Part III
The fodet genre of Senegambia discussed in the last part of this essay remains alive today and clearly displays the musical characteristics that make it intriguing to listen to in comparison with the blues of the early 20th century. Formally fodet pieces are cyclical like the blues’ common 12-bar repeating chord structure; melodically they emphasize two to four descending phrases arranged in a particular pattern – sometimes even AAB, thus directly analogous to the blues’ structure; most fodet pieces have one main tonal center (its key, if you will) that is played in for the larger part of the cycle and one other tonal center (usually a whole step away) that functions much like the V/dominant tonal center of the blues’ cycle last four bars; and the melodic material emphasizes the fifth very strongly, just as in the blues. The instrument – xalam – is from the family of instruments known to be the basis of the banjo in the United States, interesting because the fiddle, banjo, tambourine trio was probably the most common in early US-American history. Finally, the social role of fodet players – keepers of history, social commentators, inter-group diplomats, and entertainers all rolled into one – bears striking similarity to that of later blues men. Given these parallels and the fact that an overwhelming number of slaves were shipped from Senegambia and the Guinea Coast in the 17th and 18th centuries together make a strong case for considering the fodet as a prominent musical tradition that affected the creation of the blues.
Common sense, however, is sometimes too common. While it makes sense that if we find similarities between two traditions and large numbers of people who came from one place and were transplanted to the other that this is the most likely route of transfer, we must ask whether it is actually the case. Gerhard Kubik, building upon the revolutionary insight of Paul Oliver, has challenged this doxa, arguing that it is perhaps not the number of people that matter but the fitness of the transfered material that matters most. For example the mouth-resonated musical bow played in white Appalachia almost definitely was a transfer from a similar tradition carried over by a small number of slave from Mozambique.
“People from southeastern Africa in the United States may have been few in number, but this would not necessarily inhibit their cultural influence. Here, as always, we have to bear in mind that culture is not necessarily transmitted in proportion to people’s numbers. One charismatic personality will suffice to release a chain reaction. One virtuoso musician can end up being imitated by hundreds. This fact has often been neglected by researchers proceeding from a collectivistic perception of culture. (Gerhard Kubik, Africa and the Blues p. 13)
The argument is powerful, I find, especially if we look to other cultural practices where one person indeed has caused a tidal shift, such as Kenny Clarke’s revolution in jazz drumming or Charlie Parker’s on the saxophone, to name but two within the musical realm. Indeed, in an environment as hostile as that of the US slave culture a solo tradition may have had the greatest chance of success. Even if this may not be the rule, it occurs often enough to cast doubt upon any argument based upon numbers of transported culture bearers. Understanding that power is in this case not in numbers allowed both Oliver and Kubik to look beyond the coastal areas for musical traditions which might bear even greater similarity to the blues. What they found was surprising.
Africa is no different than other geographies in the sharp distinctions there are between coastal and interior regions. Coasts tend to be places of intense trade and intercourse with other regions, often have different climates and cuisines, and thus it is unsurprising to find the musical traditions in the west central Sudanic hinterland – that geographic area just interior to the West African coast – are similarly distinct. Without pointing to a particular song type or genre Kubik shows how the musical styles of this area contrast with those of the Mande traditions on the coast. In addition to solo singing traditions accompanied by various stringed instruments (lutes such as the xalam and garaya; one-stringed fiddles such as goge, goje, and riti) the area displays an absence of polyrhythms and so-called asymmetric time-line patterns. Time-line patterns are repeated rhythms used to orient the players and listeners within a ‘bar.’ In the West we use many symmetric rhythms, such as 1234, 1234 or 123, 123, 123, whereas a common Brazilian one is 12312312, 12312312. In the latter the division is not even, but asymmetric, and Kubik has noted during his more than four decades of research in Africa that where polyrhythms are prominent, so to are asymmetric time-lines. Thus the absence of both in the blues – which uses a 4-beat bar and a symmetric shuffle feel (123, 123, 123, 123) – points similarly to an African tradition lacking such musical features, such as the west central Sudanic belt we’re looking at here. Lastly, Kubik notes that the singing style of this area emphasizes a “raw” vocal timbre and heterophony (singing a melody over a chordal background) similar to the blues and distinct from the “sweeter” timbres and parallel harmony of the coastal regions.
The interior not only has a different culture because of differences in trade, subsistence, and interaction, but also because of the historical inheritance from the Muslim influence. Islamic converts fled to Africa still during Mohammed’s lifetime, but it was from the 8th century on that various parts of Africa – especially here in the eastern sub-Saharan area – were Islamicized, bringing them new instruments, musical traits, and practices. Chief among them for our purposes are the declamatory vocal style (loud voice, good projection, addressing an audience), wavy intonation (heavy vibrato, moving a pitch slightly around), use of melismas (the florid vocal improvisation often associated with blues and gospel singers, many notes sung to one syllable of text often at the end of a phrase) and the widespread use of pentatonic scales (scales with five pitches to the octave, not seven as is common in the West). Together these stylistic traits suggest to Kubik that the blues retained tonal and rhythmic material from the ancient Nigritic song styles – those discussed in the foregoing paragraph – and ornamentation and performance aspects of the Islamic influences.
What both Kubik’s and Coolen’s theories lack is any direct evidence for particular movements of people to areas of the United States and the emergence of even a proto-blues style that would raise one probability above the other. But I think it clear that both provide us with a clearer picture of the sorts of musical traditions that may have led to the blues of the early 20th century. Tracing these traits is no mere academic exercise for it forces us not only to listen to the music more closely, but it allows us to hear history embedded – consciously or not – in the very fabric of the sound. Thus heard, the music is forcefully thrust back into the real world from which it came and which gave it its life. In the next part we will return from Africa and look at the probable conditions in the New World from which the blues arose. The picture drawn will, for many, be a surprising one.
