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Hit Me With Music!

Time Zone: EST (New York, Toronto)

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/1/2019 5:27:55 AM

The incomparable Mississippi John Hurt was born in Carroll County, Mississippi in March of 1892 about 4-1/2 months before H.I.M. was born in Ejersa Goro, Ethiopia. RastafarI!

Messenger: GARVEYS AFRICA Sent: 3/1/2019 7:13:16 AM

Plantation songs

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/1/2019 12:01:45 PM

And, of course, there's the bigger-than-life Earl "Fatha" Hines to whom every old jazz player like me owes a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/3/2019 8:24:35 AM

Messenger: Empress lioness 9 Sent: 3/3/2019 9:57:40 AM

"good thing about music, when it hits ya feel no pain" Nice selections, Nesta Jah Bless Keep hittin'

Messenger: Levite I Sent: 3/3/2019 1:51:54 PM

To all I Sistren ancestral and living. Blessings from the Levite

Messenger: Levite I Sent: 3/3/2019 2:09:36 PM

Is song like dis is mi a raise and grow to. When I man eye dehya knee more time is dis kinda riddim iman cud hear ina di distance while ina playground at break time as Garvey Afrika fadda did have di biggest baddest sound in I city and could be heard tessin riddim from miles away. True story. So mi a hail Garveys Afrika and Garveys Afrika Snr from dem love di ghetto yute! And all true real ghetto yute who a try a survive in Babylon right now and have dem papers and cerfitiket and nah do nuh wrong and still cyant find a works know seh Jah love yuh. The I works are not in vain! Mi nuh know how dis ah some big thread about hit me with music and nobody have first hand account of musical experience and whe dem be when dem hear and get lick ina dem chess by certain riddim...yo mi waan hear story about mystical musical experience

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/4/2019 1:24:35 AM

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/4/2019 2:13:10 AM

Very few people have any concept of how profoundly the culture and innovation of the African slave has influenced all realms of modern music. I remember many years ago learning about the "call and response" (derived from African slave work songs and going back even deeper into African culture) in a jazz, rhythm & blues music class taught by a man who happened to be aptly named Mr. Freeman. The "call and response" motif derived from the interactive vocals sung during field work (and was subsequently incorporated into African-American Gospel music). Jump ahead more than a century to psychedelic rock music which would appear to have little to do with plantation work songs or Gospel. In this cut called "Street Worm"(1969) from the band “Spirit”, Jimi Hendrix's close friend and co-electric guitar pioneer Randy California applies the 'call and response' technique at the beginning of a classic electric guitar solo (beginning at time 1:33). If you listen to how he "answers" his own guitar riff you can hear the genesis of an electric guitar technique that many other rockers subsequently adopted as a standard (incredibly, all rooted in an old slave singing style brought over to America from Africa). California liked the riff repeating technique born of the 'call and response' in his psychedelic leads so much that he frequently used an Echoplex when he played in concert.'Call and response' (which some may think is mere repetition) is so embedded in music today that very few would recognize it as being linked to an African tradition.

Messenger: Nesta1 Sent: 3/4/2019 2:37:13 AM

And, of course, the blue note -- now ubiquitous in modern music. Field hollers and work songs reflect the oral tradition of African music. Songs sung by slaves as they worked, hollering to each other across the fields, worshiping together or at other gatherings for entertainment. This musical language developed along with using augmentations of the traditional 12-tone chromatic scale of Western music, in a sound which came to be recognized as the "blues".

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