by Berimbau » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:19 pm
We are on the same page Facundo! As to how our music survived, I think that the African cultural identity and resistance were at the heart of it. Yes it was an extremely inhuman situation, wholly driven by greed. Racism was just the byproduct of that market-driven economic philosophy. But first, you had to bankrupt your soul by buying into the lies. This is exactly what the Bush administration is doing today!!
As to the discourse in academic circles, the orientation of the various parties has changed several times since the days of Melville Herskovits. A European-American scholar, he was the first American anthropologist to argue seriously for the case of "African survivals." The African-American sociologist E. Franklin Frazer argued against Herskovits insisting that African-American culture was created by the slaves in the US from European sources. In Cuba, Ortiz and Fuentes debated much the same regarding African and Native-American influences there. In Jamaica, Brathwaite and Patterson continued a similar debate visa vis African VS European influences on that island.
By the 1970's a vogue for finding EVERYTHING to be of African origin had taken hold. Now that didn't account too much for the creativity of the peoples in the African Diaspora!
For my part, I really prefer the more historically accurate and VERY CAREFUL tone achieved by Sidney Mintz & Richard Price in their groundbreaking "The Birth of African-American Culture." Or of Gerhard Kubik's Angolan Traits in Black Music, Games, and Dances of Brazil." Incidently, these two books were written by "white" people. But that shouldn't really matter if they're good books, should it?
Now I personally feel that the ethnic dimension of the debate has been an embarrassment to everyone in the academy. Quite honestly, 95% of history does come with some kind of an agenda, and Afrocentricism has merely replaced Eurocentrism with an equally unfair and biased approach. In the end, one must sift through a great number of books and agendas to arrive at anything like an historic truth. History just ain't pretty, and it can't be changed by pouring either sugar or vinegar on it.
Saludos,
Berimbau
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