Blues: An African Sonic Response by Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D

Blues: An African Sonic Response

By Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D.

I was asked, “Is there an African blues?”

The question came innocently, primarily because the recording industry has given us a habit in the last hundred years of naming, marketing and categorizing music based on the geography, the political correctness of the times (or lack thereof) and/or ethnicity – i.e. race records, gypsy jazz, Brazilian jazz, rhythm & blues vs. rock ’n roll, British rock, blue eyed soul vs. soul, gospel vs. soul gospel, and so on. It makes total sense since the nature of the business of selling requires the necessary “careful” identification of any product for appropriate distribution – in this case, music. In order to appreciate the complexity of music as a creative and living entity, it is important to first appreciate the context in which it is born.

First and foremost, music made by humans is an expression of cultural power. American blues, in its earliest and deepest expression, is the crystallization of West African musical aesthetics sculpted to withstand the winds of the political, economic and socio-cultural hurricane that American slavery brought to bear on the African populations of the Southern plantations of North America. West African musical aesthetics are the architecture and foundation of the sonic expression of African socio-cultural experiences of Blacks in America.

Second, the musical aesthetics that formed what we now call the “blues” subconsciously reminded Blacks in America that they were Africans, and that while they had left Africa, Africa never left them. The blues is the African sonic response to the American socio-cultural and political experience of Blacks in America. You can hear the musical foundations of the Delta blues in the music of Timbuktu, Mali, performed by “banjoist” Bassekou Kouyate with the vocals of his wife Awa Sacko, or in the guitar of Ali Farka Touré or in the music of Salif Keita.

African music is the root of all of humanity’s music. We should never lose sense of the actual chronology of time that defined our collective African genetic human lineage and cultural heritage. We should remember that Africans developed on the planet five million years ago and have been dispersing to the far corners of the globe ever since. We should also keep in mind that the Suez Canal was only dug in 1859, which means that prior to that, one could walk from Senegal, West Africa, to Beijing, China… and African folks traveled.

Third, the creation by Blacks in America of the “American blues” is the umbilical cord to Africa that fed their collective sacred cultural consciousness in North America and bonded them as a people. The blues is that cord, that connection to the aesthetics of the Motherland, that allowed them to survive as a people in the socio-cultural, economic and political American experience.

It is important to remember that 99% of African Americans come from the west part of the African continent, and while they

Iconic Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist bluesman Ali Farka Touré singlehandedly brought “desert blues” to an international audience. Photo by Tagles 1

Musician Bassekou Kouyate is internationally known as master of the ngoni, an instrument similar to the banjo. Photo by Richard Kaby 2

Often referred to as “The Hendrix of the Sahara,” Vieux Farka Touré continues his father’s legacy of merging African sounds and the blues. Photo by Sachyn Mital 3

did not all necessarily speak the same languages, they had cultural markers in common in the expression of movement through dance. These West African populations had in common musical instruments, melodies, songs and concepts of rhythms anchored in a polyrhythmic ternary appreciation and subdivision of time or groove, from which the great Duke Ellington concluded, “It Don’t Mean A Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.” African rhythms swing, therefore African Americans’ expressions of rhythm swing.

We should not forget that to Africans, music is part of every human activity. There is the recognition that the management of sound wave vibrations (i.e. music making) is also a space where the sacred nature of the sound is and should be celebrated, thus the importance of the Black Church in African American life as early as its arrival on the continent of North America. The connection between sound and sacred is part of an important tradition of religious rituals on the continent of Africa, in which communication with the sacred and ancestors is done through music, rhythms, trances and possessions of the spirit through sounds.

The Great Malian guitarist/vocalist Ali Farka Touré from Timbuktu used to say, “In reality, there is no such a thing as Black Americans... but there are Blacks in America... which means that they came with their culture...” While this seems an obvious statement, given the forced nature of the migration through the period of the Atlantic slave trade, it underscores the power of African culture, the resilience of its people, its identity markers through its aesthetics and its unique ability to morph and adapt to its changing environment. The celebrated ethnomusicologist and blues guitarist Ry Cooder came to the same conclusions when he first heard the traditional music of the Songhai people of Mali in the songs, rhythms and riffs of guitarist Ali Farka Touré. These African aesthetic markers were so evident to the European-American clergy, who heard the rendition of their Christian hymns by the Black Church, that the White clergy felt the need to give them the new name of “Negro Spirituals.”

A powerhouse vocalist and champion of women’s rights, Oumou Sangaré is a Grammy Award-winning Malian Wassoulou musician. Photo by Bryan Ledgard 4

America’s oldest musical, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic instrument celebrated since the earliest beginnings of this nation’s musical mecca – Nashville – is an instrument from West Africa that is called the ngoni – the banjo. President Jefferson referred to the banjo in his letters to Monticello as an instrument played by his slaves that he had never heard before, but “which is quite pleasant to the ear.” The banjo was the vehicle through which African culture maintained its umbilical cord to Africa through the expression of its tonal colors, its rhythmic syncopations and its harmonic and melodic systems in blues music. Furthermore, it is the rhythmic and melodic syncopations of the banjo that Blacks replicated on the left of the piano to create ragtime, when Christian missionaries introduced the piano on the plantations. There hadn’t been a single banjo in England, Scotland or Ireland. The populations from the British Isles immigrating to the United States and moving into the South – the Appalachians, Kentucky, Tennessee – found on the Tennessee River banks these African populations playing the banjo. They incorporated these sounds, colors, textures and rhythms from the music of the Mississippi Delta into their own Celtic heritage to create an authentically American music and style that we call bluegrass. No instrument or culture from Mali, no bluegrass!

Several musicians on the scene today continue the tradition of incorporating African musical aesthetics to animate the blues. Vieux Farka Touré, son of venerated Songhai guitarist/vocalist Ali Farka Touré continues in his father’s footsteps to promote the musical aesthetics of the Malian empire on today’s festival circuit, along with powerhouse vocalist Oumou Sangaré. The West African Cameroonian veteran of the saxophone, Manu Dibango, is still on the scene today playing musical riffs that animate the concept of the American blues, but more importantly, let’s remember American blues superstar guitarist/vocalist Bonnie Raitt, a lady who really knows about the blues and can converse about Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters or Son House, and who traveled to Mali and sang in Bamako with the great Ali Farka Touré, stating the experience “changed her musical outlook on music” (Public Radio International, May 2017).

The reason why the blues speaks to our collective humanity beyond race and nationality is because in its tonalities and delivery, the blues reflects and expresses the sum of our human suffering and grief, as well as our aspirations and hopes for a better tomorrow. Music is an expression of our collective humanity, and Africa speaks to us through the depth of the blues, because each and every one of us on this planet is a descendant of Africa. So, to the question, “is there such a thing as an African blues?” the answer is, Africa speaks to our collective humanity through the blues.

Dr. Pascal Bokar Thiam, a.k.a Pascal Bokar in the music world, is a guitarist/vocalist from West Africa, Senegal. He is currently a faculty member of the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department of the University of San Francisco where he teaches jazz studies and directs the USF Jazz Band. He received the Jim Hall Jazz Master Award for Guitar from the Berklee College of Music and the Outstanding Jazz Soloist Award from Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody. In 2015, his CD Guitar Balafonics received the “Best CD of the Year” distinction from Downbeat Magazine with a four-star review. Bokar is considered the Father of the “Afro Blue Grazz” sound that melds together African musical traditions, American blues and funk with bluegrass stylings. www.afrobluegrazzpascalbokar.com

Photo Sources 1 Tagles, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Ali_Farka_Toure.jpg 2 Richard Kaby, CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/2.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bassekou_

Kouyate_photo.jpg 3 Sachyn Mital, CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Vieux_Farka_Tour%C3%A9.jpg 4 Bryan Ledgard, CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.0), Taken for BBC Radio 2 at 2009 Cambridge

Festival, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oumou_

Sangar%C3%A9_(3785248191).jpg

Author and musician Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D., is considered the Father of the “Afro Blue Grazz” sound. Photo courtesy of Pascal Bokar