What culture/country in the diaspora has the most African cultural retention?

[Samori Toure]

I partially disagree.

BBQ most definitely didn’t come from white folks, look at the history of most white owned BBQ joints in the South and there’s always a story of some old Black man teaching them. Kind of like old country artists always have that same kind of story. Not to mention there’s nothing comparable I’ve seen within European cuisine, especially not that shyt from the British isles. Whats more likely in my opinion is the theories that it either came from Native American influence, or came by way of Caribbean slaves who were brought in to the Carolinas during the early years of the colony which explains the similarities you see between bbq and jerk.

I also had saved a youtube clip of a woman in a Gambian village frying chicken just like we do, but it’s got shut down due to copyright reasons.

Bar-b-que is barbacoa. It is attributed to Taino Indians, but it definitely came to the Africans through Europeans, mostly the Spanish.

Now African Americans revolutionized that shyt, but nope it came from the Taino through the Europeans to the Africans.

 

[im_sleep]

Mrs. Harris and the woman who is a curator for museum in New Orleans are the only ones who could be clasified as historians in that small segment. I hope the subtitles didn't block their listed occupations which flashed on the screen

1. completely agree,he's not a historian ... though I assume it was edited and he was comparing specific islands to certain americancolonies

2. disagree......(modern day)Louisiana was French territory until the Haitian revolution...and some parts of the area....I imagine, is similiar to the climate of the islands....I know they grew sugar cane in LA for example.....so him saying that the diets of people in New Orleans specifically would be similiar to the islands sounds right.....Africans taken from those same islands (and regions of Africa), growing the same crops,eating fish/shrimp/conch, in the same general area...under the same euros(french and spanish) are going to have same foods

MS was next to LA, but were separate countries and slave systems before the louisiana purchase....they share the gulf coast, but he's not completely wrong

No doubt, Mrs. Harris is someone I highly look up to on this subject.

I’m not doubting the similarities, I’ve always felt that New Orleans is the crossroads of the American South and the Caribbean, which makes it a uniquely special place in the diaspora. However what I’m saying is every aspect of New Orleans culture is not exclusive to its location in relation to the South, which is an assumption I see a lot of people make, which is why dude would use such a poor example when much there’s much better ones to use. Its a lazy approach that speaks more to the lack of knowledge people have of general AA culture outside of major locales. He’s not wrong in his assessment of New Orleans, he’s wrong in his assessment of everyone else.

And trust me I’m well aware of the differences historically between the 2 states. I’m also aware that during the roughly 60 year period of American slavery in the gulf that cultural influence crossed between Creoles(Native Louisianans) and African Americans coming from the Old South as plantations started having blended populations due to the domestic slave trade as well as slavery within the region. That’s not even covering post-emancipation. Louisiana slaves were traded into neighboring states as slavery expanded just the same as they were gaining slaves from elsewhere. It’s not like there was a Great Wall of Louisiana that squelched influence from flowing in and out of the state.

Like explain to me what foods are exclusive to New Orleans in relation to being similar to the Caribbean, that you won’t find anywhere else in the South? What crops are grown that are exclusive and how does that impact the cuisine? Btw, I know the answers I’m just curious what you think they are.

And I want it to be clear my issue hear isn’t the assessment of New Orleans or even Louisiana in general. My issue is too many people’s lazy catch-all approach to understanding AA culture outside of certain locations and the fact that nobody ever challenges it.

 

[im_sleep]

Bar-b-que is barbacoa. It is attributed to Taino Indians, but it definitely came to the Africans through Europeans, mostly the Spanish.

Now African Americans revolutionized that shyt, but nope it came from the Taino through the Europeans to the Africans.

So would you say the line goes...

Taino Indians to Europeans, European to Africans in the Caribbean, then Africans in the Caribbean into American colonies?

Or Taino’s straight to Africans and so on?

I ask because I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around European slave owners giving Africans cooking tutorials on things outside of European dishes.

 

[get these nets]

The majority of slaves brought illegally to the United States after importation was abolished ended up in the gulf, mainly Texas and Louisiana.

And the majority of those who came through South Carolina’s ports prior to 1808 remained in the region initially, at least a generation or two. You gotta remember the south central states were barely established and Virginia/Maryland were too busy exporting slaves as opposed to importing. The domestic slave trade didn’t start picking up a lot of steam till the 1820’s up to the civil war, so yes you could effectively consider them Gullah/Geechie. Plus there is literally too much cultural overlap to treat them as some sort of totally separate group who developed in a bubble compared to everyone else, if anything they are more of a founder group who retained more, but still part of the same strand IMO.

If what was posted earlier about that port in the Carolinas being THE busiest slave port pre-1808 is true, then it doesn't seem to add up that the enslaved would remain in the coastal NC/SC/GA region for a generation or two.

triangular slave trade routes and history says that the Africans were acclimated/broken down at the first leg of the route....in the Caribbean. ....then shipped to ports North.
Not understanding any purpose of Africans remaining near the port of entry
region. The ships were constantly coming in because there was a demand for labor in different parts of the colonies, not just the coastal Carolina area.
If Charleston was the main entry port for enslaved Africans into the American colonies, the middle men slavers would have been the buyers. And then the Africans would soon be moved to secondary auction areas in the interior and in other colonies.

 

[im_sleep]

If what was posted earlier about that port in the Carolinas being THE busiest slave port pre-1808 is true, then it doesn't seem to add up that the enslaved would remain in the coastal NC/SC/GA region for a generation or two.

triangular slave trade routes and history says that the Africans were acclimated/broken down at the first leg of the route....in the Caribbean. ....then shipped to ports North.
Not understanding any purpose of Africans remaining near the port of entry
region. The ships were constantly coming in because there was a demand for labor in different parts of the colonies, not just the coastal Carolina area.
If Charleston was the main entry port for enslaved Africans into the American colonies, the middle men slavers would have been the buyers. And then the Africans would soon be moved to secondary auction areas in the interior and in other colonies.

I’ll get back to this later to explain some more

 

[im_sleep]

If what was posted earlier about that port in the Carolinas being THE busiest slave port pre-1808 is true, then it doesn't seem to add up that the enslaved would remain in the coastal NC/SC/GA region for a generation or two.

triangular slave trade routes and history says that the Africans were acclimated/broken down at the first leg of the route....in the Caribbean. ....then shipped to ports North.
Not understanding any purpose of Africans remaining near the port of entry
region. The ships were constantly coming in because there was a demand for labor in different parts of the colonies, not just the coastal Carolina area.
If Charleston was the main entry port for enslaved Africans into the American colonies, the middle men slavers would have been the buyers. And then the Africans would soon be moved to secondary auction areas in the interior and in other colonies.

Notice how in the earlier decades how SC’s enslaved population is heaviest on the coast. By that time slaves had been present in the region for over 100 years. Now notice how after 1810, also after the banning of importation, the increase starts spreading inland, and even decreases a little on the coast by 1860. All the while new states are getting heavy increases.

 

[intruder]

Damn I forgot how much I loved this song Memories of voudou rarahs in Aquin, Southern Haïti

Haitian voodoo folk songs be the soonest shyts. Just imagine some random sunday afternoon you run into a croud of thousands of people screaming this shyt atop their lungs dancing in the middle of dirt roads in the countryside.

 

[intruder]

Did hatians listen to Francophone African music like Soukous back in the day?

Yes. Lots of Soukouss influence in Haitian music. I'd have to go back and listen to some of the 80s joints to pinpoint them but Artists like Carole Demesmin used some Soukous-like tunes for her music.

THo it's hard to pinpoint origins of haitian music. I'm sure we've borrowed some from all over Africa just like African Americans. Lately, last 5 years, ive developed a love for Zouglou and Soukous but handsdown my favorite is Congolese which includes Soukous and other genres but especially their folk music

 

[Samori Toure]

If what was posted earlier about that port in the Carolinas being THE busiest slave port pre-1808 is true, then it doesn't seem to add up that the enslaved would remain in the coastal NC/SC/GA region for a generation or two.

triangular slave trade routes and history says that the Africans were acclimated/broken down at the first leg of the route....in the Caribbean. ....then shipped to ports North.
Not understanding any purpose of Africans remaining near the port of entry
region. The ships were constantly coming in because there was a demand for labor in different parts of the colonies, not just the coastal Carolina area.
If Charleston was the main entry port for enslaved Africans into the American colonies, the middle men slavers would have been the buyers. And then the Africans would soon be moved to secondary auction areas in the interior and in other colonies.

You mention 1808, but slavery didn't end in the USA until 1865 so of course most people stayed in place in the regions that they were in unless they were sold into different regions. Both sides of my family are primarily from Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. My mother's family moved from a coastal area near the North Carolina/South Carolina border into Tennessee. Some were taken to Tennessee as slaves, while others moved to Tennessee as free people after the Civil War ended.

 

[intruder]

Bénin




meanwhile in Haiti...



Ayïbobo , suckas

 

[Supper]

triangular slave trade routes and history says that the Africans were acclimated/broken down at the first leg of the route....in the Caribbean. ....then shipped to ports North.
Not understanding any purpose of Africans remaining near the port of entry
region. The ships were constantly coming in because there was a demand for labor in different parts of the colonies, not just the coastal Carolina area.
If Charleston was the main entry port for enslaved Africans into the American colonies, the middle men slavers would have been the buyers. And then the Africans would soon be moved to secondary auction areas in the interior and in other colonies.

Wrong for the most part. Even during British colonial era, when about half of the slaves imported to the US would come, the vast majority(%80) of the slaves imported to the North American colonies came directly from Africa. The other 20 percent mostly came from seasoning camps in the Caribbean after spending a few months there being prepped to be sold off to other colonies. In colonial French Louisiana the number was even less as there was a legal ban on slaves coming in from the French west indies.

Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877

 

[Supper]

Bar-b-que is barbacoa. It is attributed to Taino Indians, but it definitely came to the Africans through Europeans, mostly the Spanish.

Now African Americans revolutionized that shyt, but nope it came from the Taino through the Europeans to the Africans.

While certainly a descendant of barbacoa, American BBQ is defined by it's use of BBQ sauce and reliance on pork which distinguishes it from it's from it's ancestor. These traits come from the enslaved(& possibly early freedmen) Afr'Am tradition of mixing African, Native, and European spices to make sauce and the heavy use of pork because it was pretty much the cheapest and most readily available mammal meats(feral hogs are STILL considered pest in most parts of the south), in comparison to beef which was very expensive to buy, let alone raise. Obviously black ppl, slave and free, by and large couldn't afford to make wide use of prime choice cut meats.

• East Carolina Sauce – Most American barbecue sauces can trace their roots to two sauces common in North Carolina and South Carolina.[citation needed] The simplest and the earliest were supposedly popularized by African slaves who also advanced the development of American barbecue. They were made with vinegar, ground black pepper, and hot chili pepper flakes. It is used as a "mopping" sauce to baste the meat while it was cooking and as a dipping sauce when it is served. Thin and sharp, it penetrates the meat and cuts the fats in the mouth. There is little or no sugar in this sauce, which in turn has a noticeably more sour flavor than most other barbecue sauces.

Barbecue sauce - Wikipedia





Most black cowboy/cattle hands in Texas didn't even own the ranches they work on or the cattle on them. And most of them worked primarily as cooks.



Explanation of the difference between the Central Texas-white style(which actually has a lot of AA influence) and East Texas-black style bbq(which came first).

The etymologist who finally comes up with a satisfactory history of the word “barbecue” will have to account for such differences as these. At first blush, the East Texas chopped pork sandwich with hot sauce has little in common with the slab of Central Texas beef. Culturally and historically they are miles apart. It seems likely that they are the product of two quite different traditions, one carried eastward from the open range, the other carried westward by Southern blacks, meeting in Texas where the name of one (which one?) was fused to the other.


In any event, one plausible theory which has been offered to explain the difference between the two goes something like this: The heavily-sauced, chopped East Texas barbecue is a reflection of the fact that it was originally a Negro phenomenon, an ingenious method for rendering palatable the poorer, less-desirable cuts of meat which often were the only ones available to the poor black. Hence most of the attention was lavished on the hot sauce, whose purpose was to smother the dubious flavor of the meat which the barbecuing process had at least made tender. (Culinary experts tell us that we owe the finest continental sauces, like bearnaise, to a similar problem of semi-spoiled meat in Bourbon France).

In Central Texas, by contrast, the Saturday barbecue at the town meat market was developed by the dominant social class, who could choose from among the best cuts of meat and cooked them to emphasize their flavor. Piquant sauces had little appeal in that situation, and it is therefore not surprising that Central Texas sauces are often a rather bland incident to the large well-flavored chunks of beef enjoyed for their own sake.

The World’s Best Barbecue is in Taylor, Texas. Or is it Lockhart?



Fun Fact: Even "East" Texas bbq is not exactly a monolithic category stylistically. It's more of a meta category for all black-style bbq traditions decended from that brought by AA slaves to Texas during the domestic slave trade. But, within that category there are regional differences, mainly between Northeast and Southeast Texas.

Southeast Texas(Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange) bbq is HEAVILY influenced by gulf coast Louisiana creole cuisine in it's use of smoked boudain, grease-beef balls, muddy-water sausage(Houston specific), smoked crabs(Beaumount specific), and other seafoods.
The boundaries of Southeast Texas barbecue
Old-School Houston Barbecue Thrives at Ray’s BBQ Shack
The origins of Southeast Texas barbecue

The Northeast TX style bbq(mainly Dallas and Tyler TX), I'm not too sure of other than it's descended from the southern bbq tradition brought by AA slaves during the domestic slave trade. I wish there was more info on it.

 

[havoc]

The Gullah-Geechee are African Americans and for whatever reason people assume that African Americans have not retained much cultural influence from Africa. However, it is pretty clear that African Americans retained a great amount of cultural influence from Sahelian people, especially the Mande. Consider these things:

1. The Blues. That genre music is right out of Mali and it came to the USA with the slaves. The Blues is the root music of all other American music (Country; Bluegrass; Gospel; Funk; Soul; Rock and Roll; Jazz; Rap, etc.) and the slaves from the Sahel are responsible for all of that music being in the USA; especially the Mande slaves.

2. The Southern Accent. Project MUSE - Bound to Africa: the Mandinka Legacy in the New World

3. Rice. That is why Mande people were brought to the USA and they are responsible for many rice dishes that are credited to Europeans. The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection | The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

4. Playing the dozens: Aka Sanankuya is from Mali and it was considered part of a civic duty in Kurukan Fuga in 1236.
Sanankuya | Revolvy


There is other stuff like Islam in African American Christian Churches and names like Malik, Jamal, Rasheed, Rashida, Omar, Fatima, Kadeshia, etc., but I don't have time to write it all out right now.

African American music

 

[UberEatsDriver]

Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and possibly the Garifunas who live on the coast of Central America.

 

[im_sleep]

While certainly an descendant of barbacoa, American BBQ is defined by it's use of BBQ sauce and reliance on pork which distinguishes it from it's from it's ancestor. These traits come from the enslaved(& possibly early freedmen) Afr'Am tradition of mixing African, Native, and European spices to make sauce and the heavy use of pork because it was pretty much the cheapest and most readily available mammal meats(feral hogs are STILL considered pest in most parts of the south), in comparison to beef which was very expensive to buy, let alone raise. Obviously black ppl, slave and free, by and large couldn't afford to make wide use of prime choice cut meats.




Barbecue sauce - Wikipedia





Most black cowboy/cattle hands in Texas didn't even own the ranches they work on or the cattle on them. And most of them worked primarily as cooks.



Explanation of the difference between the Central Texas-white style(which actually has a lot of AA influence) and East Texas-black style bbq.


The World’s Best Barbecue is in Taylor, Texas. Or is it Lockhart?



Fun Fact: Even "East" Texas bbq is not exactly a monolithic category stylistically. It's more of a meta category for all black-style bbq traditions decended from bbq traditions brought by AA slaves to Texas during the domestic slave trade. But, within that category there are regional differences, mainly between Northeast and Southeast Texas.

Southeast Texas(Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange) bbq is HEAVILY influenced by gulf coast Louisiana creole cuisine in it's use of smoked boudain, grease-beef balls, muddy-water sausage(Houston specific), smoke crabs(beaumount specific) and other seafoods.
The boundaries of Southeast Texas barbecue
Old-School Houston Barbecue Thrives at Ray’s BBQ Shack
The origins of Southeast Texas barbecue

The Northeast style bbq(mainly Dallas and Tyler TX), I'm not to sure of other than it's descended from the southern bbq tradition brought by AA slaves during the domestic slave trade.

East Texas BBQ = GOAT style of BBQ, just for the diversity alone.

It’s irritating as hell how much Central Texas BBQ gets the spotlight...but we all know why that is.