Kalamu ya Salaam has described the aesthetic qualities of “Great Black Music,” as “Loud, Raw, Bluesy, and Iconoclastic.” The first two qualities were certainly represented in traditional African music as we know of various drum cultures and singing styles that qualify as both Loud and Raw. Bluesy is a bit harder to find in Africa but there are some similarities in the way West African people embellish their songs dramatic flourishes of notes and the way that some people in Central Africa tune their marimbas and kalimbas. However, Bluesy is more closely related to Iconoclastic because it is an American phenomenon created by the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas who were always in the process of reinventing their expressions of culture and this was reflected most strongly in the music they created.
Write a 3-4 page essay that provides an analysis and interpretation of the following questions:
How does the African American and Caribbean music that you are most familiar with preserve Loud and Raw elements of traditional African music like call-and-response singing and syncopated rhythms?
How does your music break the molds of the past to represent something Bluesy and Iconoclastic to distinguish your generation from those that preceded?
Provide representative examples, quotations, and references from the Reading Assignments.
