structures of early string bands and blues, its DNA is baked right into the rhythm guitars of rock music.

Even today, artists like Rhiannon Giddens and Beyoncé (on Cowboy Carter) are actively bringing the banjo back into the commercial spotlight while explicitly honoring its West African roots. It’s not just a survival of African music—it’s the foundation of American popular music.

I mean I did say "not much" and not "nothing whatsoever". I dont deny at all that there are some fragments and shards of culture the slaves managed to carry over. From what I know e.g. the banjo is largely affirmed to have some sort of african roots.

>But in this case it seems more a reason to once again just tear away any sort of cultural origin or larger picture away from African Americans, which has been done for a very long time for largely racially motivated reasons (people without a culture, people without origin, etc.)

I would totally turn this around and say that this is more of a case why these connections are more based on a kind of desperate ideology rather than properly grounded cultural science.

But also I am just a complete modernist. I dont see the denial of these attempts to project some cultural connection to africa in any way as a blow against african americans. The immense respectability and grandiosity of black american culture is just beyond reproach. Black americans invented fucking jazz, what more do you need to see them as cultured people deserving of the highest respect?

>We would never deny the European origins of music in this country

I very much would deny any heritage and very completely, if we are talking about the equivalent to that african connection. I dont think anything we listen to today has some identifiable connection to premodern german or french music. In fact there modernity wiped the slate much harder. Surely the rural euro peasantry had their own versions of tribalistic bang your drums and psychedelic chants kind of stuff, we just have no idea what that sounds like today. Its only these tribes that survived relatively untouched into the 20th century that we now have an idea what true pre-modern music sounded like.

Its just modernity, all that is solid melts into air. Black americans have established themselves as musical geniuses of the modern era again and again, and that is how I respect them. So yeah, I reject this kind of ethnic nationalism on just ideological grounds, I see zero reason to try to battle the racists on their terms.

But on another level its just solid cultural science. If there really was some identifiable, audible lineage between this or that african ethno style and modern black music, I would totally accept that and just be like "huh, thats neat!"

But as said, as someone who actually listened through a good few african ethno compilations I just dont hear it. Its just a total stretch.

Wow thanks this is a breath of fresh air vs the typical Reddit people pulling stuff out of their butt