What is Black American Culture? (inspired by The Salon)

[Bawon Samedi]

Point being there's nothing anything close to Haitian culture that's native to the Continent of Africa. It's is unique all on it's own just like African-American culture is. There are simply ties to a variety of cultures on the African continent because of the role of indigenous African ethnicities played in the ethnogenesis of Afr'ams as well as Haitians.

This. And just like AA culture, Haitian culture too has European influence. Especially in the music, language and to an extent food. Even though Haitian dances is mostly African derived, some dances do have strong have strong European influence. Point is the culture of the African diaspora is diverse in that its mixed with many different African elements. But more importantly there's no such thing as a monolithic African culture.

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

Yes indeed. Haitians retained a good number of some African cultural traits, but still a lot were lost during slavery and their culture is very unique compared to other African culture. One would think Haitian vodou is the exact same copy and paste of African Vodun, but its not Vodou actually has strong European Catholic influence along with African Vodun influence. If you go to the deep south AA culture retained significant amount of African cultural traits i.e the Gullah and see this thread. So if we are going to talk about Haitians retaining more of their African "roots" than AA's than we have to know which specific region in the south, because for example in some places in the south AA's still retained African based Martial Arts "Knocking and Kicking".

For example..... Hatian Vodou... Do you believe that the belief\practice of Vodou is shared throughout the majority of the Hatian population?

 

[BmoreGorilla]

Dude no disrespect but

Idk why you don't want our culture to be ours but, it is and you gotta deal with it.

Breh theres been plenty of evidence provided for you in this thread. So I don't know why your keeping up with this "the math aint adding up" shtick

You also have to have a working understanding of how older musical genres impacted the general AA population during those times as well

This is a really silly comment and shows how uniformed you are. No offense. But I'm going to try and have some patience with you. Blues is the "blackest" genre in the United States, but more importantly it is the root and foundation of African American music(and American popular music in general). It along with gospel are also the root and foundation of African American culture. The blues development started in...You guessed it... Slavery. And then it was fully developed by the early 20th century, specifically when radio was invented. But more importantly it developed in the south, where the majority of the AA population lived. It defined the AA culture and struggle at that time. Hell blues is the ROOT of AA non-religious secular culture. The "vices" of black American such as drinking, partying, sex, smoking dope,etc. Blues defined all that. If it weren't for the blues not only can you just forget about your Hip Hop and R&B, but AA's would be more religious than we are today. Yes it defined ALL the things you listed and its roots are still seen today.

Its sad that my white professor understands(and know this), but you as a black person does not.

Please check my original post where I stated in 2015 hip hop is black American culture. Im not saying the blues, jazz, soul food, the church etc. isn't a part of our culture. All Im saying is that none of those things have thoroughly defined our image the way hip hop does at this present moment.

For all of you saying we don't have a culture yall are dead wrong. We had no choice but to have our own culture becuz we were excluded from American culture as a whole.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Haitians retained a lot more of their African roots than AAs by far......... I think people are taking an academic approach to this instead of a worldly one.... cause real talk, culture has an ultimate purpose, and I haven't seen anyone touch on it yet.....

Haitians aren't really that African (many people think Haiti is Africa Pt 2 in the world and they couldn't be more wrong) culturally speaking, which is why they call it Creole (AfroEuropean) they just have a different African base that influences them. I would argue that their culture isn't even as vast as AfroAmericans.

 

[Supper]

I use to prefer the term "Black-American" to "African-American" for good reasons, but @Supper once made a good point to me that "Black-American" is actually too general compared to "African-American". The term African-American is good, because its not a racial entity but an ethnic one. And because of ethnic, AA's have their own specific culture.

Because "black" has and still serves as a marker for categorization in the skin color based "race" system. And as we know(hopefully) "race" is not an observable phenomenon based in any science, whether in the study of culture or genetics. Thus this "color"(or lack there of) not a sufficient title for any ethnic group of people as it does not represent our heritage, ancestry, or history. I primarily use African-American, but would also be okay with "Afro-American", or the portmanteau "Afr'am" which might actually be the best option because it doesn't give the impression that our title is just two words of continents put together, but ONE word which has it's linguistic root words in two continents that denote our ancestral continent and the continent of our ethnogenesis.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

For example..... Hatian Vodou... Do you believe that the belief\practice of Vodou is shared throughout the majority of the Hatian population?

Some Haitians I met say they despise Vodou and not many on the island practice, while some say a good number do practice it but behind close doors. I'm part Haitian, but I never been to the islands so I don't know. All I know is that most of Haiti is catholic and almost all Haitians I met in America do not practice Vodou. To me it seems like only a quarter of the population practices it and only in rural areas. So imo I do not now about majority.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Point being there's nothing anything close to Haitian culture that's native to the Continent of Africa. It's is unique all on it's own just like African-American culture is. There are simply ties to a variety of cultures on the African continent because of the role of indigenous African ethnicities played in the ethnogenesis of Afr'ams as well as Haitians.

Drop some knowledge on these suckers bro.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Haitians aren't really that African culturally speaking, which is why they call it Creole (AfroEuropean) they just have a different African base that influences them. I would argue that their culture isn't even as vast as AfroAmericans.

Yeah Haitian culture is always looked at as the go to culture for those in the Afro-Diaspora who retained most of their African cultural traits by people not much informed on Haitian culture. But really Haitian culture has some strong European influence.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Because "black" has and still serves as a marker for categorization in the skin color based "race" system. And as we know(hopefully) "race" is not an observable phenomenon based in any science, whether in the study of culture or genetics. Thus this "color"(or lack there of) not a sufficient title for any ethnic group of people as it does not represent our heritage, ancestry, or history. I primarily use African-American, but would also be okay with "Afro-American", or the portmanteau "Afr'am" which might actually be the best option because it doesn't give the impression that our title is just two words of continents put together, but ONE word which has it's linguistic root words in two continents that denote our ancestral continent and the continent of our ethnogenesis.

THIS! I was waiting for you to touch base on it, because I really did not know how to explain it.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Yeah Haitian culture is always looked at as the go to culture for those in the Afro-Diaspora who retained most of their African cultural traits by people not much informed on Haitian culture. But really Haitian culture has some strong European influence.

Yep. many think Haiti is Africa PT 2 but just in the new world. I would say Brazil and Cuban are easily more African in the stereotypical, drumming/voodooish way people think African culture is.

 

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

true but the origins got obscured because it went global and with so many white people making it, those who weren't aware of the roots and sounds in Chicago (House), Detroit (Techno) and New York/Jersey (Garage) took it for imported "white" music

good post.

I mean, there are a good amount of people that respect the origins and the producers that innovated the game, some of them like Atkins, May, Saunderson are still around djing now getting paid overseas playing festivals. I've been to Detroit for Movement/The Detroit Electronic Music Festival three times (first was in 2008)...that's where it really began. Hell, the first real rave and the first time rave was used in terms of a party was in Chicago in 1982...

REally though, the thing about that music is just due to the fact that it was so bare bones and really didn't rely on too much other than a bass kick, a snare, and a high hats, it was extremely subject to different levels of interpretation. I think that's what made it so popular.

The fact that you could have one record that came from Chicago in the early 90s with just a hot beat and a chant like "hoes break it down" or something...lol...then mix that with some heady abstract and minimal European type stuff that has a black cover with a white line running through the middle with just the word "partition" on the cover and the tracks would just have titles like "2" and "3" that
s the magic of that music.

EDM...is killing that completely. EDM is just whitewashed mainstream house music for white North American audiences that don't care about the roots or the history of the artform. That's why many older heads (like myself) that have been around the block in the game...do not fukk with EDM.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

This. And just like AA culture, Haitian culture too has European influence. Especially in the music, language and to an extent food. Even though Haitian dances is mostly African derived, some dances do have strong have strong European influence. Point is the culture of the African diaspora is diverse in that its mixed with many different African elements. But more importantly there's no such thing as a monolithic African culture.

Every AfroNewWorld population is "Creolized" by definition since none have a pure 100% African derived culture. It's really the African traditions colliding and trying to adapt to the new European culture.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Yes indeed. Haitians retained a good number of some African cultural traits, but still a lot were lost during slavery and their culture is very unique compared to other African culture. One would think Haitian vodou is the exact same copy and paste of African Vodun, but its not Vodou actually has strong European Catholic influence along with African Vodun influence. If you go to the deep south AA culture retained significant amount of African cultural traits i.e the Gullah and see this thread. So if we are going to talk about Haitians retaining more of their African "roots" than AA's than we have to know which specific region in the south, because for example in some places in the south AA's still retained African based Martial Arts "Knocking and Kicking".

Black Americans do Louisianna Voodoo and Southern Hoodoo but many people don't know about that


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.



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]


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

 

[jwonder]

New Blacks

 

[Field Marshall Bradley]

Point being there's nothing anything close to Haitian culture that's native to the Continent of Africa. It's is unique all on it's own just like African-American culture is. There are simply ties to a variety of cultures on the African continent because of the role of indigenous African ethnicities played in the ethnogenesis of Afr'ams as well as Haitians.

That's great, but that wasn't my point...... cause at the end of the day Haitian culture is inherently more African than AA culture... that's all I was trying to stress