> Everybody remembers when the first black stuff came to their country. The first returned immigrant who changed your popular culture by imitating things that black people were doing in the US, whether it was rock and roll, or just how to dance.

What memories would Manu DiBango, Bongo Kanda, Touré Kunda, Salif Keita, Fela Kuti, et al have of "black stuff" do you suppose?

Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu shouts out to the works of Angélique Kidjo, not Chuck Berry.

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tolerance 3 days ago | parent [-]

I hate to drag myself into this kind of stuff. But you can’t really believe that an afrobeats artist isn’t somehow influenced by Black (as in US) culture.

I’d go as far as to say that an artist in that genre will not receive any mainstream popularity (to the extent to the likes of Burna Boy) without in some way appealing to parts of the African diaspora who themselves are influenced largely by Black (US) culture, even if its superficially (i.e., how they dress).

Cursory research about the influence you named of Burna Boy’s yields:

> She grew up listening to Yoruba and Beninese traditional music, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, James Brown, Manu Dibango, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Fela Kuti, Stevie Wonder, Osibisa and Santana.

The affect that the American acts had on her music, you’d know better than I. But the degrees between Burna Boy and Chuck Berry apparently are fewer than recognized.

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Levitz 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

>I hate to drag myself into this kind of stuff. But you can’t really believe that an afrobeats artist isn’t somehow influenced by Black (as in US) culture.

But by that token the one from the US is influenced by US culture tenfold

	▲	tolerance 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Certainly, just not in the ways I think are useful to whatever point you’re trying to make.

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defrost 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What goes around comes around and yes, musical forms from Africa that were remembered in the US and branched from over time feed back into their mother lode.

I seek not to dis the US modifications, just to remind some that these were not and never the OG sources.

> But you can’t really believe that an afrobeats artist isn’t somehow influenced by Black (as in US) culture.

I can say I struggle to see the line from R.L. Burnside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DOnKJ232M to Touré Kunda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6u0omHFhqE

I would like to hear more about the US precursors that influenced(?) Mory Kante's Yeke Yeke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Cmv2K07R0 .. I was unaware of an underground kora-playing griot scene in the US.

Just for the chuckle value, here's arguably the greatest dis of US hardcore rap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ouDZkX1Yh8

> I’d go as far as to say that an artist in that genre will not receive any mainstream popularity

Errr, by "mainstream" do mean "USofA" ? I can assure that all the names I mentioned are known to numbers that rival any audience that can be found in the US .. just not to audiences that register with the US zeitgeist.

Early Angélique Kidjo was a traditional musician who went on to and jammed with European bands https://youtu.be/_-YlMyUgzC8?t=96 , slightly later AK was independent with European producers, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4NsRS3S1UY

Mature A-K played about, riffing on Hendrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN_K84TAxNs, reworking Talking Heads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR8jgFGmqvU, backing and supporting Australians*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGomSuDPeSU

If you care to listen to the linked tracks you might reflect on the influence there from "black USA" ... it's more that she joined in with the Hendrix legacy for the joy of collaboration than it formed an integral part of her background.

* For some value of Australian... :-)

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tolerance 3 days ago | parent [-]

My comment was specifically about Burna Boy, a contemporary artist.

Granted I’m indifferent to the musical heritage of Black (as in native to the African continent and its diaspora) music and will yield considerable ground to people more interested in that than I am because of this.

But speaking about culture in general, I think it’s “goofy” (to borrow a term from the grandparent comment) to brush away the influence that Black (as in US) culture has on Blacks (everywhere else) today. Not 50 years ago. Right now. I’m specifically referring to acts who may be equal in relative notoriety to the one’s you named, but are popular today like Burna Boy.

We can split hairs about the influence that Black (as in African) music had on Black people in the US. I’m sure there’s arguments to be had that vary in how appreciable they are to this premise. It’s probably equally “goofy” to wave off the idea that the “degrees of separation between Burna Boy and Chuck Berry” extend further to Berry’s great(N)-grandparents who carried the remnants of what was to be “remembered” on US soil after crossing the Middle Passage.

But I don’t think that it’s as linear a process as we’d like to imagine, at least it isn’t anymore.

Bangs (and external agents independent of Black people) disrupted the matrix and the “mother lode” is no longer centralized at the “mother land”.

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defrost 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I think it’s “goofy” (to borrow a term from the grandparent comment) to brush away the influence that Black (as in US) culture has on Blacks (everywhere else) today.

You'd probably best argue that point with someone that thinks US Black culture has had zero global travel and influence then.

What isn't 'goofy' is the notion that US and African Black culture have had a near continuous back and forth interchange throughout history, the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival featured a strong 'Back to Africa' thread that highlighted contemporary African music, polyrhythmic forms, call and response, specific artists, etc. all of which can be found in the US Black Culture musical production of today .. WhoSampled highlights sources of many drum beats used in early hip hop recordings of the 1980s that are now considered iconic, and so on.

> Bangs (and external agents independent of Black people) disrupted the matrix

Who or what is 'Bangs', to which matrix do you refer? <insert relevant Samuel L. Jackson quote>

> and the “mother lode” is no longer centralized at the “mother land”.

Not a great turn of phrase, mother lodes can be exhausted but they don't move.

To the point buried within, Africa may have been the point of origin of all humanity but it was never the point of genesis of all musical form, Gamelan is almost unique to the Sundanese peoples (Indonesia) with tenuous backlinks to Indian forms at best .. it's a long way from there to any prior African drum or percussion influences.

In greater human history people have made their own unique forms and variations across the globe, post near instant global communication, recording and playback, these forms all mutually intertwine and influence each other.

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tolerance 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well here I am thinking that a mother lode just meant a lotta stuff kept somewhere, and simultaneously surprised that you aren’t familiar with South Sudanese-born artist “Bangs” and that you didn’t catch on to “matrix” as a reference to Africa being the developmental environment for Black music [but were keen to pick up on the aforementioned mother lode gaffe that short circuited our little game of language surrounding the origins of Black culture].

Explaining a joke or a wry remark is about as deflating as either fallen flat. So you’ll have to pick up on the grander point that I was trying to make by yourself.

Suffices to say that you’ve managed to do that already anyhow in a manner far more sophisticated than my own.

I had a great time, you?

	▲	defrost 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm good - I enjoy a rambling conversation nominally centred about <something> Mother lode comes from mining, the real or imagined source of tiny nuggets found washed further downstream (by current or ancient no longer present water flows). In that sense, to which I'm a little wedded by practice, they don't move about, at least not until mined dry and relocated to some treasury or rich persons pocket. Bangs and matrix are overloaded, it's hard keeping up with what others mean in their use of terms, Gammon in the UK has a meaning different to it's use by urban aboriginal people in Australia. For some the origins of local Black Culture have little remnant of African culture and predate both the arrival of convict ships upon the tide and the retreat of ice from Europe that allowed the settlement of the extremely white bits. Great party hats though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwion_Gwion_rock_paintings * https://www.magabala.com/products/yorro-yorro RIP Kumanjayi Mowaljarlai - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw-AgvUEVm4