African Influence on New World Music

Miles Malone

Being tasked with expanding the music history cannon was always going to be a tough undertaking. Not only was it difficult because these things haven’t often been spoken of as a whole, but oftentimes the histories of certain marginalized groups have been erased altogether. When researching primary sources for this post, I quickly found that records of slavery, particularly outside of the U.S., are very difficult to find. This is only amplified when trying to find information pertaining to the cultural traditions of enslaved peoples. They couldn’t document their musical traditions because they were barred from reading or writing, and most Europeans had no real interest in documenting these traditions first-hand. Despite these hurdles, musicologists have been able to trace many musical instruments and ideas in New World music directly back to Africa. Sub-Saharan Africans influenced New World music through instruments and rhythmic ideas.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was in place from the 16th century until the mid-19th century C.E. The trade usually involved Western or Central Africans being sold into slavery by other Africans to European traders. These traders usually came from France, Britain, the Netherlands, and from our favorite Southern European peninsula: Iberia. When these enslaved Africans were brought over to the Americas, they would often carry some of their smaller instruments with them. Even when they couldn’t carry the instruments with them, they would often reconstruct them once they had made it to their destination. Instruments such as the banjo, a xylophone type instrument called the balafon, and the panpipe were among those brought over.

Left: An early African banjo

Above: An African balafon

Along with these instruments, Africans brought over many musical ideas, particularly rhythms. One of the most important parts of New World music is a rhythmic device known as a clave. The clave is used for timekeeping in many New World music styles, particularly those of the Afro-Cuban variant. Claves aren’t exclusive to Cuba however, and are used in many Puerto Rican, Brazilian, and Peruvian musical styles. The clave held a similar timekeeping role in African music as well; in fact it’s still an important part of the musical tradition today. Clave means ‘key’ in Spanish, and it is indeed the key to many New World genres. The most common breakdown of a clave is the 2-3 pattern and the 3-2 pattern in respect to common time. There is also the bembe pattern which is almost exclusively used in 6/8 meter. The most common type of claves are the Son clave and the Rumba clave. The main difference between these types of claves is the placement of the last note on the three side being moved from beat 4 to the ‘and’ of 4. Here is a chart to illustrate these differences, along with a video demonstrating how this sounds.

Now that you have a feel for the clave, it is time to see how it is utilized in modern music. First, here's 'Fall' by Davido, a Nigerian-American pop artist. Notice the pervasive use of the 3-2 clave.

For contrast, listen to a few minutes of this compilation of a modern Brazilian style of music known as Baile Funk. The immediate thing that you’ll notice is the use of the 3-2 clave like in the previous example.

For our second comparison, you should first listen to the Jalikunda Drum Ensemble from Montserrat:

Now compare that to Brazilian music legend Sergio Mendes’ ‘Magalenha’ starting at about the 45 second mark. Notice the heavy percussion? These two fairly distant New World countries are connected by their shared history of African slavery. Another good point of comparison between these two examples is in the way that they’re sung. Both examples feature a call and response pattern in the vocals with a single vocalist giving the call and a chorus of voices responding to them. This is yet another example of African influence on musical styles of the New World.

My next example is of Afro-Peruvian music provided by Tony Succar’s group for TED. Afro-Peruvian music in its modern state is heavily influenced by Jazz, but it also leans very heavily into its Spanish roots, illustrated by the guitar riff in the beginning of the video, and its African roots, illustrated by the 6/8 clave that serves as the basis of the groove through most of the video. I would suggest watching through the entire video, as it is a beautiful example of the fusion of cultures, representing each of them in different ways.

A big question that may come up is how did these ideas spread not only throughout individual countries, but most of the New World at large? Not only did the slaves not initially speak the languages of either their European captors or the natives of their new forced homes, but once sold in the New World, they often didn’t speak the same language as one another. It is common knowledge based on our records of slavery here in the United States that enslaved families were often separated, and the same thing happened in the rest of the New World. So what was one to do when faced with the hurdle of a massive language barrier? It fell to music to connect the enslaved populations. Even if they didn’t speak the same language initially, the African slaves often had very similar musical traditions and would share these traditions with each other. A British physician named Hans Sloane documented one such event in his 1707 document Voyage to the Islands. Sloane notes how the Maroons, who were free people of African descent, intermingled with the enslaved African and Native populations through music. Sloane also goes on to describe a man known as Mr. Baptiste, who in Sloane’s opinion was the most competent musician at the gathering. This is most likely due to the fact that Mr. Baptiste was the only one who could write music using European notation. This encounter actually produced the first time to our knowledge that African music was notated using Western notation.

Portrait of Hans Sloane

The description of these gatherings actually suggests that instead of these musical ideas spreading from country to country in the New World, they actually did develop in their own ways in each country, which is why music from Brazil will sound different when compared to Afro-Cuban or Afro-Peruvian music, yet still have those same African rhythms and similar instrumentation and musical ideas.

Fortunately, unlike the North African influence on Iberian music, the African influence on New World music is generally more recognized and discussed. When you put modern examples next to each other, it’s undeniable that Africa’s influence on New World music is there. That’s often shown through the use of instruments that originated in Africa, or rhythmic devices such as the clave that you still hear in African and New World styles. The written history of these connections has largely been erased by many factors, though. These factors include the fact that slaves weren’t taught to read and write, or that there was simply no interest from Europeans in recording these ideas for a modern listener to understand. Despite this, these traditions survived through exchanges between enslaved peoples and then passed down from generation to generation until they could be recorded. That fact alone is a testament to the resilience that the slaves had to survive in this harsh new world. It’s also a testament to how music can connect us all, even when we don’t speak the same language or when our histories are actively being erased. I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up in a period of time when we are starting to “write” our wrongs and take accountability for the sins of the past. My family is from Jamaica, and sometimes I wonder if an ancestor of mine was present during Sloane’s time there. I wonder if they were part of one of these many beautiful exchanges. I hope that by writing about it I can end the cycle of erasure and make sure that they are represented with the respect and dignity that they haven’t been afforded thus far. I hope that I’m making them proud.

Bibliography

Dubois, Laurent, David Garner, and Mary Caton Lingold. musicalpassage.org.

Noakes, Greg. “Exploring Flamenco’s Arab Roots.” Aramco World 45:6 (November/December 1994): 32-35.

Woodroofe, Carmen. “Rhythm, Relationships, and Rebellion: The Role of Ritual Music in the Lives of the Enslaved African Diaspora in Saint Domingue and Cuba During the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Researcher: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30:1 (Spring 2020): 97-121.

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