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As my taste in music changed from Blues infused
Urban Soul to Blues infused Urban Jazz, I can remember Marvin Gaye
ask the question we all wanted to know the answer to, “What’s Goin’ On!”
What’s goin’ on with the Vietnam War? What’s goin’
on with the riots and the Panthers? What’s going on with Tricky
Dick Nixon? What’s goin’ on? What’s goin on? And, of course,
Marvin already had the answer. We all nodded in approval as Marvin
crooned his reply over every black, urban AM radio station in
America: “Mercy, mercy, me. Things ain’t what they used to
be!”
Some will see all that I have said as
coincidental. Those who see it as such are unaware of the mythic,
purgative, transforming power that music has for the Black
American. From plantation to plant floor, it has been hymns sung
in church, Blues screamed in jukes, and Jazz played in clubs that
have sustained us. And, if Hip-Hop is about anything, it is the
scream of Black youth at war with itself as it watches the death
of one world and the beginning of another.
But the Black youth of America are not alone in
their sense of profound confusion. For the whole world is singing
the death song of the Industrial Age. All that we see in our
children—the confusion, the obsession with drugs and thuggery,
the fascination with death—speaks of the dislocation of their
souls, their hearts, and their minds. A
Post Industrial Blues
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Jazz, blues, and their sacred cousin, gospel music, all have a
rhythm-device in common: the back-beat. Indeed, the back-beat, a
heavy emphasis on two and four, is a hallmark of African
American music and remains dominant as a rhythmic device into
the 21st century. An interesting note about the back-beat with
respect to gospel music is the flipping of rhythmic emphasis. In
the then popular waltz form, the emphasis was usually
ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. But in gospel, when three-four
time is used, as it frequently is, the practictioners usually
clap on two and three, thus getting a one-TWO-THREE,
one-TWO-THREE rhythm. The back-beat.
None of the other popular musics of the African diaspora
(whether from the Caribbean, Central America or South America)
employs a heavy back-beat unless the particular form in
question, such as salsa, reggae or soca, is a form that was
significantly influenced by Black music from America. This
absence of the back-beat is distinctive especially given that
most African diaspora music heavily uses drums, or quasi-drum
instruments (steel pans for example).
This is a curious development that is made even
more curious by the fact that for the most part the drums of the
diaspora remained hand-drums and it was in the United States
that the mechanical drum, or the drum kit, commonly called the
trap drum or traps, was developed. So the place where the drum
had the least continuity in terms of usage and in terms of the
direct retention of African poly-rhythms, is the place where the
back-beat was emphasized and the drum kit was developed!
Clapping On Two and Four
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updated 16 October
2007
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