Al-Muhajabah showed me this from the San Francisco Chronicle
Muslim roots of the blues
The music of famous American blues singers reaches back through the South to the culture of West Africa
- Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Sylviane Diouf knows her audience might be skeptical, so to demonstrate the connection between Islam and American blues music, she'll play two recordings: The Muslim call to prayer (the religious recitation that's heard from mosques around the world), and "Levee Camp Holler" an early type of blues song that first sprang up in the Mississippi Delta more than 100 years ago.
"Levee Camp Holler" is no ordinary song. It's the product of ex-slaves who worked moving earth all day in post-Civil War America. The version that Diouf uses in presentations has lyrics that, like the call to prayer, speak about a glorious God. ("Well, Lord, I woke up this mornin', man, I feelin' bad . . . Well, I was thinkin' 'bout the good times, Lord, I once have had.") But it's the song's melody and note changes that closely parallel one of Islam's best-known refrains. As in the call to prayer, "Levee Camp Holler" emphasizes words that seem to quiver and shake in the reciter's vocal chords. Dramatic changes in musical scales punctuate both "Levee Camp Holler" and the call to prayer. A nasal intonation is evident in both.
"I did a talk a few years ago at Harvard where I played those two things, and the room absolutely exploded in clapping, because (the connection) was obvious," says Diouf, an author and scholar who is also a researcher at New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. "People were saying, 'Wow. That's really audible. It's really there.' "
Interesting article.
You can check here to hear for yourself if "it's really there."
Diouf has written a book, "Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas", which Al-M reviewed a while back:
The book is the result of extensive research in primary sources about slavery and builds a profile of the African Muslims who were brought to the Americas as slaves. Diouf believes that about 15-20% of all slaves were Muslims. She analyzes the historical record in Africa as well as in the Americas to reconstruct the story of these slaves.
Many of the Muslims taken as slaves were highly educated, in the religious sciences and in general. They were marabouts (holy men), warriors, traveling scholars, merchants, or members of the upper class. They had often dedicated their lives to Islam and established a respected place for themselves in their societies. They were often used to being leaders. (Diouf's analysis of the African historical record explains why the Muslims taken as slaves tended to fit this profile).
