Re: West Afrikan Akonting lute musik Old Time Herald web site

Thank you all for your remarks to my statement about the Griot influences. I
really appreciate the efforts you have done to formulate your standpoints.

I would like to add, so there will be no mistakes, that I do not advocate
the Jola Akonting music to be a replacement of the griot music in the New
World. On the contrary, my whole point is that this subject is much more
complex than most scholars have tended to describe it by simplify it to
Griot music. And I believe we all agree on this point.

But like blues, jazz rock etc have been names for a genre of different music
under the same label the descended African music in the New World has been
labeled griot music to such degree that most people believe griot music is
the same as genuine African folkmusic. That was my whole point. According to
my very humble opinion that has contaminated the research work of Western
scholars in Africa. If you have the only notion that  Griot music is the
answer then you will find a lot of old genuine and new fake Griot music
wherever you go in Western Africa. It is far more difficult, sometimes even
dangerous to search for other roots of African folk music specially as most
of it have died out during the last century and been replaced by jazz,
reggae and rock influenced music. Perhaps that has been the main problem for
the last fifty years of constant research and recordings in this area of the
world. Researchers could not find anything but griot music. And that
situation has set the history in a misleading way

There is no single answer to what was the origin of the banjo and banjo
music in the New World. For instance I am rather sure that the Jamaican
Strum-Strum that Hans Sloan depicted around 1700 has it ´s origin in two
string folk lute instrument that was used in Ghana to Northern Nigeria
region 200 years ago. I have seen and documented instruments like that in
the Museum in Brussels (i.e Vase from Wasulo group). If you combine that
fact with the knowledge that a large portion of the black population in
Jamaica seems to heritage just from this regions (checked by DNA testing)
that  could give you some clue of the heritage of the music traditions.
Scientific proofs, no, but at least enough facts for a speculations.

And I am equally convinced that early minstrel music in Eastern States like
Virginia and both Carolinas was influenced by the Jola akonting playing or
very similar now extinct lute playing. That does not exclude the notion that
other type of African lute playing have influenced banjo playing in other
parts and for other groups in the past in the eastern States and mountain
areas.

> Lyle wrote: What I remember most clearly about Charter's book (and it's
been
quite a few years since I read it) is that he didn't find anything out
about the "roots of the blues" in his travels<

I have a feeling that Sam agrees about the blues topic to-day. But it was
about a note in his book about seeing and hearing a Xhalam being played by a
Griot that Sam stated that this was a  forefather for the Banjo. And it was
Sam who, at first, disputed the idea that Akonting was an old instrument and
he thought that it could have been influenced  rather recently by banjo
playing from the West.But perhaps Allen have also said that in our earlier
discussions.Sam is now very enthusiastic about the Akonting finding.

<Allen wrote: non griots could have preserved and transmitted griot
traditions >

A fully agree with you Allen. I do not deny at all that there are a griot
influence in all African folk music or vice versa. What I was trying to say
in my clumsy English was that just what you pointed out. Most probably
rather few griots was brought over to the New World. If there was a griot
tradition space to fill for other none griot musicians they most probably
filled it. What people have told me many times in Senegambia is following.
The griots have it´s base in Islam and existing power structure. No one
outside the griot casts independent if ethnic group was in the past allowed
to use the main three griot instrument, the Kora harp, the fan shaped bridge
short dowel stick lute and the balafon. That has nowadays been deteriorated
to such extent that all people who learn to play those instruments outside
the griot casts call themselves griots. So the confusion is total.
Also,real griots always never played for dancing. In the Islamic groups that
was done to the accompangeman of drums. In the none Islamic groups that
could and still is done by use of  i.e akonting lutes.

<Allen wrote:No contemporary African music forms currently being practiced
griot or not can escape the
influence of colonial and post-colonial cultural influences>

I fully agree with you Allen. That is why I am so surprised that scholars
without any hesitation can (could) claim that griot music was the ancestor
of Western banjo music. But at the same time the griot music has also from
the beginning been influenced by Arabic/Middle East music. This is something
Eric Charry has pointed out in his book Mande Music and also told me when I
meet him this spring.

<Jack wrote: I think the point is that griot music is a celebration of
aristocratic  power.  If there is no aristocracy to compose and perform it
for, why would anyone preserve it?>

I agree. But the griots also were, and still are, paid for playing on
weddings, funerals and circumcisions. That must have been taken over by
other musicians in the spirit of African griots if no real griots were
present. Thus they probably took part of the griots traditions to the new
world until the new masters allowed them, from the beginning very
reluctantly as they thought slaves needed no religion, to adopt
Christianity.

<Allen wrote: The point of this is that you cannot use ethnomusicological
evidence from present day Africa as if it was  unmediated expression of 17th
century Africa whether one is talking about the Griots or others. >

I  agree allen and would very much like to discuss the eventual southAfrican
influences on the New World slave music. We know that the flat neck lutes
with pegs of Malaysian origin ( Ramkies) was used in several South African
states since the 1700th century. They are now completely obsolete and have
been replaced since about 100 years by the western guitars. During my
digging in the stored collection of African lutes in the Musical Instrument
Museum in Brussels I have also found four very interesting lutes from
Eastern Congo(Zaire). They look like partly like Chinese/Japanese lute
instrument, PI-PA,with flatted head, pegs and large decorated fiddle box peg
heads very much like the Stedman Creole-Bania from Surinam. They were
collected to the museum about 150 years ago. I would like to discuss those
lutes further as well what you know about the Ramkie traditions..

Gourd banjo Pete Roos and I could at the same time at MIM also examine in
detail the newly found Banza from Haiti and the Stedman Creole Bania. We
have documented them good enough ( both inch and mm) to make blue print
copies for making replicas in the future.

Ulf
FBI
Forensic Banjo Investigations