Suggestions for American Black culture?

[IllmaticDelta]

Cont.

Stereotypical boxing styles

@ 18:33 the guy is the video mentions the 52 blocks style of the aframs that protected herc from getting his system jacked

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Are there traditions and customs we can list as our culture?

of course...repost from an old thread on the same topic

But this still does not describe what AA culture is...... and so far, the only thing I got it music....

Sad to say, I think you guys are marginalizing what culture really is and what its really about........

It's more than music....must have missed this post from me...

Modern music, ubran/street wear, soul food, Southern baptist churches, HBCUs, AA literature/art/movies and the vast array of dances.

This idea that AA don't have culture is dumb and idiotic, and honestly, AA culture is just as rich as most places claiming to have "their own culture"

I'll let @IllmaticDelta and @K.O.N.Y @Anghellic put in work though

to add on

Dance. AAVE and Urban AAVE. That intangible black identity that permeates throughout our population that naturally comes to us. The cool factor we're known for. Fashion and urban fashion

edit-Actually some of these overlap yours

Folklore and Oral traditions
Gospel
Shout Bands/music
Negro spirituals
Dance
HBCU
Baptist-Holiness-Pentecsotal church
Fashion
Food
Regional subcultures
Blues
Zydeco
Rock/Rock n Roll
Gullah-Geeche
Louisiana Creole
Black Indians
Mardi Gras Indians
Afro Seminole
Funk
HipHop
Jazz
Jazz funeral
Religious subcultures
Hoodoo
Voodoo
Brass Bands
HBCU bands
Black Cowboys/Rodeos
Speech/Dialects
Slang
Soul
Disco
House music
Electronic dance
Rural related culture
Civil Rights
Black Power/Pan-Africanism/Afrocentrism

...plus many other things


keep in mind that this is what makes up the modern "Afroamerican" identity and culture ..


One thing people must remember is the full blown modern AfroAmerican identity came about due to the struggle and jim crow laws. Before that, you had people with regional flavors culturally and you had different classes of AfroAmericans or what came to be Black Americans.


Origins of African-American Ethnicity or African-American Ethnic Traits


The newly formed Black Yankee ethnicity of the early 1800s differed from today’s African-American ethnicity. Modern African-American ethnic traits come from a post-bellum blending of three cultural streams: the Black Yankee ethnicity of 1830, the slave traditions of the antebellum South, and the free Creole or Mulatto elite traditions of the lower South. Each of the three sources provided elements of the religious, linguistic, and folkloric traditions found in today’s African-American ethnicity.30


http://essays.backintyme.biz/item/19

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Pretty every American musical genre, for starters. Most dance forms that are US-born. A number of musical instruments. Southern-cuisine in American is basically African-American food.

And plenty of other folk/rootsy stuff dealing with religion like hoodoo, voodoo, wudu, and even the way Christianity is practiced. Also quilting, basket weaving, story telling(which evolved into spoken word) old home building styles.

yup

Many Blacks from the South incorporated spiritual beliefs or remnants of ATR with the Bible/Christianity - and they still do.

For instance, Pastor C.H. Mason:

Mason was born the son of former slaves Jerry and Eliza Mason in Shelby County, Tennessee. He used "Hoodoo" and used magical sticks and items to heal and pray.​

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Estrelda Alexander was raised in an urban, black, working-class, oneness Pentecostal congregation in the 1950s and 1960s, but she knew little of her heritage and thought that all Christians worshiped and believed as she did. Much later she discovered that many Christians not only knew little of her heritage but considered it strange. Even today, most North Americans remain ignorant of black Pentecostalism.

Black Fire remedies lack of historical consciousness by recounting the story of African American Pentecostal origins and development. In this fascinating description she covers

• what Pentecostalism retained from African spirituality
• the legacy of the nineteenth-century black Holiness movement
• William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival
• African American trinitarian and oneness Pentecostal denominations
• the role of women in African American Pentecostalism
• African American neo-Pentecostals and charismatic movements
• black Pentecostals in majority-white denominations
• theological challenges of black Pentecostalism in the twenty-first century

Whether you come from an African American Pentecostal background or you just want to learn more, this book will unfold all the dimensions of this important movement's history and contribution to the life of the church.

REVIEWS
"This particular book is especially welcome. African American Pentecostals have become a major force in American (and world) Christianity, but there is a serious lack of well-documented studies. Estrelda Alexander does an excellent job filling that lamentable gap."

Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
"Pentecostalism is one of the most vibrant and important developments in modern Christianity. In this welcome and much-needed book, Estrelda Y. Alexander demonstrates convincingly that this global work of the Spirit has to a large extent emerged from and continues to be fanned into flame by the African American community. Outsiders who think a few more controversial variations of 'black fire' sometimes look like 'strange fire' will be glad to learn that the African American church has able internal critics of its own outliers. Every Christian--indeed, everyone interested in the present and future of Christianity--needs to know this story."

Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College
"Black Fire offers an expansive historical overview of African American Holiness-Pentecostals and their often overlooked contributions to the early development, dissemination and current vitality of the modern Pentecostal movement from its inception to the present. Students and scholars of African American religion and culture will appreciate its rich content, as well as its nuanced attention to matters of race, class, gender and generation."

Karen Kossie-Chernyshev, Ph.D., professor of history, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas
"Dr. Alexander has gathered the major, minor, profound and pedestrian aspects of African American Holiness-Pentecostalism in a volume that seeks to provide a Rosetta stone for scholars, students, denominational historians and the general public. She is clear to state that this work is an endearing labor of love to articulate her experience as an African American Pentecostal worshiper, scholar and minister. This volume is the seedbed of a crop of readable studies in African American Holiness-Pentecostal history, theology and culture. A worthy investment in understanding the why, who, what and how of a century-old community of denominations linked to the book of Acts and 312 Azusa Street. Kudos!"

Dr. Ida E. Jones, historian, Calvary Bible Institute and Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
"This book will provide its readers with a valuable overview of important monuments and figures from the past one hundred years. It presents a straightforward account of how African American Pentecostalism developed and changed over time. Because of the scope of this work, it will be helpful for general audiences who want to learn more about this topic or for use in an undergraduate course."

Monica Reed, H-Net Pentecostalism, May 2014
"Black Fire provides a much-needed narrative that completes, and at times corrects, the general histories of both American Christianity and the Pentecostal and charismatic movements."

William Purinton, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 36, No. 2
"Alexander is one of the few historians of black Pentecostalism who have attempted to synthesize the story of black Pentecostalism within one volume. This is a very challenging task that she does exceptionally well given the myriad number of black Pentecostal denominations. Her work is a first of its kind and a timely, valuable resource for students and scholars of African American religion in general and African American Pentecostalism in particular."

Jonathan Langston Chism, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 42, No. 4, December 2016

Black Fire - InterVarsity Press

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Pentecostalism’s Neglected Black History

Christine A. Scheller: What is the connection between Pentecostalism and African spirituality?

Estrelda Y. Alexander: Because the early leaders of Pentecostalism were African American, they had been grounded in a spirituality. A lot of times, because you don’t understand your past, you don’t even know what it is that influences you. Seymour grew up in Lousiana and Lousiana was a place where there was a lot of African spirituality around him that he imbibed as a young person. So some of the ways that African people are open to God get incorporated into Pentecostal worship, and you can see this in the difference between white and black Pentecostals even today. There’s this real sense of openness to the Spirit, but not naming it as African religion.

Christine A. Scheller: So, it’s a cultural influence?

Estrelda Y. Alexander: Right. They would never say that, but one of the people who specifically talked about embracing African roots as part of Pentecostalism was Charles Harrison Mason, the founder of the Church of God in Christ, which is the largest African American Pentecostal body in the world. He was unashamedly African in his approach to religion and incorporated things such as healing rituals that he not only found support for in the Bible, but also found support for in his African roots. He was not ashamed and he didn’t want Black people to be ashamed of their Africanness, and so he did things like using herbs and healing roots. Even though he saw this as healing that was being offered by the Holy Spirit, he also saw a place for the African herbs and the things that he had known in his childhood in the ritual of healing in the Black church.



There are elements of Africanism that no they are not named as that, but they get incorporated, such as the music. In the Black Pentecostal church, music is a mainstay, and it’s music at a different level. I’ve heard a critique by a middle class Black person who was appalled by the earthiness of the music in Black Pentecostal worship, and almost saw it as soulish, and didn’t think it was appropriate, because not just music, but rhythm and drums are important to African American Pentecostal worship. When Pentecostalism first began, people who were around Pentecostals thought their worship was appalling. For example, when Rev. Charles Parham came to Azusa Street, he called what he saw at the revival “crude Africanisms.” He was appalled at the openness to the Spirit. It wasn’t just speaking in tongues, but it was the shaking, the quaking, which many people would see as related to Spirit possession in African worship. Pentecostals would say, yes, there’s a Spirit possession, but they would redefine it as possession by the Holy Spirit. If you go back to slave religion, you had things like the “ring shout.” The people who were early Pentecostals weren’t that far removed from slavery, so some of that was in their memory and gets translated into some of the worship that happens in the early movement.

Pentecostalism's Neglected Black History | HuffPost

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Various Carolinian Afram artistic practices

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

of course...repost from an old thread on the same topic




It's more than music....must have missed this post from me...









Folklore and Oral traditions
Gospel
Shout Bands/music
Negro spirituals
Dance
HBCU
Baptist-Holiness-Pentecsotal church
Fashion
Food
Regional subcultures
Blues
Zydeco
Rock/Rock n Roll
Gullah-Geeche
Louisiana Creole
Black Indians
Mardi Gras Indians
Afro Seminole
Funk
HipHop
Jazz
Jazz funeral
Religious subcultures
Hoodoo
Voodoo
Brass Bands
HBCU bands
Black Cowboys/Rodeos
Speech/Dialects
Slang
Soul
Disco
House music
Electronic dance
Rural related culture
Civil Rights
Black Power/Pan-Africanism/Afrocentrism

...plus many other things


keep in mind that this is what makes up the modern "Afroamerican" identity and culture ..


One thing people must remember is the full blown modern AfroAmerican identity came about due to the struggle and jim crow laws. Before that, you had people with regional flavors culturally and you had different classes of AfroAmericans or what came to be Black Americans.


Origins of African-American Ethnicity or African-American Ethnic Traits


The newly formed Black Yankee ethnicity of the early 1800s differed from today’s African-American ethnicity. Modern African-American ethnic traits come from a post-bellum blending of three cultural streams: the Black Yankee ethnicity of 1830, the slave traditions of the antebellum South, and the free Creole or Mulatto elite traditions of the lower South. Each of the three sources provided elements of the religious, linguistic, and folkloric traditions found in today’s African-American ethnicity.30


http://essays.backintyme.biz/item/19

Here is the thing... the fact that most AAs can’t tell you what our culture is, or what it stands for, is indicative that something is broken or missing in regards to what is supposed to be our culture....

 

[Akata Man Bromo]

@Hiphoplives4eva

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Here is the thing... the fact that most AAs can’t tell you what our culture is,

who said most aframs don't know what their culture is? Most people who ask questions like these are outsiders who only know mainstream afram culture rather than the root culture that birthed it

or what it stands for,

see above

is indicative that something is broken or missing in regards to what is supposed to be our culture....

it's more indicative that many don't realize just how expansive and diverse it is combined with its regional flavoring. An afram from the gulf coast technically has a totally different flavoring from an afram from, let's say, rural virginia.

 

[Sankofa Alwayz]

It’s common knowledge that culture consists of dance, music, food, linguistics, collective consciousness, spirituality/religion, fashion, social customs, architecture, family heirarchy, subcultures, literature, and so much more. There have been so many examples given to OP and foreign Blacks as well as AAs who for whatever reason believe in the crackkka rhetoric that we “don’t have a culture” pinpointing exactly what Afrikan Amerikkkan culture really is and what it consists of.

 

[Sankofa Alwayz]

The dance aspect is one of my most favorite things about The Culture:





















These are just a very small handful of examples.

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

The dance aspect is one of my most favorite things about The Culture:





















These are just a very small handful of examples.

Culture is also behavior, one’s philosophy towards life, and rites of passage to manhood/womanhood.
What cultural examples reflect these things and are shared amongst the majority of African Americans?

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Benevolent societies (also known as mutual aid organizations)

A fitting introduction to this section on antebellum black mutual benefit associations is a sample of titles, sites, and founding dates:

• Free African Union Society, Newport, RI, 1780s
• Free African Society, Boston, 1787
• Free Dark Men of Color, Charleston, 1791
• New York African Society for Mutual Relief, 1808
• African Benevolent Society, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1827
• Baltimore Society for Relief in Case of Seizure, 1830
• Afric American Female Literary Association, Philadelphia, 1831
• Coloured American Temperance Society, Philadelphia, 1831
• Phoenix Society, New York City, 1833
• Adelphic Union Library Association, Boston, 1836
• Young Men's Literary and Moral Reform Society, Pittsburgh, 1837

Mutual assistance and self-help have been cornerstones of African American community for generations. Here we offer texts that document what, in 1903, W E. B. Du Bois called "the first wavering step of a people toward organized social life."1 The earliest mutual assistance societies among free blacks provided a form of health and life insurance for their members—care of the sick, burials for the dead, and support for widows and orphans. Later societies sought to promote education and job training, especially for newly arrived African Americans, freemen and fugitive slaves. While the number of societies attests to the wide-ranging efforts of northern free blacks, most were hampered by low funds and low membership.

1. Free African Society, Philadelphia, 1787. Founded by the black ministers Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, the Free African Society listed its goals—as well as its expectations of all members—in its founding document. Members would contribute money to a fund from which a weekly sum would be paid to the "needy of this society . . . provided, this necessity is not brought on them by their own imprudence." The society was nondenominational to include free blacks of all religious sects, as no one sect had enough members to create its own mutual aid society. "How great a step this was," wrote W. E. B. Du Bois, "we of to-day scarcely realize."1
   
   
2. New York African Society for Mutual Relief, 1808. Similar to the Free African Society, the New York society was formed two decades later to provide a form of health and life insurance for its members and their families. In this 1809 address the president and cofounder of the society, William Hamilton, exhorted its members to be firm in their commitment to the society i.e., to each other. "Let us all be united, my Brethren," he concludes in rousing rhetoric, for "MUTUAL INTEREST, MUTUAL BENEFIT, AND MUTUAL RELIEF." The Society persevered for more than 150 years, into the 1950s.
   
   
3. Negro mutual benefit societies in Philadelphia, 1831. In a newspaper notice "To the Public," the mutual benefit societies of Philadelphia listed their goals and financial contributions for the relief and education of poor African Americans in the city. Why would they do this? Because "many have mistaken our object, and doubted the utility of these institutions," even accusing them of promoting "extravagance and dissipation" among their recipients. Not so, the societies insist: their funds go to the neediest among them for basic sustenance.
   
   
4. Phoenix Society, New York City, 1833. The newly formed Phoenix Society also published its goals in a newspaper, in this case the African American Liberator. Education was its primary object, and it outlined achievable steps to enroll black children and adults in reading and writing classes, trade apprenticeships, lending libraries, lecture series, and self-improvement groups—even providing clothing to children who could not otherwise participate. Although the society soon folded for lack of funds, other societies continued similar programs in New York City.

Mutual Benefit Societies, African American Community during Slavery, African American Identity: Vol. I, 1500-1865, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center

Benevolent societies (also known as mutual aid organizations) were organizations created in the late 1700’s to help free and enslaved Africans cope with financial hardships such as illness and providing proper burials for family members. This resilient population used the ancestral practices rooted in their African heritage to create communal groups with a strong social function. Many scholars have traced these roots to the Senegambia and Congo regions of West Africa where benevolent societies were also important in providing a sense of stability and unity to the community.

As early as the 1780’s benevolent societies were formed by free and enslaved blacks of New Orleans. Evolving from African community and tribal practices, these social organizations were even more crucial for African American survival in the New World. Members relied on one another for assistance through hard times, illness, and ensured proper burials at death. These benevolent societies and social groups also serve to continue the expression of African cultures, traditions and forms of ceremony, dance music and celebration that evolved from the practices and ritual of Africa which arrived into Congo Square, the only place in America where free and enslaved people of color were allowed to express their culture.


In New Orleans, the French government’s approach to slavery was much different than in the rest of the United States. The French applied a more lax approach to slavery, allowing people of color to congregate on Sunday afternoons at Place de Congo (Congo Square). This was a gathering place, similar to a market place, located outside of the New Orleans’ city limits. The French inadvertently created the perfect environment for people of color to share and preserve their tradition of drums, dance, songs, food and folklore from their homeland. This very important exchange is the foundation of New Orleans’ African American benevolent societies.parade_3New Orleans’ tradition of benevolent societies continues to provide stability to its African American community. Before Hurricane Katrina (2005), New Orleans had over fifty-two clubs who produced annual parades. These clubs comprised of extended families and community members based in specific neighborhoods. Post-Katrina, the number of active benevolence societies are greatly reduced, but the remaining clubs continue to carry on the traditions. Each club creates a parade, which expresses their identity through dress, dance and music. The role of the benevolent society has changed over time, but they still provide a support to their members and their community.

Benevolent societies not only provide financial support and a sense of community, they are a living testament to the cultures, traditions and ceremony that originated with their African ancestors.

Benevolent Societies - Black Men of Labor

Early African American cooperative economic action took many forms: mutual aid and beneficial societies, mutual insurance organizations, fraternal organizations and secret societies, buying clubs, joint stock ownership among African Americans, and collective farming. The majority of early African American cooperative economic activity revolved around benevolent societies, beneficial societies, and mutual aid.

Many of these societies were integrally connected with religious institutions and/or people with the same religious affiliation, and established educational, health, social welfare, moral, and economic services for their members. Chief among the activities were care for widows and children, the elderly, the poor, and provision of burial services.

A group of people who know each other, through their neighborhood or church or other organization, join an organization to provide a service or a set of services – a community of care. They agree to pay an initial fee to join and a weekly or monthly fee to keep the common fund/treasury operating. A specified portion will be paid to any member who needs the service: is sick and needs a doctor, needs hospitalization, needs an income while convalescing, needs to be buried, etc.

Sometimes other members will give their services instead of or in addition to funds from the organization’s treasury. This was and continues to be a way to pool money, support others in your community, and guarantee support in times of emergency – all in a family and community atmosphere of trust and fraternity.

Any possible need was addressed through a Mutual Aid Society. Often people who were involved in Mutual Aid Societies later became involved in formal cooperatives.

Lessons from African American Cooperatives • RMEOC

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Hoodoo

African American Hoodoo (also known as "conjure", "rootworking", "root doctoring", or "working the root") is a traditional African American folk spirituality that developed from a number of West African spiritual traditions and beliefs.


The hoodoo religious system
According to Carolyn Morrow Long, "At the time of the slave trade, the traditional nature-centered religions of West and Central Africa were characterized by the concept that human well-being is governed by spiritual balance, by devotion to a supreme creator and a pantheon of lesser deities, by veneration and propitiation of the ancestors, and by the use of charms to embody spiritual power. [...] In traditional West African thought, the goal of all human endeavor was to achieve balance." Several African spiritual traditions recognized a genderless supreme being who created the world, was neither good nor evil, and which did not concern itself with the affairs of mankind. Lesser spirits were invoked to gain aid for humanity's problems.[6]

Since the 19th century there has been Christian influence in hoodoo thought.[5] This is particularly evident in relation to God's providence and his role in retributive justice. For example, though there are strong ideas of good versus evil, cursing someone to cause their death might not be considered a malignant act. One practitioner explained it as follows:

"[In] Hoodooism, anythin' da' chew do is de plan of God undastan', God have somepin to do wit evah' thin' you do if it's good or bad, He's got somepin to do wit it ... jis what's fo' you, you'll git it."[7]
"([In] Hoodooism, anything that you do is the plan of God, understand? God has something to do with everything that you do whether it's good or bad, he's got something to do with it... You'll get what's coming to you)"
Not only is God's providence a factor in hoodoo practice, but hoodoo thought understands God as the archetypal hoodoo doctor. On this matter Zora Hurston stated, "The way we tell it, hoodoo started way back there before everything. Six days of magic spells and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made."[8] From this perspective, biblical figures are often recast as hoodoo doctors and the Bible becomes a source of conjurational spells and is, itself, used as a protective talisman.[9] This can be understood as a syncretic adaptation for the religion. By blending the ideas laid out by the Christian Bible, the faith is made more acceptable. This combines the teachings of Christianity that Africans brought to America were given and the traditional beliefs they brought with them.

The newest work on Hoodoo lays out a model of Hoodoo origins and development. Mojo Workin:The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Ph.D. discusses what the author calls "the ARC or African Religion Complex which was a collection of eight traits which all the enslaved Africans had in common and were somewhat familiar to all held in the agricultural slave labor camps known as plantations communities. Those traits included naturopathic medicine, ancestor reverence, counter clockwise sacred circle dancing, blood sacrifice, divination, supernatural source of malady, water immersion and spirit possession. These traits allowed Culturally diverse Africans to find common culturo-spiritual ground. According to the author, Hoodoo developed under the influence of the ARC, the African divinities moved back into their natural forces, unlike in the Caribbean and Latin America where the divinities moved into Catholic saints. This work also innovatively discusses the misunderstood High John the Conqueror root and myth as well as the incorrectly discusses "nature sack."[10]

Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System

In this book, Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. Working against conventional scholarship, Hazzard-Donald argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she calls "regional Hoodoo clusters" and that after the turn of the nineteenth century, Hoodoo took on a national rather than regional profile. The first interdisciplinary examination to incorporate a full glossary of Hoodoo culture, Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System lays out the movement of Hoodoo against a series of watershed changes in the American cultural landscape. Throughout, Hazzard-Donald distinguishes between "Old tradition Black Belt Hoodoo" and commercially marketed forms that have been controlled, modified, and often fabricated by outsiders; this study focuses on the hidden system operating almost exclusively among African Americans in the Black spiritual underground.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13697064-mojo-workin




If you listen to older Blues, they make many references to Hoodoo


John the Conqueror

John the Conqueror, also known as High John the Conqueror, John de Conquer, and many other folk variants, is a folk hero from African-American folklore. He is associated with a certain root, the John the Conqueror root, or John the Conqueroo, to which magical powers are ascribed in American folklore, especially among the hoodoo tradition of folk magic. Muddy Waters mentions him as Johnny Cocheroo pronounced Johnny Conqueroo in the song "I'm a Man". "I think I'll go down/To old Kansas too/I'm gonna bring back my second cousin/That little Johnny Conqueroo"



Black cat bone

A black cat bone is a type of lucky charm used in the African American magical tradition of hoodoo. It is thought to ensure a variety of positive effects, such as invisibility, good luck, protection from malevolent magic, rebirth after death, and romantic success.[1]

...Got a black cat bone
got a mojo too,
I got John the Conqueror root,
I'm gonna mess with you...

—"Hoochie Coochie Man," Muddy Waters
The bone, anointed with Van Van oil, may be carried as a component of a mojo bag; alternatively, without the coating of oil, it is held in the charm-user's mouth.[2]


Mojo (African-American culture)

Mojo /ˈmoʊdʒoʊ/, in the African-American folk belief called hoodoo, is an amulet consisting of a flannel bag containing one or more magical items. It is a "prayer in a bag", or a spell that can be carried with or on the host's body.

Alternative American names for the mojo bag include hand, mojo hand, conjure hand, lucky hand, conjure bag, trick bag, root bag, toby, jomo, and gris-gris bag.[1]

The term mojo is now commonly used in the English language to mean one's personal talent or gift. For example, a person might say that they are "getting their mojo on" when trying to get the attention of a possible mate.


Goofer dust

Goofer dust is a traditional hexing material and practice of the African American tradition of hoodoo from the South Eastern Region of the United States of America.








Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition

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Louisiana Vodoun

Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, describes a set of spiritual folkways developed from the traditions of the African diaspora. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions developed by West and Central Africans populations of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Voodoo is one of many incarnations of African-based spiritual folkways rooted in West African Dahomeyan Vodun. Its liturgical language is Louisiana Creole French, the language of the Louisiana Creole people.

Voodoo became syncretized with the Catholic and Francophone culture of New Orleans as a result of the African cultural oppression in the region resulting from the Atlantic slave trade. Louisiana Voodoo is often confused with—but is not completely separable from—Haitian Vodou and Deep Southern Hoodoo. It differs from Haitian Vodou in its emphasis upon gris-gris, Voodoo queens, use of Hoodoo paraphernalia, and Li Grand Zombi. It was through Louisiana Voodoo that such terms as gris-gris (a Wolof term)and "Voodoo dolls"' were introduced into the American lexicon

Louisiana Vodoun is markedly different from Haitian Vodou. It is more of an amalgamation of religious and magical practices found in the southern United States. This includes some of the Lwa found in Haitian Vodou, a strong presence of the Catholic Saints, and elements of southern folk magic like gris-gris, wanga and mojo bags. There is not a “regleman” in the same manner as Haitian Vodou and there is more of an emphasis on self-made Vodou Queens like the famous Marie Laveau. Louisiana Vodoun has a strong connection with Spiritualism and shares many magical techniques with Hoodoo (southern folk magic) – but should not be confused with Hoodoo. You will see the use of veves (ornate painted symbols) in Louisiana Vodoun, much as in Haitian Vodou. Louisiana Vodoun’s primary liturgical language is English with a bit of French Creole.

What is the difference between Voodoo, Hoodoo and Santeria?

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Gospel Quartets were the first Black male groups. They kicked off everything.

....relates to early quartet-gospel singing styles



Barbershop music

Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era (1930s–present), is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music, characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture. Each of the four parts has its own role: generally, the lead sings the melody, the tenor harmonizes above the melody, the bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone completes the chord, usually below the lead. The melody is not usually sung by the tenor or baritone, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate embellishment can be created. Occasional passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts

Historical origins
In the last half of the 19th century, U.S. barbershops often served as community centers, where most men would gather. Barbershop quartets originated with African American men socializing in barbershops; they would harmonize while waiting their turn, vocalizing in spirituals, folk songs and popular songs. This generated a new style, consisting of unaccompanied, four-part, close-harmony singing. Later, white minstrel singers adopted the style, and in the early days of the recording industry their performances were recorded and sold. Early standards included songs such as "Shine On, Harvest Moon", "Hello, Ma Baby", and "Sweet Adeline". Barbershop music was very popular between 1900 and 1919 but gradually faded into obscurity in the 1920s. Barbershop harmonies remain in evidence in the a cappella music of the black church.[4][5][6] The iconic barbershop quartets are typically dressed in bright colors, boaters and vertical stripe vests, though costuming and attire can vary.[7]

Barbershop Quartets, Present at the Creation

^click on it

March 18, 2002 -- Think of barbershop quartets and this image easily comes to mind: four handlebar-mustached white men in straw hats and striped vests singing "Sweet Adeline" in four-part harmony.

But the roots of barbershop actually date back to singing by African Americans in the late 19th century, Jim Wildman reports for Morning Edition as part of the Present at the Creation series on American icons.

"Barbering was a kind of low-status job and it was held in some areas by gypsies and European immigrants, in other areas, by African Americans," says Gage Averill, chairman of the music department at New York University and author of the upcoming book Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony. Barbershops often served as black community centers, "the place where guys hung out," he says. "A lot of harmony was created in these barbershops."

Thomas Johnson Jr., 89, grew up singing early barbershop tunes with friends in barbershops and on street corners in Richmond, Va., in the early 1900s. "During that time, it was just anyway you sing it was alright. Hand it down, throw it down, any way you get it down. Whatever came to the ear -- that's barbershop."

But barbershop quartets soon became associated with white performers when the recorded version of the music became widely distributed, Averill says. Thomas Edison's early phonograms spread to parlors around the country, "but they needed content," Averill says. "So they actively sought out groups to record. You couldn't bring an orchestra... or a chorus into the early studios. They were cramped and you had to sing right into the horn (microphone). So it favored small groups and these quartets were just perfect."

By the end of the 19th century, phonogram companies presented competing quartets, Averill says. "And those quartets -- the ones that they were really promoting -- were by and large white quartets. And it was the promotion of these groups and their dissemination everywhere in North America and beyond that really fixed the identity of barbershop in a white context."

In addition, scholars incorrectly traced barbershop's origin to England. Library of Congress musicologist Wayne Shirley says the misperception started in the 1930s, when an influential historian, Percy Skoals, was misled by an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Shirley explains: "There was an Elizabethan phrase about 'barber's music,' music that was made in barbershops, and so (Skoals) decided that the barbershop quartet came basically from England. And unfortunately it's just not true. Barber's music, which simply meant the kind of stuff you hear when there are a couple of lutes around and people are getting haircuts and passing the time by singing rather badly, is not barbershop."

http://sandbox.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/barbershop/index.html

 

[Poitier]

Culture is also behavior, one’s philosophy towards life, and rites of passage to manhood/womanhood.

You're confusing culture with social norms.

 

[8WON6]

I'm pretty sure African Americans created Memorial Day, I can't remember what the first name of it is off the top of my head though.