Seawall
Registered User
Here's a sound file that a friend sent me that details the role of Afro Cuban music in the modernization of Congolese music (and the Congo influence on other African genres). It was sent to him by the late ethnomusicologist and label owner, John Storm Roberts. Note the parallels between what was going on in Africa between the 50's to the 70's and the musical upheavals in the Caribbean and Latin America during the same period. One commonality is the role of Afro Cuban music, and then the emergence of soul, disco, and funk during the early 70's. I've only uploaded side a, however, side b illustrated the r&b influence on the brass lines of various African genres, and also the disco influence on the Afro Cuban derived bass lines that were found in Congolese music.
About John Storm Roberts quoted from the NYT.
"Long before the term was bandied about, Mr. Roberts was listening to, seeking out and reporting on what is now called world music. He wrote several seminal books on the subject for a general readership, most notably “Black Music of Two Worlds” (Praeger, 1972) and “The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States” (Oxford University, 1979).
“Black Music of Two Worlds” examines the cross-pollination — in both directions — between Africa and the Americas, from the influence of African music on jazz, blues, salsa and samba to the popularity in Nigeria and Zaire of American artists like James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.
In writing the book, Mr. Roberts sought to connect a diffuse web of existing studies by ethnomusicologists. The studies typically appraised local musical traditions while ignoring the reach of Africa as a whole.
“It was like a landscape with a large number of artesian wells, and nothing linking them,” he told The New York Times in 1992. “And I conceived of ‘Black Music of Two Worlds’ being more like canals joining.”
In “The Latin Tinge,” Mr. Roberts trained his ear on the influence of musical forms like tango, rumba, mambo and salsa on a wide range of American pop styles, among them ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, rhythm and blues, jazz, country and rock."
Side A of the cassette rip.
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Some of the records from Roberts' Original Music label.
About John Storm Roberts quoted from the NYT.
"Long before the term was bandied about, Mr. Roberts was listening to, seeking out and reporting on what is now called world music. He wrote several seminal books on the subject for a general readership, most notably “Black Music of Two Worlds” (Praeger, 1972) and “The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States” (Oxford University, 1979).
“Black Music of Two Worlds” examines the cross-pollination — in both directions — between Africa and the Americas, from the influence of African music on jazz, blues, salsa and samba to the popularity in Nigeria and Zaire of American artists like James Brown and Jimi Hendrix.
In writing the book, Mr. Roberts sought to connect a diffuse web of existing studies by ethnomusicologists. The studies typically appraised local musical traditions while ignoring the reach of Africa as a whole.
“It was like a landscape with a large number of artesian wells, and nothing linking them,” he told The New York Times in 1992. “And I conceived of ‘Black Music of Two Worlds’ being more like canals joining.”
In “The Latin Tinge,” Mr. Roberts trained his ear on the influence of musical forms like tango, rumba, mambo and salsa on a wide range of American pop styles, among them ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, rhythm and blues, jazz, country and rock."
Side A of the cassette rip.
<embed src="https://www.box.com/embed/0a2mohim67ptlyh.swf" width="466" height="400" wmode="opaque" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always">
Some of the records from Roberts' Original Music label.
