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

[IllmaticDelta]

The influence is all over what we now think of as rural white, country-mountain music

 

[MostReal]

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

good post breh

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

good post breh

 

[MostReal]

I must say some great info in this thread
@IllmaticDelta
@Supper
it is way past time for you guys to chose an avi, your post are too great not to have one on this forum

some very disappointing post from @Peter Vecsey @BmoreGorilla , @MeachTheMonster is a terrible Larrybox stan poster anyway so...

In theory, people working in their self interest are suppose to take stewardship of their culture in order to preserve, propagate, and and market it to member outside their culture for profit, which can become a really big deal when you talk about as I've said before with the entertainment and tourism industries by exploiting people's natural attraction towards the exotics. African-Americans have abysmally failed in this regard.

Both Afr'Ams and the Japanese have massively influential cultures on a global level. But, the difference is that the Japanese act as militant ambassadors of their culture and take ownership of it to the full extent, to the point where no "westerner" would dare to try and openly claim anime or karate as "western culture" simply because it's popular in the West for fear of the ensuing swarm of Japanese who would certainly jump down their throat in defense of their culture. They make sure patrons of their culture pay financially and pay dues. Whereas if some white person were to claim Jazz, Electro-Techno, or Rock & Roll music as apart of "western culture", you would probably have some AAs who would be right there nodding along with them. And even if they knew deep down that it was wrong they wouldn't have the intellectual wherewithal to know how to effectively pick apart these fallacies and crush them, because of, how you say, cultural unawareness.

we really don't know the value we have with our creativity. Its sad that fellow black posters in this thread feel that way & don't understand how they sound. They sound just like this white supremacist poster I argued with in Higher Learning because he stated that everything 'black' that we make in this country should be made Public Domain & readily appropriated/assimilated into the larger white American culture with no regards to rights of ownership etc. Yet, these posters subliminally agree with him.
If we started taking 'ownership', I'm going to start using another term more like selling what is ours, from us to others it would change our standing in this world completely.

I think it's harder to do because AfroAmeicans aren't a nation/country. With Japanese culture, at the end of the day we know what country this stuff is coming from which also happens to be very homogenous whereas as AfroAmericans originated/grew up in a nation where we're just a small group in a sea full of white people plus other ethnic groups. What this does, is that whatever we come up with, it gets appropriated by the masses and then becomes standard American pop culture for everyone and then it can often obscure (to many people) the origins. With white people being the masses and controlling most of the media..there is almost no way for AfroAmericans to avoid what happens like what happened to Rock N Roll

I'm hoping these artist start to realize that there is no use in signing with major record labels anymore since they no longer really pay to market artist. Make your music, establish a following, use social media & the net to book shows, sell music etc.

 

[bouncy]

Man, I learn so much from @IllmaticDelta and @KidStranglehold, y'all make a brother proud to be
Black. For real!

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Contributions to american culture?

We have never been apart of America since its creation to consider our culture apart of American culture.

Black American culture was segregated off just like its people

7revo, your post couldn't be more wrong, you should read this...............

wtf.... this simply isn't true. There was physical segregation for sure but Black American culture has been dominating America since the the 1850's. Where do you think HillBilly music came from?






or what the early minstrel shows were trying to imitate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Plantation

The influence is all over what we now think of as rural white, country-mountain music

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Go to 3:38

 

[Blackout]

7revo, your post couldn't be more wrong, you should read this...............

I did mention how they stole our art example being Elvis.

 

[MostReal]

Those string instruments & sound, I dare say derived from the Kora a West African instrument as well


start at 2:00 mark

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Are Black Americans the only blacks in the Americas questioned about not having "culture" ? Like u would never hear someone tell a Black Brazilian, Cuban, Jamaican, Trini, Black Mexican, etc that they have no culture cause of xyz.

Double standards and haters. It's funny how some will try to throw shade at AAVE (Black Dialect aka Ebonics) without understanding it's roots and not realizing that Creole/Pidgins/AAVE all came about the same way. For example...



Misconceptions About “Black Dialect”


I would like to shed some light on black dialect, which some individuals now call “Ebonics,” and how such came to be. It kinda irks me that people keep referring to it as being “made up” or some sort of street slang. They think it’s the same thing that you might hear from rappers which really isn’t the case. Black Dialect or Ebonics originated in the American south from slaves and eventually spread out when blacks began to leave the South. In fact, if you want to see or hear it in it’s true form just go find some old slave narratives or even old Blues lyrics. Rappers actually rap in a a combination of “Black Dialect” and street slang. Real black dialect has no slang. Black dialect is really Southern White American English with Africanisms. It formed the same way West African pidgins, Jamaican Patois and Creoles formed. Famous African American writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Paul Dunbar wrote many of their works in this dialect.

What people call "Ebonics" today used to be called "Black Dialect" or "Black English". A quick history comparing "Black Dialect or Ebonics" "Gullah" and West African Pidgins


Southern American English

Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Virginia and central Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to central Texas. Southern American English can be divided into different sub-dialects (see American English), with speech differing between regions. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) shares similarities with Southern dialect, unsurprising given African Americans' strong historical ties to the region.

The Southern American English dialects are often stigmatized (as are other American English dialects such as New York-New Jersey English). Therefore, speakers may code-switch or may eliminate more distinctive features from their personal idiolect in favor of "neutral-sounding" English (General American), though this involves more changes in phonetics than vocabulary. Well-known speakers of Southern dialect include United States Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush along with playwright Tennessee Williams and singer Elvis Presley.

The Gullah Creole and "black dialect" are related. The main difference is that "Black Dialect" is closer to Standard English while Gullah has more pure African influence. One can say that "Black Dialect" is watered down Gullah. Yall may not know this but an AfroAmerican Gullah speaker and a Jamaican Patois speaker can somewhat understand each other but speakers of "Black Dialect" can't understand either one. An article take from the Jamaican-Gleaner website...


God speaks Gullah

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060128/mind/mind1.html

A NEW translation of the New Testament designed for persons who speak Gullah was unveiled last November. This translation bears strong resemblance to Jamaican Patois.

Gullah is the language that gave the world the song Kumbaya and words such as 'yam' and 'nanny'. It is spoken by about 250,000 African-Americans who inhabit the coastal areas between South Carolina and Florida.

The Gullah language according to www.wikipedia.com "is an English-based Creole, strongly influenced by West and Central African languages such as Vai, Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kikongo.

"It strongly resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone, a major West African English-based Creole. Some African-derived words attributed to Gullah are: cootuh (turtle), oonuh (pronoun 'you'), nyam (to eat), and buckruh (white man)".

The language originated in the slave trade that brought mainly West Africans to the Sea Islands off South Carolina. The slave traders, in an effort to thwart uprisings and escapees mixed slaves who spoke different languages. From this hybrid came Gullah. Some linguists believe that 10,000 African-Americans speak nothing but Gullah.

Gullah, also called Geechee, was developed as a way for slaves to communicate with one another without white slave owners knowing what was being said. After the American Civil War, the former slaves were able to retain their culture and language because many remained isolated on coastal islands.

Because the islands were isolated, Gullah never evolved into standard English.

Gullah many concur bears some resemblance to Ebonics, the modern African-American vernacular. But scholars insist it is a distinct language with its own grammar and vocabulary.

Bible translator Pat Sharpe and her husband, Claude, arrived in the Sea Islands all set to retire in the late 1970s. The couple decided to try a translation of the Bible into Gullah, beginning a process that would take nearly 30 years.

By the time the Sharpes had arrived, Gullah speakers had learned to be ashamed of their language. Some locals tried to persuade the Sharpes to drop the project. The couple refused to give up. They noted that Gullah had contributed to the English language such words as 'tote' (to carry), 'chigger' (flea) and 'biddy' (chicken). Other linguists joined the translation team as the project evolved.

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Jamaican website REGGAEmovement.com on Patois

http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/sullivan.html

Jamaican Patois, otherwise known as Patwa, Afro. Jamaican, just plain Jamaican or, Creole, is a language that has been until quite recently referred to as "ungrammatical English." (Adams, 199 1, p . I 1)

Creole languages are actually not unique to Jamaica, they are found on every continent although their speakers often do not realize what they are. The rest of the terms refer strictly to Jamaican Creole. Creoles are languages that usually form as the result of some human upheaval which makes it impossible for people to use their own languages to communicate. What people often refer to as the 'bad' or 'broken-English' of Jamaica are actually local Creoles that usually come about through a situation of partial language learning (Sebba 1, 1996, p.50-1.)

The technical definition of the term Creole means-, a language which comes into being through contact between two or more languages. The most important part about this definition is that a new language comes about which was not there before, yet it has some characteristics of the original language(s) and also has some characteristics of its own. The Creole of Jamaica and the Caribbean is referred to as an 'English-lexicon' and this language came about when African slaves were forced into a situation where English, or at least a very reduced form of English, was the only common means of communication. The slave traders and owners spoke English while the slaves spoke a variety of African languages and the slaves had to assimilate by learning English which explains why much of the vocabulary is English in origin. Although there is much English vocabulary, many words were also adopted from African languages when no equivalent English word could be found such as, words for people, things, plants, animals, activities, and especially religious words (Sebba 1, 1996, 50-1.) The name Jamaica itself was derived from the Arawak word Xaymaca meaning "Island of springs," but no other known trace(s) of the Arawak, the indigenous inhabitants of Jamaica, exist today (Pryce, 1997, p-238.)

Despite all the debate surrounding Patois, the international prestige of Standard English which derives from political and economic factors, has made people everywhere around the world obtain the major life goal of speaking it; even in countries where English has never traditionally been spoken people are acquiring this goal. As stated before, in Jamaica, the overwhelming feeling of prestige surrounding English causes people who speak Creole to be regarded as socially and linguistically inferior. This causes Creole languages to be considered unacceptable for use for any official or formal purpose, including education, hence the previously mentioned problem of young Creole speaking children getting frustrated and discouraged by trying to read and write in "Standard" English, which to them is basically a foreign language (Sebba 1, 1996, p.52.) We have even seen some of this debate on educational uses of language occur in the U.S. on the issue of Ebonics. Ebonics has been referred to as "Black English" and it is the language of many inner cities and until now has been thought of as slang'. Ebonics and Jamaican Patios are similar in that they both have the same roots and parts of the language came out as a result of people being taken from Africa for slavery (citation #3, WWW.) Also, the primary similarity in the debate on Ebonics and Jamaican Patios is the fact that Standard English is the language that must be mastered to conduct most businesses and to be successful in any traditional occupation (Pryce, 1997, p.241.)

.....and for the record, "Ebonics" is not slang. Basically, Black Dialect/AAVE/Ebonics is decreolized, Pidgin/Creole and that is closer to standard English

Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . AAVE . Creole | PBS

Origins: Dialect or Creole?

There are two main hypotheses about the origin of African American Vernacular English or AAVE. The Dialectologist Hypothesis, a prevailing view in the 1940s, concentrates on the English origins of AAVE, to the exclusion of African influence.

The Creole Hypothesis, on the other hand, maintains that modern AAVE is the result of a creole derived from English and various West African Languages. (A creole is a language derived from other languages that becomes the primary language of the people who speak it.) Slaves who spoke many different West African languages were often thrown together during their passage to the New World. To be able to communicate in some fashion they developed a pidgin* by applying English and some West African vocabulary to the familiar grammar rules of their native tongue. This pidgin was passed onto future generations. As it became the primary language of its speakers, it was classified as a creole. Over the years AAVE has gone through the process of decreolization - a change in the creole that makes it more like the standard language of an area.

*A pidgin is language composed of two or more languages created for the purpose of communication, usually around trade centers, between people who do not speak a common language. It is never a person's primary language.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/AAVE/creole/#




Decreolization=steps closer to standard English=why many think it's just broken English w/o any Africanisms=why speakers of it can't understand Jamaican Patois and Gullah speakers even though they came about the same way

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By the way, the Carib equivalent to what "Ebonics" or "Black Dialect" (decreolized Creole) are to Gullah (pure Creole) is what they call Caribbean English. It's closer to standard English than the purer Carib Creoles/Patois

Caribbean English

Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the Caribbean, there is a great deal of variation in the way English is spoken. Scholars generally agree that although the dialects themselves vary significantly in each of these countries, they all have roots in 17th-century English and African languages.

Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the Caribbean, there is a great deal of variation in the way English is spoken. Scholars generally agree that although the dialects themselves vary significantly in each of these countries, they all have roots in 17th-century English and African languages.

Standard English - Where is that boy? (pronounced /hwɛəɹ ɪz ðæt bɔɪ/)

* Barbados - 'Wherr dat boi?' ([hwer ɪz dæt bɔɪ]) (Spoken very quickly, is choppy, rhotic, and contains glottal stops; The most distinct accent)

* Jamaica, and Antigua and Barbuda- 'Whierr iz daht bwoy?' ([hweɪr ɪz dɑt bʷɔɪ]) (Distinctive, sporadic rhoticity; Irish and Scottish influence)

* Trinidad and Bahamas - 'Wey iz dat boy?' ([weɪ ɪz dæt bɔɪ]) (Very similar to the accents of south western England and Wales; Have no rhoticity)

* Guyana, Tobago, St. Vincent - 'Weyr iz daht bai?' ([weɪɹ ɪz dɑt baɪ]) (Many variations depending of Afro- or Indo- descent, and compentency in standard English; Sporadic rhoticity )

* Belize, Panama, Nicaragua, The Bay Islands, Limón, and the Virgin Islands - 'Wehr iz daht booy?' ([weɹ ɪz dɑt buɪ]) (Distinct, sporadic rhoticity, pronunciation becomes quite different from "Creole" pronunciation.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_English


Go find some old slave narratives from the American South or the dialect infused poetry of Paul Dunbar based on Southern Black dialect and you'll see and read stuff just like that.

 

[OfTheCross]

Root bump

 

[Whogivesafuck]

Georgia and Mississippi also for the West Coast. For the North East you do have a smattering of people with roots in Texas (Prodigy of Mobb deep), Mississippi (Nas for example) and Alabama.

I think that has more to do with Bud Johnson and olu dara jones profession as musicians compared to the average black person of that time. The reason why certain states are tied together are due to the three major rail lines that ran through the state. Illinois Central railway (Alabama Mississippi, Arkansas) ,Seaboard airline(Virginia,Carolina,Florida),Union Pacific Railway (Texas-Louisiana).

Isabel Wilkerson just put out a book a couple years ago about the great migration.It's a good book.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I think that has more to do with Bud Johnson and olu dara jones profession as musicians compared to the average black person of that time. The reason why certain states are tied together are due to the three major rail lines that ran through the state. Illinois Central railway (Alabama Mississippi, Arkansas) ,Seaboard airline(Virginia,Carolina,Florida),Union Pacific Railway (Texas-Louisiana).

Isabel Wilkerson just put out a book a couple years ago about the great migration.It's a good book.

The railroad connection is true and dictated the flow from specific regions of the South, outwards but there is nothing unusual about running into people people in the North East who have roots in the Gulf Coast/South West.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Yes, we are Afr'Am. Like I said, there are overarching elements to our culture & heritage that pretty general among African-Americans such as the use of red-rice(Oryza glaberrima) in our meals, use of grounded peanuts(goobers) in meals, the combination of Native-American crops with West African cooking techniques to make AA staple dishes like grits and cornbread.

And on music there's the use of strummed folk instruments like Banjo with has documented and recorded being played by African-American in just about every part of the US and Elongated Minor Pentatonic scales with microtonal bent "blue notes" in our melodies ESPECIALLY with the trade marked raspy voices, as well as off-beat accentuation(nuts and bolts of the backbeat which is also unique to all forms of AA music and not found in other Afro-diasporan music types)


(You certainly wont find anything like that among Haitians or Martiniqueans)

^^^^Much of this has to with the common rice, cattle, cotton culture that the economic landscape of North America demanded on slave industry regardless of it was being administered by French, Spanish, or English unlike in the Caribbean and South America were Sugar & Mining where the bread and butter of the economy. Slavers in French Louisiana are noted in specifically trying to recreated the model of rice plantations of the English/British administered southern atlantic coast upon seeing their success so they could compete. So, as it was be a large number of Upper West Africans slave from the Sudan and Sahel regions were imported into the colonies and much of AA culture, if traced back, to pre-transatlantic era is rooted in the traditions of the Sudan and the Sahel. And if that wasn't enough there was the domestic slave trading once the US republic procured lands formerly under the thumb of European colonialism. The amount of people involved in this movement of slaves was even greater than that of the Transatlantic slave trade. So, no Texas nor Louisiana Africans/AA were ever in isolation from other African/AAs in other parts of the colonial or antebellum US.

And like @IllmaticDelta said there's also the common influence of the Church traditions as well.



"Free blacks", yes. Non-AA immigrants, No.

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