Ryan Rush

Rotz

Midterm Essay, MUSC 109

24 October 2014

Today I am going to go ahead and tell you a story. This story is based on historical

events. This story is about ones journeys to new places far and away from home, how the

different travels and interactions have made an impact on this individual, as well as how this

individual used those impacts to slightly change and alter its personality while remaining true

to itself. The final part of the story will be about the incredibly long journey the individual has

taken to make it back home, and how, even with some personality changes, the family and the

people in which the individual belongs to still recognizes it and accepts it with open arms.

Today, I will tell the story of how African Music, particularly the music of West Africa has been

spread throughout the world, influenced the music of other countries across the globe, fused with

different types of music to make new genres, and eventually its return home to Africa in its

modern genres, which include other genres which were influenced by African music in the first

place. When referring to the musical tradition itself, I will use the name Morowa, which

according to Askhari Johnson Hodari (PhD), who wrote THE AFRICAN BOOK OF NAMES:

5,000+ Common and Uncommon Names from the African Continent, is the Akan name for

Queen.

Our story starts way back around the 17th century when the African people were still their

own people free to live their life. Then one day something changed. The African continent was
being invaded by outsiders. Those outsiders were the Americans and Europeans. This event in

which these outsiders captured a large quantity of African people and dispersed them to different

places around the globe. This event, according to Michael Bakan, is known as the African

Diaspora. When the people were captured and dispersed, they were not alone, they were

traveling with Morowa, their different musical traditions. Morowa was special to the people,

besides each other, it was pretty much all they had left. It was during the African Diaspora in

which the African people became slaves. The dispersion from Africa to places like the Americas

that exposed them to different types of music for the regions of the world in which they now

resided. Everywhere in which the people were dispersed, Morowa sent a piece of herself to be

with them and help remind them of home. The people were now slaves that were brought in to

do the hard labor that their owners did not wish to do. It was during this time in which Morowa

met the musical traditions of her new home(s), sometimes these meetings were powerful enough

to merge Morowa with these new musicultural traditions to create new musical genres.

Morowas personality consists of six main characteristics, the first of which, she can

speak in multiple voices at once (complex polyphony). Next up, she is composed of different

layers, like onions, or even ogres for that matter. These layers are short and appear in a variety of

repeated patterns (layered ostinatos). Probably one of her more distinct traits is that she is

conversational, whether she is trying to get a verbal response, or if she is trying to be soothing,

that conversational element is usually present. Morowa loves to throw curve balls at you and

improvise just when you think you have her figured out, she changes everything up. Her voice

has a variety of sounds it can make, one of these sounds can be heard on CD 2-2 (timbral

variety). She also speaks in a distinct matter so her message gets across properly (distinct pitch
and scale systems). Morowa had such an impact in these regions that you can notice some of

these characteristics in the music from the regions she has travelled.

Morowa has now traveled from Africa, to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and has

landed in the Caribbean and South America, we will start her journey from her time in

Argentina. Morowa landed in Buenos Aires, which is a large port city in Argentina. Being a port

city, Buenos Aires was home to many ethnicities, which helped create the Tango. You can hear

Morowas influence on the tango in the ostinatos and the rhythm. Tango originally began as a

song & dance for the lower class that eventually gained mainstream popularity. A man named

Astor Piazzolla took tango and mixed it with western music, specifically jazz, to create a new

form of the tango, Nuevo Tango. According to Bakan, this was done at the urging of his

mentor, and he enjoyed the hell out of it.

Morowas next journey takes to the musical sensation that is Brazil. Morowa has a heavy

influence on the Brazilian music called Samba. Samba is the most well-known music to come

out of Brazil, and most of Morowas influence could be heard in the polyrhythmic percussive

texture that is common in African music, as well as the vocals and improvisation in Samba. Most

of the vocals in samba are call and response form (CD 3-19). The upper-class community in

Brazil preferred something that wasnt so in your face and abrasive, so Morowa met with 3

musicians in the 1950s and together they churned out a mixture of Samba and western Jazz

music to form what is known as Bossanova; which sounded much classier than Samba due to

changing the percussive parts of the rhythm into a type of string instrument which sounds like a

guitar (CD 1-27). The pieces of Morowa left behind in Samba, and Bossanova came in contact

with Gilberto Gil and his pal Veloso. Together they took that samba and jazz infused bossanova

music and added rock to become Tropiclia (CD 1-1). Veloso and Gil were exiled due to their
inclusion of foreign music in tropiclia, and tropiclia was outlawed by the Brazilian government

in the 1960s.

Time to go to Cuba. When slaves were first brought to Cuba by the Spaniards, Morowa

had a chance to mingle with and blend herself with musical elements that came from Spain. This

merging gives way to the birth of Latin dance music by way of Afro-Cuban derivation. The first

type of music to come out of this was more ritualistic and was called Santeria, which also

happen to be the religion in which the rituals took place. The other type of music popular in

Cuba was a traditional dance called Rumba. The bat drums which are used for Santeria are

similar to the fontomfrom set up in Africa where each drum in the set has a specific pitch. In an

effort to establish their own identity, Cubans adopted a mixture of African and European music,

the one of which is the more Spanish influenced Danzn, the other being more African

influenced called Cuban Sn.

Danzn is played in an ensemble style with lots of instruments. Morowas mark has been

left in the rhythms. The Danzn helped make way for a fusion of a more Afro-Cubanized version

called the Danzn-Mambo, which added conga drums. The congas helped give that extra Afro-

Cubano flavor. You can still hear some of the musical Africanisms in danzn-mambo. Out of the

danzn-mambo, in the 1950s came the white mans version known as the cha cha ch, which

was created so that white people could dance to it because they lacked the ability dance to the

good stuff. The other style of music in which you can hear Morowas influence is the Big Band

Mambo style (CD 4-6). The big band mambo much like Morowa has distinct characteristics

similar to the musical Africanisms, including the short repetitive layers, the many voices at

once, complex rhythms etc. It was played in a large ensemble which included western
instruments as well as Afro-Cuban ones. This is where Morowa linked up with her favorite

person of the entire journey, Tito Puente.

Tito Puente was a Puerto Rican man living in New York. Having grown up in Spanish

Harlem as a kid, he was exposed to many different types of music, including the music in which

Morowa had a heavy hand in creating, Afro-Cuban. Puentes biggest song is Oye Como Va

(CD 4-7), which sounds to like it belongs to the big band mambo genre. Tito Puente is also

credited with the creation of Salsa music in the 1970s. In salsa you can hear the influence

Morowa has on it in the polyphonic texture and the layered repetitive ostinatos. It is heavily

influenced by Afro-Cuban music, with intentional exaggeration. Morowa makes her trip back

home to Africa through modern day genres and is happily home with her family. This happened

with the creation of Afro-Pop and high time music which are both influenced by salsa music,

which in turn was influenced by Morowa herself. That is the journey of Morowa, the African

musical tradition, from Africa, to the Americas and back home. Globalization played a large part

in the journey of the music. With globalization comes ease of communication with foreign

nations and it became easier to travel to these places where different cultures can exchange and

mix ideas to make brand new ones, and what comes out of this musically, is generally a beautiful

thing.