Pat’s Polemics

I sent this in when the program requested testimonials for a grant.
The music of Africa has formed the base of a good deal of the world’s music. While usually consigned to the label “popular” as opposed to European as “serious” music, this African based music attracts the finest talent of the modern era and will eventually be considered the global “serious” music of the world it already is in actuality. While most of us still smile as we listen to it, serious composers and musicians have taken us a long way from the days when Schwann record catalogue classified jazz under dance music. And so it is that I have listened to Afro-Pop for some decades now to increase my grasp of the multiplicity of genres spawned by the music of Africa. From the hands and hearts of slaves, it has conquered the world.