Back to Africa: The New World Afro-Diaspora Roots of Modern African Music
- Thread starter The Odum of Ala Igbo
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Will check him out later
Don't want to hijack the thread but this is a good article . African music is becoming very popular in the Caribbean especially afrobeat and kizomba
https://www.google.com/amp/www.thef...-trinidad-carnival-olatunji/amp?client=safari
How Soca Is Absorbing Afrobeats To Create A New Subgenre
The Monarch competition is a key event in the run-up to Trinidad and Tobago’s annual carnival, and one of the most prestigious music showcases in the Caribbean. Olatunji’s triumphant performance of “Ola,” already one of the most popular songs of the 2015 carnival season, earned him the title of Groovy Soca Monarch, one of two prizes awarded at the competition. Perhaps more significantly, it also confirmed the arrival of a new subgenre that's come to be termed “afrosoca”—a blend of Caribbean and African rhythms that reflects both the outward expansion of Trinidad’s signature sound and the growing influence of afrobeats on the island, and worldwide. It was Shakira Marshall, a New York-based choreographer of Guyanese descent, who coined the term afrosoca as a name for her Brooklyn-based dance class in 2012.
The emerging hybrid is the latest volley in a transatlantic conversation that began, like so many other cultural transfers, with the enslavement of millions of West Africans and their forced relocation to Caribbean colonies centuries ago. Trinidadians proved to be remarkably resilient and creative in preserving African traditions over the years, refashioning the spoken word commentary of the griot into calypso, defying colonial bans on drums by creating new percussion instruments from bamboo and turning discarded oil drums into the steelpan. Similar developments occurred across the Caribbean—notably in Jamaica, where the mento style of folk developed in parallel to calypso in the early 20th century, and where African drums later reasserted themselves in the form of Nyabinghi drumming, the rhythmic foundation of reggae.
By blending with afrobeats, a rhythmically similar but more nebulous category with less restrictions and more visibility, soca is broadening in a way that’s true to its origins and identity.
Today, Jamaican reggae and dancehall are among the most popular music forms in many parts of Africa. Along with hip-hop, house, and African sounds like highlife and kwaito, reggae and dancehall represent a major thread in the expansive category of African dance rhythms that has come to be known as afrobeats, from the patois-inflected bashment pop of Nigeria’s Burna Boy and Timaya, to the quasi-dancehall azonto beats used by Ghanaian artists like Sarkodie.
That kind of organic culture-mashing is how soca itself was born. The genre first developed in the mid-’70s through the music of calypsonian Lord Shorty (later known as Ras Shorty I), who sought to blend calypso with the chutney sounds of the polyglot island’s substantial East Indian population, creating a Trinidadian sound he called “the soul of calypso.” Abbreviated to soca, the genre crystallized in the ’80s, with synthesizers and drum machines approximating the sounds of brass bands and rhythm sections. Spreading across the Caribbean, it took on different shapes on different islands, from the rugged bashment soca of Barbadian artists like Lil Rick, to the jab jab style associated with Grenada. About a dozen Caribbean nations and island territories, including Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines—just about every English-speaking country in the region, save Jamaica—count soca as their primary musical product.
But what drives and propels soca is precisely what limits it: it is music made expressly for the Caribbean’s annual carnival celebrations. Carnival traditions have their own African roots, having originated as a means of resistance among Trinidadian slaves. Each year, a few dozen songs, mostly from Trinidad and Barbados, take hold region-wide and advance through the diaspora, where they soundtrack floats at celebrations from London to Brooklyn to Baltimore. A handful of songs—Kevin Lyttle’s “Turn Me On” and Rupee’s “Tempted to Touch”—have made it to Top 40 radio, though often in a form remixed to fit global tastes. Yet the genre remains inexorably tied to the parades, or road marches, that are the climax of every Caribbean Carnival.
To function on the road at Carnival, songs must effectively propel members of masquerade troupes—running on fumes after weeks of fêtes, exhaustive costume prep, and the paint-splattered, rum-soaked, pre-dawn ritual known as J’Ouvert—to vigorously and relentlessly “chip,” jump, and wave their flags through the streets for hours. This requires an insanely insistent energy, one most often delivered by power soca, a sound in the 160-165 beats-per-minute range that ranks among the world’s most aggressive dance rhythms.
Soca’s co-dependence with Carnival means that it lays dormant for large parts of the year, before gushing forth again in a mad rush of releases timed to hit just before Carnival. This stop-and-start cycle inhibits the genre, critics say, but also creates an opportunity for annual reinvention. In the last five years, EDM has played a significant role in expanding soca’s parameters, spurring a fusion that has both influenced and been influenced by Major Lazer. The Diplo-led outfit, whose Jillionaire hails from Trinidad, has collaborated with soca’s two biggest icons, Machel Montano and Bunji Garlin, helping to bring the latter’s “Differentology” to global attention with an official 2013 remix.
Garlin has been a force in soca since the early aughts, but Montano in particular has found inspiration outside of Trinidad for decades. Beginning in the 1990s, soca artists took on influence from pop, R&B, and other genres, creating a more melodious, mid-tempo school known as groovy soca. In contrast to the call-and-response chants of power soca, its lyrics paint the trappings of Carnival in more romantic, universal terms, celebrating revelry and wining—the circular rotation of waistlines central to contemporary Caribbean dance.
Now, it is Africa that is again influencing Caribbean music, at the considerably more mellow 120 beats-per-minute tempo of groovy soca. As afrobeats has fanned out of Lagos and Accra and into the global mainstream through diasporic hubs like London and Toronto, it is having a more intimate, familiar conversation with the islands. Artists from the two regions are building on their shared histories and extant similarities with collaborations and remixes that are blurring the boundaries between African and Caribbean sounds even further. Jamaica’s Konshens recently released a remix of his “Gal Ting” featuring Nigeria’s Patoranking, and Sean Paul has paired with both Fuse ODG and Timaya in the last two years. The video for “Bend Down Pause,” a heavily dancehall-indebted single from Wizkid and Runtown, both Nigerian, features an intro from Jamaican-born Major Lazer MC Walshy Fire and Kingston-originated moves courtesy of Caribbean dancers like Crazy Hype and Betty Rox. Machel Montano recently released a remix of the song geared to the 2016 Trinidad Carnival season. And Busy Signal, dancehall’s savviest genre experimenter, has been putting a Jamaican spin on popular African rhythms for years, notably with “Same Way” and “Professionally,” flips of Sarkodie’s “U Go Kill Me” and P-Square’s “Personally,” respectively.
Nigeria’s Timaya has perhaps brought the commonalities between soca and afrobeats—as well as dancehall—into sharpest focus. “Sanko” seamlessly straddles all three genres; its video features a mixture of dancehall movements and Nigerian steps, like the shoki. “My intention was to develop a unique sound, that when played across continents, the response and the vibe will be the same,” Timaya says via email from Nigeria. “And I am very happy to say I achieved that.”
Afrobeats tracks like “Sanko” have had a particularly palpable impact in Trinidad and Tobago, influencing not only emerging soca acts like Olatunji and Sekon Sta, but also the genre’s leading voices. In March, Destra Garcia, the islands’ “Queen of Bacchanal,” released a remix of “Sanko.” In November, Bunji Garlin launched Suit of Black, his pan-Caribbean supergroup with dancehall deejay Assassin and Jamaican-Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishall, with “She Bad,” a propulsive afrobeats-inspired track with a sample of seeming West African origin. And Garlin’s wife, two-time Soca Monarch winner Fay-Ann Lyons, effectively kicked off the 2016 Carnival season with “Block the Road,” a collaboration with Ghana’s Stonebwoy, built by St. Vincentian producer Stadic as a 50/50 hybrid between soca and afrobeats.
More than anyone, though, it is soca’s marquee act, Machel Montano, who has brought African sounds and consciousness to the fore in Trinidad. He collaborated with South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo on 2013’s “Possessed,” and was the first Caribbean artist to endorse Timaya, hopping on a remix of “Shake Your Bum Bum” and bringing him out to Trinidad for his annual pre-Carnival concert in 2014. Montano has also collaborated with Nigerian rapper 2face Idibia, and has releases with Uganda’s Eddy Kenzo and Nigeria’s Legendury Beatz in the works. Last year, he shot the video for “On My Way,” a song inspired by the global reach of African drums, in Egypt.
“One day I was in London, looking at this African group perform, and they had these dance moves,” Montano says from L.A., where he now lives part-time. “It reminded me of Jamaican moves like pon di river, pon di bank, mixed with wining from Trinidad. But something about it was royal, and something about it was funny. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do with my soca music and our dance.’ To raise it up in a regal, royal way.”
Montano revitalized the genre in the ’90s with tracks like the dancehall-inflected “Big Truck” and the Spanish guitar-driven Shaggy collaboration “Toro Toro,” and he has been soca’s leader in terms of both popularity and innovation ever since. Today, he sees in the fusion an opportunity to create a greater platform for a genre he’s long worked to bring to wider acceptance. By blending with afrobeats, a rhythmically similar but more nebulous category with less restrictions and rising visibility, soca is broadening in a way that’s true to its origins and identity, a welcome development for artists seeking to grow the genre’s profile without losing sight of its core appeal. “This beat—being influenced by dancehall, being influenced by soca, being influenced by afrobeats—would play and please a wider cross section of people,” Montano says. “You can have Jamaicans, Trinis, Africans, and even Europeans and Americans dancing to this one beat.”
What is now organically occurring between soca, dancehall, and afrobeats, he says, is the realization of a goal he’s had since he began traveling the U.S. and Europe as a youth, as the lone international representative of a genre everybody had heard but few outside the Caribbean diaspora could name. “People used to make fun and fuss about ‘crossing over’ before. This is beyond crossing over, this is like interweaving,” he says. “You asked me if I think soca, afrobeats, and dancehall will become one genre? Well, that would be a great dream
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IllmaticDelta
Veteran
Soukous
From 2:13 -> 4:11
Original African Guitar Excellence - Zaiko & Ali Farka Toure
Papa Wemba, Congolese Soukous Superstar and Sapeur RIP
From 2:13 -> 4:11
Original African Guitar Excellence - Zaiko & Ali Farka Toure
Papa Wemba, Congolese Soukous Superstar and Sapeur RIP
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
The Nigerian Civil War was a major conflict during the apex of Highlife's popularity, and it was reflected in music
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
I love soukous. Soukous dancing has HEAVILY influenced how Africans dance today. East African music, in particular, brims with Soukous music and dancing influence.
makes the cypher complete
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
This song is sort of in the middle between Congolese Rumba (More on this later!) and Soukous.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Congolese Rumba (Rumba Lingala)
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
(more Congolese Rumba)
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Highlife, Soukous, Congolese Rumba. Blood is thicker than frigid Atlantic water!
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
Some of you may be wondering why, why are Congolese musicians allowed to release praise songs of Lumumba during Mobutu's reign of power?
Well, Mobutu tried to harness Lumumba's image of a national hero onto himself. That way, he would be praised in CONJUNCTION with Lumumba. Although, it was Mobutu who pushed for Lumumba's murder by Belgian and Katangese separatists (with CIA approval).
Music is political.
Well, Mobutu tried to harness Lumumba's image of a national hero onto himself. That way, he would be praised in CONJUNCTION with Lumumba. Although, it was Mobutu who pushed for Lumumba's murder by Belgian and Katangese separatists (with CIA approval).
Music is political.
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
'Christiana' really stretches out the Cuban guajeo influence, though not as far as Joromo/Guitar Boy in my opinion
The Odum of Ala Igbo
Hail Biafra!
An ode to West Africa's independence movement (Highlife)
