Page 53 - Akae Beka

Blues: An African Sonic Response

By Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D. were Africans, and that while they had left Africa, Africa never
I was asked, “Is there an African blues?” left them. The blues is the African sonic response to the American
socio-cultural and political experience of Blacks in America. You
The question came innocently, primarily because the recording can hear the musical foundations of the Delta blues in the music
industry has given us a habit in the last hundred years of naming, of Timbuktu, Mali, performed by “banjoist” Bassekou Kouyate
marketing and categorizing music based on the geography, the with the vocals of his wife Awa Sacko, or in the guitar of Ali
political correctness of the times (or lack thereof) and/or ethnicity Farka Touré or in the music of Salif Keita.
– i.e. race records, gypsy jazz, Brazilian jazz, rhythm & blues vs. African music is the root of all of humanity’s music. We should
rock ’n roll, British rock, blue eyed soul vs. soul, gospel vs. soul never lose sense of the actual chronology of time that defined our
gospel, and so on. It makes total sense since the nature of the collective African genetic human lineage and cultural heritage.
business of selling requires the necessary “careful” identification We should remember that Africans developed on the planet five
of any product for appropriate distribution – in this case, music.
In order to appreciate the complexity of music as a creative and million years ago and have been dispersing to the far corners of
living entity, it is important to first appreciate the context in which the globe ever since. We should also keep in mind that the Suez
it is born. Canal was only dug in 1859, which means that prior to that, one
First and foremost, music made by humans is an expression could walk from Senegal, West Africa, to Beijing, China… and
of cultural power. American blues, in its earliest and deepest African folks traveled.
expression, is the crystallization of West African musical aesthetics Third, the creation by Blacks in America of the “American
sculpted to withstand the winds of the political, economic and blues” is the umbilical cord to Africa that fed their collective
socio-cultural hurricane that American slavery brought to bear sacred cultural consciousness in North America and bonded
on the African populations of the Southern plantations of North them as a people. The blues is that cord, that connection
America. West African musical aesthetics are the architecture to the aesthetics of the Motherland, that allowed them to
and foundation of the sonic expression of African socio-cultural survive as a people in the socio-cultural, economic and
experiences of Blacks in America. political American experience.
Second, the musical aesthetics that formed what we now call It is important to remember that 99% of African Americans
the “blues” subconsciously reminded Blacks in America that they come from the west part of the African continent, and while they

Iconic Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist bluesman Ali Farka Touré single- Musician Bassekou Kouyate is internationally known as master of the ngoni, an
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handedly brought “desert blues” to an international audience. Photo by Tagles 1 instrument similar to the banjo. Photo by Richard Kaby

Blues Festival Guide 2020 51