Music for the Soul

Sylviane Diouf: In the American South, Sahelian Muslims [the Sahel stretches from Senegal to Sudan] had a better chance of preserving their musical styles than the more numerous non-Muslims from the forest and the coastal areas of West Africa and West Central Africa, who relied more heavily on drumming and group singing and dancing. The reason is that drums were outlawed in the American South in 1740 after Central Africans staged a revolt in South Carolina in 1739, in which they used drums to call on people to join them. This revolt really spread fear in the colonies. People from the Sahel who relied less on drums could continue to play their string instruments, such as the banjo, and they adapted quickly to the fiddle. So that was really the first condition.

Then, between 1790 and 1865, there was in the United States what is called the domestic slave trade. Over a million Africans and African Americans from the Upper South—states like Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina—were sent on forced journeys to the Deep South to develop cotton and sugar on plantations. The work regime was extreme, and it rested on incredible brutality. Communal song and dance may not have been appealing in this inhumane environment, in the really terrible conditions the people were in. In addition, slaveholders were probably leery of assemblies, even if they were, on the surface, for the purpose of dancing.

For people originally from the Sahel, their musical style had a much better chance of taking root in the Deep South because that tradition had already been easier to preserve further north, and it also responded better to the social and psychological situations people found themselves in.

SD: It really went both ways. In several regions in Africa, including the Sahel, which has a large Muslim population, traditional, pre-Islamic music is based on a pentatonic or five-note scale, whereas music in the Arab world, for example, is based on a heptatonic or seven-note scale. Throughout the Muslim world people recite the Qur’an according to what they know, their local traditions, which are based on the local sound that appeals to the population. So, although the words are the same, the way the Quran is recited can sound different.

A journalist, Isma’il Kushkush, wrote a very interesting BBC article on this subject, and it shows that social media and YouTube have introduced African reciters to a wide, international audience, which was not the case before. For example, the prayer and du’a of Shaykh Omar Jabbie, an imam from Sierra Leone who is based in the United States, has over 3.6 million views—he learned to recite in Senegal and in Gambia. And what’s interesting is that while most of the people who have viewed this particular prayer and du’a are found in France—it’s not surprising: there’s a large West African Muslim community there—the second-largest group of listeners is in the United States. And perhaps it’s a hint that to people in the US this sounds familiar, even unconsciously, because of the genesis of black music in America. Also interesting is the recitation style of the late Sudanese Nourin Mohamed Siddig, who died in a car accident last year. It was described, as Kushkush notes in his article, as sad and soulful and bluesy. He too used the pentatonic scale, which is traditional in Sudan.

And from the other perspective, the singing style of West African Muslims is characterized by the kind of declamatory style, wavy inflections, raspy voices, melisma, humming, vibrato, and quivering effects of Qur’an recitation. It’s so deeply rooted that it continues to be prevalent in contemporary music. For example, you can hear these features in the way Senegalese musicians like Youssou N’Dour and Baaba Maal sing. Have you seen the film Black Panther?

SD: When we see Wakanda for the first time, the soundtrack is by Baaba Maal, and it has all the characteristics I just mentioned. So, if people want to understand how West African Muslims sing, how they’ve been influenced by Qur’anic recitation, they can play Black Panther, and they’ll see exactly what I mean.

SD: It’s interesting because if this is forgotten today, it was widely known in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. There were many black string bands with fiddle, banjo, and guitar. They were often itinerants, and they played for black and white audiences—separately, of course. The banjo was so totally identified with black people that white musicians played the banjo in blackface in profoundly racist minstrel shows. Some early bluegrass and country musicians acknowledged that they learned to play the banjo and the guitar from black musicians, and the same white musicians, as well as others, also recorded with black musicians.

The thing is that black music is always looking forward and evolving. In other words, a change was coming. While white audiences were listening to hillbilly or old-time music, because they were nostalgic for the good old times, African Americans living under Jim Crow were looking elsewhere. There was no nostalgia for the past there. So, little by little, the black string bands became outdated. And interestingly the banjo, which was this purely African instrument, became associated with white, rural, racist Southern culture.

There were a few older black banjo and fiddle players who persevered, but as they died out there was little interest among young black musicians until groups like the Ebony Hillbillies and the Carolina Chocolate Drops claimed back the banjo. And then there was the first “Black Banjo: Then and Now Gathering,” which was held in North Carolina in 2005. I have here the announcement; the goal was “to create awareness that banjo playing today is an outgrowth of the African experience, to bring attention to contemporary Black banjo players who are carrying the tradition into the Twenty-First Century, to celebrate the Banjo’s place in African American music and culture, and to highlight the banjo’s role in cultural exchange.”

Since then, young black banjo players have reclaimed the instrument from the white Southern culture that it has been associated with. And in the spirit of black music always looking forward, they produce innovative, fresh sounds. But for a lot of people still today, the banjo is the epitome of white Southern music. They don’t know it is an African instrument, but Thomas Jefferson knew it very well.