African music as found in the western half of the continent has an overall shape despite major distinctions from north to south. This music came (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
The Reshaping of a Musical Culture
01/29/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentJoseph Holloway writes in Africanisms in American Culture that the slaves brought with them their musical culture. That resulted in them reshaping the European American (Continue Reading)
Carried along in the rhythm of the music
11/20/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSitting here listening to a series of performances of Agbadza, the ever popular Ewe dance music, I realized the nature of that pulse, what many (Continue Reading)
Heavy Metal in Africa
11/19/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentA Togolese heavy metal group is making itself known. Heavy metal is associated more with White audiences in the U.S. and even has an association (Continue Reading)
Trace it back
11/06/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentTake a rhythm in any current song of the Americas and Europe. Trace it back until it disappears. Where was that last point found? Take (Continue Reading)
A Breakthough Insight, I think………..
08/20/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentA couple of nights ago I had put on a CD of rhythm and blues. My wife and I began slow dancing between the kitchen (Continue Reading)
Double consciousness – we all possess it now
05/11/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor decades, going back to W.E.B. Dubois writing in The Atlantic , African-Americans have told of the double consciousness they carry within: who they are (Continue Reading)
Tapping Into the Sacred Force
05/02/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe title of a 2013 blog item here dealt with that sense that musicians may be “plugging in” to a force field for the energy (Continue Reading)
What there is pattern, there is intention
02/01/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentWhen artists bypass rules and structures, their work can sound chaotic to anyone expecting the traditional patterns of rhyme, harmony, rhythm, tone, pitch, scale, mode, (Continue Reading)
Calling the moves
01/26/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSquare dancing is directed by a “caller,” a person who calls out the next move: do-si-do, swing your partner, etc. I thought of that when (Continue Reading)
Thought Experiment
12/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter four centuries, most Americans can identify a piece of music as African-American. Not necessarily performed by African-Americans but in the African-American tradition. Why is (Continue Reading)
Where are the Mozarts?
11/21/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentLooking at the history of Western music, certain individuals stand out as musical geniuses: Mozart, Bach. We recognize this phenomenon and marvel at it. These (Continue Reading)
The Truth of Cultural Exposure
08/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn my household right now we have 4 levels of cultural exposure. My wife was raised in a Black Pentecostal church, came from a small (Continue Reading)
How a Colonial Perspective Works
05/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMusicology in the West has relegated popular music to the non-serious realm. Therefore, African scholars, branded and sanctioned by metropolitan universities and departments of musicology, (Continue Reading)
cowbell as cultural memory
03/28/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Sam Floyd, my suspicions rise over terms like “cultural memory.” I recall a disturbing conversation with a Prof. Woods, chairperson of the art department (Continue Reading)
Compare Calabar recitation to Havana homenaje
07/28/2019 Pat Barrett Add Comment
In Praise of Afro-Pop
07/06/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI sent this in when the program requested testimonials for a grant. The music of Africa has formed the base of a good deal of (Continue Reading)
The Pulse
06/26/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe first 3 have the pulse I am talking about. I have used examples without vocals and the last two are nothing but drumming. The (Continue Reading)
If you cannot show it, is it real?
06/26/2019 Pat Barrett 2 Comments“Show” is not the best word. Thinking about African Diasporic music and the issue of the pulse, I was reminded of the issue of acquisition (Continue Reading)
When it gets good
04/18/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentYou might notice how in many forms of African-derived music, a melody- and harmony-driven music will over the course of the piece devolve into domination (Continue Reading)
Compare this to any Niger/Chad/Congo horn section
04/13/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt about 7:05 on this you will hear the horns take over and then play any recording of the music deeply written about by Simha (Continue Reading)
Together – Apart: a view of Western music
04/06/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWestern Europe and West Africa have a lot in common in their musics and musical traditions but are also clearly distinct. Both regions and traditions (Continue Reading)
The beat of the washing machine
01/09/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentOne of the hallmarks – no, the sine qua nons – of the music of West Africa and the African Diaspora is what is popularly (Continue Reading)