"World-a-Riddim" : different rhythm types and functions globally

It seems cool to say – as a percussionist – that few instrumentalists in this modern world are as intensely “multicultural” as a percussionist/percussion player. Potentially, but even to a point inevitably.

As a sweeping, more sociopolitical,statement one can even claim that “percussionists are the only true multiculturalists” in this world.. but that is perhaps too sweeping for now..

The exceptions are those deeply specialized in e.g. purely Indian instruments (tabla) to fit in India’s musical structures, or similar all too mono-cultural percussionists in Arabic (e.g. with darbuka’s), Japanese (e.g. taiko’s), or other specific cultures, even within percussion-rich Africa.

Especially in the Western world, most percussionists in modern “pop”, “rock”, and world music, however, combine instruments from the Americas – often the African Diaspora (Afro-Brazil, Afro-Cuba) -, with African, Middle Eastern, European, or modern Western additions.

Some of these Western modern instruments are based on African or Latin American models, but either way new sounds arose, such as the metal “flexatone”, with some “singing saw” characteristics (known historically a bit in Slavic folk music), combined in sets of many percussion players with African or Afro-Cuban drums (djembe, conga’s), woodblocks, bells (found both in Africa and Asia), the relatively more European tambourines, originally Amerindian “scrapers” , or even Spanish castanets.

Like I said, a truly multicultural mix, this “tool kit” of percussionists in many “pop” or “world” music bands..

THE FUNCTION OF RHYTHM

That is: instrument-wise. It is also a fact, however, that musical “rhythm” is not uniformly defined across cultures worldwide: regarding its function in music in different cultures.

Drums and rhythm play a role in very different cultures, but are just the “tools” used according to different values and with different goals throughout world cultures.

One used to Afro-American and African percussion – like myself – can often not get into Indian “rhythms”, Japanese, or Arabic “rhythms” that easily. Even when you are musically and rhythmically flexible and adaptive – which I claim to be – dancing to it does not go as automatic as to Yoruba, Reggae, or Samba music.

In fact, some music with drums and “rhythms” in some specific cultures are not even meant to dance to (other “social”, artistic, ritual, or narrative functions). Certainly not as is common in African-based rhythms – “dance music” , or European music which we are used to. In a part of European music “rhythm” - or eventually present percussion/drums - is not even that dance-oriented, but rather serving as a harmonic base.

I myself as a percussionist am instrument-wise certainly very multicultural, rhythm-wise admittedly less. I enjoyed - selectively – some Asian, Middle Eastern, or other non-Afro – rhythms in music, some even felt a bit danceable to me, but Afro-American and African swing and polyrhythm, or clave-based music, remains more my “thing”, rhythmically. My main love.

I am a Reggae fan, and a nice thing about Reggae is that it mixes “straight rhythm”, clave, and polyrhythm aspects, with Swing, as known from Jazz and Blues. In that sense it is rhythmically between Afro-Cuban music and Afro-US music (Jazz, R&B, etc.). A good African Diaspora mix.

That is my personal rhythmical world and taste, and it is a personal trajectory, based on own choices and tastes.

OTHER MUSICAL CULTURES: SUMMARIZED

I do wonder, though, how my “world-a-riddim” (ha!) compares to the other ones I mentioned. Music follows culture, so the function of rhythm in a culture’s music reflects that culture.

In this sense “keywords” can be useful. Are there short ways to describe rhythm’s functions in different cultures?

Through Google, AI (a google plus, really), Wikipedia, and some paper sources, I could derive these keywords/short characterizations, related to some representative cultural “zones” in this world..

It is of course terribly simplified, and not all existing musical cultures are mentioned, but it is about main trends.

Africa: polyrhythm (simultaneous, interlocking rhythms) and timeline (clave). Cross rhythms too. Layered vertically.

India: cyclical time and tala (story and language based). Monophonic, linear and mathematical. Horizontal (differing from “vertical”, layered rhythm building in African music).

Western classical music: rhythm subdued to melody and harmony, later more metric flexibility and syncopation.

Celtic music: rhythm built into melodic playing (mixed), also on nonpercussive instruments (like a fiddle, pipe, or harp). Often story based. Flowing, “floating” feel, “rolling” and linear, more “ornamented” than e.g. Germanic music, and also more syncopation. Frame drum use common.

Germanic music: strict, symmetrical meters, strong first downbeat: “marching” and Waltz as archetypes. Mathematically precise, tight on-beat rhythms.

Slavic music: asymmetrical and less strict than Germanic music, some syncopation.

Arabic music: cyclical rhythmic modes, as a structural but looping skeleton, flexible to allow ornamentation. Monorhythmic. Follows melody.

Turkish music (incl. Balkan): sophisticated rhythm cycles, irregular and asymmetric meters “limping” effect), additive meters (bouncing, "swing" effect). Further similarities with Arabic rhythm cycles.

Indonesian music: colotomic structure (gamelan): architecturally precise. Gongs/metal dominant, skinned drums secondary.

Chinese music: not a metronomic rhythm but an elastic framework. Empty space valued. Following energy flow.”Breath”-based. Slight heterophony. Mostly linear, but fluid.

Japanese music: also breath-based – not metronomic -, and gives likewise importance to empty space “ the rhythmic power of silence”. Aids in story-telling and community.

Tibetan music: paces meditation, monorhythmic, non-metric rhythm , but instead - again – breath governed, and elastic. Rhythm aims at stabilizing the mind, and an inward focus though slow repetitive beats. No loops or cycles, but guiding rituals or texts.

Amerindian (or: Shamanic) music: monorhythm, “heartbeat” of nature-based, spiritual functions. Deep bass drum sounds.

Inuit music: asymmetric meter, story-based. Voice-drum interactions. Rim-hit frame drums common, differing from “deep bass” sounds of Amerindians in e.g. Bolivia.

Flamenco (Spanish) music: asymmetric elements / limitedly metered but freer, 12-beat rhythmic cycles. Nonwestern in most rhythmic aspects, including frequent syncopation, and even polyrhythm. Flamenco is rhythmically exceptional within Europe, due to different cultural influences (Roma/Indian, Moorish, African), mixed in with local Andalusian folk music.

STEREOTYPES BUT NUANCED

All this seems to more or less confirm stereotypes (Germanic music tight and “marching” like, complex story-based in India, deep heartbeat among Amerindians, “floating/flowing” Celtic sounds, meditative in Tibet and China, “groove” and polyrhythm-based in Africa), but also shows nuances. Syncopation is not only limited to Africa, for instance.

In several cultures rhythm follows a horizontal, textual “story” or “melody” of some sort (Asia and Europe), but not everywhere. Rhythm is indeed the least subdued to melody or harmony in African music: another stereotype confirmed, albeit not an offensive one (in my opinion). I am of the opinion that words/language/texts are after all also tools to lie and mislead. Their primacy over natural “rhythm” therefore suspicious.

This summary also shows how Japanese culture is partly influenced or derived from older Chinese culture, sharing cultural values of “breath” and “empty space”, in line with spiritual ideas around energy flows, as found in Buddhism (see Tibetan music), Taoism, and Shintoism.

Complicated rhythm structures in India also support ancient cultural “stories” and principles, in this case from Hinduism, showing in drums imitating spoken language.

In its syncopation, “later” Western music (pop, “rock”) certainly underwent African and Afro-American influences (via Blues, Jazz, etc.).

Logically, as part of music, rhythm follows and supports cultural specific structures and goals. In many cultures these align with local spirituality and even “sacred” or “holy” music, albeit with secular versions.

SIMPLIFIED DINSTINCTION

Looking at rhythm’s function in traditional music world wide, this main, oft-repeated – simplified – distinction bears some truth: Europe emphasizes harmony in music, Asia melody, and Africa rhythm.

Still simplified, and all music have harmonic, melodic and, rhythmic aspects, but in essence it holds: in by themselves also differing Asian music cultures (Arabic, Chinese, Indian, a.o.), rhythm almost always supports “melody” or “stories/texts” (textual stories of melodies), while in Europe indeed rhythm often tended to support “harmony”, as noticeable in “classical” music (Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, etc.), though in older folk traditions (Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Basque), supporting the stories or “melodies” also was a function of rhythm.

Polyrhythms as meant to dance to, ritually or not, remain typically and originally African. Of course, however, lyrics and singing also play a role in African music, even a guiding one, but often also rhythmically-oriented (call-and-response), seldom supporting non-rhythm as in other cultures.

SACRILEGE?

I am not the type of guy who plays the “sacrilege” card too soon, though I have my own, largely Rastafari-based spiritual views. Musicians and artists furthermore need to think creative and free to add value. That humans are born to be free, and think free, is after all also my (spiritual?) opinion.

In addition to this, one must beware of no selectiveness or bias regarding this: all too easy use, distortion, or appropriation of (even spiritual) African musical principles seems more tolerated in the West for even commercial music producers, than if e.g. non-initiates play Indian or other Asian instruments that in many minds connect more to “pure” or “sacred” ancient religions (Hindusim and Buddhism), implicitly to be respected more.

Not the same degree of “respect”, let’s just say, painfully reflecting the disparaging historical treatment of equally ancient African culture in colonial history, The same reason that India – while once a British colony – kept it’s Hindu-based culture, whereas Igbo , Yoruba, - also colonized by the British – largely “Christianized”, or elsewhere “Arabicized”/ Islamicized.. More trampled upon.

Even among African descendants in the African Diaspora – and even within the Afro-centric Rastafari movement - , there exist disparaging view of Vodou and related “spirit invoking” or “ancestor spirits” veneration in Africa.

In Central Africa (around the Congo region), ancestor worship has long been traditionally important, whereas in the Nigeria-Benin-Ghana region specific deities/spirits – connected with e.g. nature, like rivers, thunder (Shango, Yemayá, etc.) - “mounting” believers, long was. All this “spirit possession” occurs through rhythm and drumming patterns, with trance-like effects, and while dancing.

The relative importance and primacy of rhythm and drums in sub-Saharan Africa relates to these faiths.

Christianity and Islam tried to limit that, but African percussion found a way to survive, now more secularly. Think of the Djembe drumming culture and circles in nominally Islamic areas like Mali, Guinea, Senegambia, Burkina Faso, and around

This secular “djembe” drumming gained even international popularity, mostly without a proscribed spiritual goal other than “community” or “musical bliss”, though rhythmic patterns played might derive originally from ritual or “religious” celebrations in Mande cultures, such as male circumcision, initiation, etc. They became secular, though.

REGGAE PERCUSSION AND RASTAFARI

Opinions among Reggae percussionsists in Jamaica differ. These tend to be Rastafari-adherents, where a Biblical/Protestant influence (via British colonialism) still made some condemn African Vodou and related “spirit possession” faiths in Jamaica (Obeah, Pocomania), as devilish and divisive. “Obeah” and Vodou are said in some Reggae lyrics to use their “science” mainly to sabotage/attack enemies, and put wicked spells against their brothers and sisters.

Some Rastas, like Mutabaruka, however deplore this as an unfortunate Western/colonial remnant – once meant to disparage and destroy the African heritage – still within the otherwise Afro-centric Rastafari movement, that chose to be Bible-based.

Indeed, I have researched a period more deeply Vodou, Santería, Myal, Obeah, etc…, and such African “spirit possession” faiths, and their tenets and practices. I concluded it is more about “harmony”, “community”, and “healing” – i.e. the “good” – than wicked tricks and spells against people as the European stereotype indoctrinated people with.

Good and bad/evil are more clearly formulated and distinguished in text-based Christianity and the Bible (and the Quran), which might attract believers wanting to improve the(ir) world and take a clear moral stance, but a lot of that is hypocrisy and hidden power play, as the “conquering” religions Christianity, Islam,..clearly showed with their history of enslavement and second-class citizenships for nonbelievers or, well, women.

Even with this condemning of Vodou by some Rasta percussionists, they still admit that they draw on Vodou, Pocomania, Kumina, Burru, Yoruba, drum patterns or notions, when fitting musically in a Roots Reggae context. Repurposing “spirit possession”, and of course “ancestor worship” long common in Congo regions, can be seen metaphorically as honouring/respecting ones African foreparents, knowing their roots n Africa, so important for Rastafari.

This makes “sacrilege” not a very useful term for creative, rhythmic musicians. Rhythm is everywhere, it is life itself, and thus in all humans, enabling each one to express oneself through it. Just like you can get in a “trance” or meditate in quite different ways: sitting down and silent, or dancing/ moving, and singing.

Still, some “sacrilege” or “disrespect” objections were made by rigid critics against free-thinking” world music” instrumentalists who dared for instance to use a Nepalese singing bowl outside of the Buddhist lithurgical context, such as for a jazzy musical piece, or the double-sided Yoruba Bata drums in Cuba, used normally in spiritual contexts, when used in too secular “party” songs (Salsa, Latin). Those “purist” objections will remain, I think.

Rastafari adherents have at least the good argument that Rastafari arose in Jamaica among Afro-Jamaicans as a reconnection with the African roots and values (i.e. via Kumina drumming), as a broader goal “overruling” petty ritualistic considerations.

Rastafari’s Nyabinghi drumming with the characteristic “heartbeat” drum patterns is partly rooted in Congo-based Kumina drumming of Central African descendants in Eastern Jamaica, and Kumina was originally aimed at ancestor spirit invoking. Later it was replaced – or repurposed - by Rastas with Biblically based “chants” aimed at one God/Jah”, on the same drum pattern.

Some flexibility there, with fruitful results in developing Rasta culture. Culture is after all not static, but dynamic. Influenced by different cultures over time. In this case an own “Black” interpretation of the Bible.

FLEXIBILITY

Just like people are flexible too. Percussionists in the Western world, e.g. in Pop or Rock bands (or Soul, Funk, Reggae, Latin, etc.), or part of bands in Europe or the US, cannot escape being multicultural, with almost inevitably African musical elements, mixed with other ones. Standard percussion sets include Afro-Cuban instruments (conga’s, guiro, bongo), and often also African and Afro-Brazilian ones, along with Asian influences or modern factory variants, with often Afro-Latin models: examples are the now metal Cabasa shaker, based on the traditional beaded Shekere, or the Vibraslap rattle, based on the older (e.g. Peruvian) “donkey jaw”. All in all an intriguing variation of instruments, with own histories

On the other hand: many “pop” or Rock songs in Western music with standard structures (chorus-verses, bridge) are also “stories, more or less derived from Western poetic and prosaic traditions, and rhythm supports these, somewhat reminding of rhythm’s function in Asian traditions (Indian, Arabic, Chinese): supporting main melodies and stories, with timed sounds. Additionally, it also must fit a European harmony structure.

This is the musical playground, wherein it’s fun and inspiring to play, according to one’s own preferences: atmospheric, repetitive, polyrhythmic, syncopated, straight on the beat or swing. And yes, also “free space” and “breath” – as in Asian/Chinese musical culture – plays a role in this rhythmic work, (tension building, rest, etc).

What I like about Amerindian music (Peru, Bolivia, etc.) is the direct spiritual reference to nature of the drum TOOK-took-took-took, TOOK-took-took-took, like a beating heart and life line. That’s somehow part of many grooves in other genres too.

CONCLUSION

It’s good to focus on the “function of rhythm” for me as percussionist, but also as songwriter which I de facto also am, including vocals and lyrics (see my Youtube Channel).

When making/writing songs, I sometimes follow some Western pop standards (bridge, chorus, verse) and elements, mostly genre-wise Reggae, with (e.g.) often Afro-Cuban or Jazz influences adding syncopation and polyrhythm.

In other compositions of mine I depart from such “modern pop” formats and I try to make more traditional African polyrhythmic music, Salsa songs, Flamenco songs, or in European or Caribbean folk genres, with other musical structures: more asymmetric or unmetered.

Spanish Flamenco came early in my life, as my mother was from Southern Spain, and with a large family there. Some distant family members of my grandmother’s side – surname De Tena - are even Flamenco artists/singers I understood (like Miguel De Tena), so really in that culture. I like some genres and aspects of Flamenco enough to make Flamenco-like songs too, haha. This is aided by the aforementioned summary/description that Flamenco is one of the few European genres that has “polyrhythm” and further a non-Western rhythmic base. More toward “Africa”, let’s say, like Andalusia’s geography.

On the other hand: also Alpine Italian accordion music (my father was from Northern Italy), North African, or French chansons, grabbed my interest for periods.

That shows that I like to experiment with different global rhythms, even straying quite far outside my relative favourite African or African Diaspora genres (Reggae, Rumba, Son, Funk, African genres). Hoping to also find beauty in them.

That’s what an open mind – also a “musical open mind” - is: wanting to see beauty everywhere. Wanting to see possibility and inspiration everywhere.

Eventually, despite this, – usually – the “prodigal son returns to his own” to use a Biblical reference, used in also Catholic countries, as my Spanish mother used this expression regularly, for “returning “home”, where you feel in the end most at ease, and in some way “loved”, after curious wanderings.

My percussion playing on jamsessions in clubs (mainly in Amsterdam) can also be seen online, on my Youtube channel, and it also is flexible and “multicultural”, with varying patterns from e.g. Afro-Cuban Rumba and Abakua, Brazilian Samba, African bell patterns, Conga-fied Reggae basslines, Cumbia, Flamenco, but also classical music, “rock” or Pop , folk/Celtic, or Middle Eastern elements, which I try to flexibly add to the songs: usually nice covers of Rock or Funk classics.

I use thus a variety of multicultural, modern and traditional percussion instruments, but also adapt to the different functions of rhythm in Pop or Rock, while adding syncopation and counter-rhythms, without distracting from the main basic songs. This can be also “ornamentation” known in Celtic, Arabic, and Flamenco music rhythms, but also “vertically layered” on top of as well as interlocking with the main bass-drum beat, as in polyrhythmic sub-Saharan African music, hopefully to good “driving” effect.

This all is the multicultural and groovy fun of it.

Misconceptions (or lies?) about the trans-Atlantic slave trade (1500-18XX)

The recent (25th of March, 2026) “recognition” of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade - with enslavement of Africans - as “gravest crime against humanity” by the UN – after a Ghana-led initiative - was celebrated by some as a victory. This crime took place in the period 1500-1800, it states. In reality, it was until well in the 1860s that slavery as an institute was finally abolished in the Americas, but roughly the trans-Atlantic slave trade as such was around that period (1500-1800). This recognized declaration connected textually with the need for “reparations” and “compensation” for Africa and African descendants, increasing a sense of triumph.
See: (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg06q36052o)

The problem with this UN recognition document, is only that it is not legally binding, so - for all intents and purposes – symbolic “window dressing”, or at best “increasing awareness”.

That awareness is what I will deal with in this post. The reactions on mainstream and social media were varied, and those critical repeated common misconceptions, mostly betraying lack of sufficient and proper knowledge. Or they consciously spread lies, that is also possible.

OWN STUDY

I think I can conclude that with some authority. I have worked for over 12 years in a scholarly institute on colonial history and present – specializing in Indonesia/South East Asia and the Caribbean, for its library, summarizing (“abstracting”) and indexing books and articles.

This was for the KITLV in Leyden, the Netherlands, explaining the geographical choices: the Dutch had colonies in those regions (Indonesia, Suriname, Netherlands Antilles).

I worked at the Caribbean department, having to study many books and articles about Caribbean history and present, in order to describe them well for the library catalogue.

Important for this post: a lot of these works were about slavery, and connected slave trade, being so crucial and formative for Caribbean development. The focus was on the (entire) Caribbean – not just the Dutch colonies, with some side steps to Africa, yet personally, later, I read some works about the African side of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as well as the European side.

The KITLV, I then worked for, had a conservative image, as it started/was founded during the Netherlands’ colonial era, aiding such policies, but modernized over time, having a balanced library collection with different studies and viewpoints. (http://www.kitlv.nl)

OPEN DEBATE

There was also an open debate in Dutch slavery studies then, which I think is healthy in academic circles. Scholars deemed as too “apologist” debated with more postcolonial thinkers, and vice versa, including opposing stances, always beneficial for truth-finding. This open debate seems to have been lost a bit in academic circles now, according to critics, especially when “bigger interests” are at stake (the military industrial complex, "security"/control, corona, climate), open debate is avoided, and critics marginalized or “cancelled”. The slavery debate at that time only got similarly corrupted – I recall – when “reparations” by the state were called for (i.e. “money”): suddenly more the apologist, White scholars on slavery came then to lead the debate and could only speak in authoritative sources, but in time even these could be contradicted. I studied both sides.

From that professional, analytical context, I now recognize the misconceptions or lies about the slave trade and slavery in media expressions, by different commentators. Opponents of that UN, Ghana-led “gravest rime” declaration – especially – seemed to “invent” fictional histories, or repeated these. Apologist or not, but certainly not true.

Subjectivity of the term “gravest” aside, the declaration in itself makes sense: trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery were undoubtedly crimes against humanity, with tragic results (also over time) for Africans, and lacking up to the present proper compensation. What shape and form this compensation (reparation? Paid by who?) would take, is another issue.

Though not legally binding, it gave a moral message, that many critics sought to undermine. Predictably those on the Right politically, but also those with other ideological or material interests.

Main colonial powers of yesteryear – read: once involved/main culprits in the trans-Atlantic slave trade – Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, Netherlands, a.o. – “abstained” in that UN vote, while as could be expected, mostly African, Latin American, Asian, and other “third world” countries supported it (a total of 123 countries). Only the US, Israel, and Argentina bluntly opposed this "recognition declaration". Israel nitpicked on the word “gravest” in relation to Jewish history, also knowing dispersion and slavery.

The US and Argentina – at least their political leaders - just wanted to “diss” Blacks, I guess.

British conservative leader – Kemi Badenoch - of Nigerian descent! - showed her best “uncle tom” or “boasy slave” side, by claiming that Britain should have voted against the declaration, as Britain fought (later, as crucial addition) against slavery. One of those misconceptions, or repeated lies (or something in-between).

That’s one of those misconceptions.

These politicians or leaders, but also many commentators in the mainstream and social media repeated ideas – seeking to undermine the “gravest crime” argument, or that Europe did this to Africa and Africans.

I repeat: from all that I read professionally in an academic setting, and after – by white and black authors, including both postcolonial and conservative (even apologist and their opponents) ones, etc. – I knew immediately some of these ideas some spread in media in response to the UN-declaration, were mistaken misconceptions, not having any ground or basis in actually proven history.

I will discuss the main ones, based on my acquired, balanced knowledge.

“AFRICANS SOLD SLAVES THEMSELVES”

Slavery is as old as organized man, globally. That’s harsh, but true. Especially with larger scales after earlier “communal” stages among humans, hierarchies arose, with serfs and slaves. From ancient China, to Ancient Babylon, Ancient Egypt, Greece, ancient Rome, Aztec and Inca empires, but also among the Germanic and Celtic peoples of Europe there was slavery. The Germanic peoples, forefathers of many Northern Europeans, including in Germany and England, knew a class of slaves and semi-slaves, some would not imagine, seeing the image of “wild, communal” woodland societies surviving historically about the Teutonic/Germanic tribes. St Patrick, who would become the patron saint of Ireland, was ironically a slave of Celts in Ireland, though Patrick himself was also a Celt (albeit from what is now Wales).

And yes, also Africa, especially societies outgrowing the small-scale, family-based “communal” stages (that all societies go through), developed hierarchies with slaves, often as prisoners of war. Generally these slaves were absorbed if subdued locally, as societies became more large-scale and power-based, to different degrees.

This, however, was relatively limited and enshrined. The trans-Atlantic slavery – or African Holocaust – being the topic here, was a result of more global and modern European demands, disrupting African societies, even if depending first on existing practices. These local practices were aggrandized and corrupted in the European colonial interest, albeit aided by some African leaders or disunity/warring African nations. The Europeans made opportunistically use of intra-African divisions (between kingdoms/states), becoming the main (economic) impetus for enslaving more fellow-Africans, than would have been under normal, local “feudal “ developments, as selling slaves to Europeans became big business.

Several authors have shown this process, in my opinion convincingly.

“WHITES/EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES/ENSLAVED TOO”

This argument is repeated too, usually referring to Barbary (North African, Islamic) slave trade and slavery, occurring in parts of Northern Africa, the Middle East, and even Moorish Iberia.

Historians having studied this Islamic slavery since Islam’s spread after Muhammad’s death (7th and 8th c. AD and after), from Arabia to Northern Africa and the Middle East (and beyond), came to the conclusion that Muslims in earlier and later stages enslaved people of different races, with relatively many sub-Saharan Africans, Berbers, and, okay, in later stages also Europeans.

According to Islamic doctrine, all nonbelievers could be enslaved (until they converted), offering an unfortunate wide base. Slave raids among Europeans took place, but places along the Barbary coast (now roughly Algeria) were multiracial, also regarding the slave population (including Europeans, true, but also Africans, a.o.). Even Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes (of “Don Quixote” fame) was temporary enslaved there.

Much more Africans were enslaved, however, also by Arabs and other Muslims. African women for harems, as concubines, African men often as guards or servants, in many cases these were even castrated by their masters, decreasing their influence. Sources speak of millions of sub-Saharan Africans, thus enslaved and traded by Muslims, prior to European colonialism.

Most sensible conclusion: Whites/Europeans were not singled-out - or even dominant - among the Islamic-led slavery in North Africa, Spain and the Middle East.

Also in Spain and Portugal, the Moors had often sub-Saharan African slaves, cementing – according to some less-politically correct historians – the image of the ”the black as slave” In Portuguese and Spanish minds. This would then translate in Portuguese seafarers later enslaving Africans, as first Europeans, aided by sea traders from other European areas (Genoa, Venice, Catalonia, in present-day Italy and Spain). Areas with maritime traditions, that Castilian Spain had then still less.

However, with Spain’s own colonization of the Americas after 1492, the Spaniards at first made use of this Portuguese monopoly/specialization in African slaves, increasingly “racializing” trans-Atlantic slavery toward (imported) Africans, after Amerindian enslavement largely failed. Britain, France, and the Netherlands soon jumped on that bandwagon, with their colonization, even innovating this trans-Atlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans economically.

“BRITAIN FOUGHT AGAINST SLAVERY”

With modernized methods, Britain imported relatively many African slaves to its colonies in the Caribbean, aided by bases on African coasts. The profit (“blood money” one might say) or slavery gains were invested differently by and in England, than before were more chaotically by and in Portugal and Spain.

This is related to modern development, but also to cultural/religious factors, as Max Weber pointed out the role of Protestant values. Slavery profits were invested more in a productive, lasting economy, according to Protestant ethics in Britain, rendering the first industrial cities in the world – as such –, Birmingham and Manchester. This eventually led to capitalism.

Due to this modernization, by around 1800, slavery was no longer necessary or efficient, but has served its crucial purpose. Britain could therefore abolish the slave trade and slavery before other European nations. Modern tools required modern, moderate slavery/exploitation of labour, eventually developed in the West into dominant capitalist “wage labour”, some say “wage slavery”. Trans-Atlantic slavery helped shape and finance this very basis of modern Western society we all still live under now. There is thus a direct link between slavery and the Western, wage-based capitalist society of now. Many do not even know this.

The humanitarian goals of British abolitionists might have been there, but were not the dominant motivation, rather serving as hypocritical disguise, and self-righteous stances against economically more backward colonizers (Spain a.o.), which they were coincidentally also competing with. The main motivations for Britain leading the abolitionist movement were – behind the scenes – rather economical and of national interest, not humanitarian.

Conservative British leader Badenoch used this argument, which I hope to have showed is ultimately flawed.

“THOSE INVOLVED (OUR FOREPARENTS OR VICTIMS) ARE NO LONGER ALIVE”

This argument I hear or read here and there, coming down to “water under the bridge”. This is used very selectively, as historical epochs have of course lasting consequences up to the present. Besides: Germany and Japan are still paying “reparations” to European countries, Jews, or Asian countries for their roles during World War II, while most who have lived that period are by now deceased.

Moreover, it is about “lasting (generational) consequences”, which trans-Atlantic slavery surely had, such as on the African continent: population loss, economic decline and stagnation, as shown in Walter Rodney’s recommendable work ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ (1972), the title saying it not all, but well. I wrote elsewhere on my blog about this work.

Walter Rodney, a Guyanese scholar, shows in this work not to be a bigoted activist, checking intelligently the veracity and neutrality of all sources (dismissing not just apologist White westerners, but also obviously pro-Black sources), before taking – in my opinion – just conclusions about the devastating effects of Europe’s imposing of the slave trade and later colonialism on and in Africa.

That colonialism in Africa started after Britain (and also France) outlawed slavery, but in reality built forth on the same structures of trade developed during slave trade. Walter Rodney shows that well too.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the African Diaspora in the Americas, the consequences of slavery are very evident. Slavery was dehumanization into work-horses, but also involved “deculturalization”, including the loss of family names, increasing the intense dehumanization.

This of course has lasting effects up to now, supporting the “gravest crime” argument, and with it making more sensible the “compensation” and “reparation” rationale.

Issues of “bodily integrity”, “dehumanization” and such, aligned with violence-based forced labour, combined with a cultural destruction or damage . You could – and I do – argue that all human beings have the right to know their family’s roots, being essential in this world.

Blacks in the African Diaspora – in the Americas – all have lost this, bearing now Portuguese, English (or Scottish), Spanish (or Catalan), Dutch, or French surnames – i.e. of their erstwhile European masters/owners -, with only vague family lore reminding them of their African roots.

An Afro-Cuban woman I befriended had Spanish surnames (two, as in Spanish tradition) – specifically both Catalan surnames, belonging to Barcelona elite families – referring to their erstwhile family owners, but with family stories reminding vaguely of “Congo” origins of their forebears, as many Afro-Cubans in Eastern Cuba (later confirmed with DNA tests, so accurate). Many Afro-Cubans know for instance of their Yoruba origins too, even with some tangible retentions of it, Jamaicans of their Ghanaian or Igbo roots, etcetera. Historical written records of the time itself (in e.g. colonial archives) can give some more specific insight of one’s family members, but are partly deficient.

The connection to their family history has been – however – systematically disrupted due to slavery, as regards to historical records, as they were assigned European names of their masters. DNA studies (which only arose since the 1950s) give now some more possibilities to trace one’s specific roots. Still, organic family ties (a basic human right) have been lost.

CULTURAL RESISTANCE

Within this overall tragedy, there is the beauty of cultural strength and survival. Enough African retentions and memories were kept alive to give birth to own cultural creations among Afro-Americans, including musical genres based on African principles. African principles also giving birth to folk belief systems, and other cultural expressions throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas, by necessity mixed with European culture.

Thus arose and were invented Samba, Salsa, Reggae, Calypso, Merengue, Jazz, Blues, Funk, and Soul.. just to name some known Afro-American musical genres, with elements that can be traced back to specific African principles and roots in what is now the Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa. A beautiful story of cultural survival and resilience, but amidst a tragedy of grave human rights abuse. Culture as resistance against dehumanization.

Depopulation in parts of Africa, already hinted at the “genocidal” effects of trans-Atlantic slavery, also need to be mentioned. Figures differ – I also recall from my own studying of slavery, professionally – but an estimated 15 million Africans died during the forced transport from Africa to the Americas – probably more, while those surviving had relatively short lives, due to the harsh, inhumane conditions of slave work. Population loss, genocide..

On top of this, they were enslaved, so had no property or income, to pass on to offspring, as other human groups in theory had. This kept them economically backward and dependent, up to the present. So, even if those directly involved no longer live now, it is present in the unequal socioeconomic position. In most American nations, Blacks – those of African descent - are at the bottom of the economic ladder.

“IT WAS AN ELITE THING”

This argument is somewhat more sensible, though not fully. The poor European people (the peasants, low-wage labourers, property-less) had indeed less stake in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery, of course started and benefitting the elite, moneyed classes: rich merchants, sometimes nobility, within European societies. They profited most of it, and in earlier stages, Portuguese and Spanish gains of slavery went to these elite families, building palaces, buying more grounds, gaining more political power in national affairs, with little “offshoots” benefiting poorer surrounding Portuguese or Spanish people: at most creating some extra, low-wage jobs in the margins of colonial activities (dockworkers, seamen, stores, sugar refining, housekeepers, etc.).

The “offshoots” became – however – more structural with the more investing, and overarching, Protestant approach of the British, redirecting colonial and slavery gains toward industrialization in England, and eventually capitalism. This created whole economic sectors – also indirectly - in British society, requiring many workers, and thus (albeit relative) wider economic prosperity.

The poor labourers in the factories in e.g. Birmingham or Manchester, that thus arose, were of course not from classes or families that ever had leading or decisive roles in colonialism or slavery within or by their country, but profited from it nonetheless. As known, Britain started the first “industrialization”, and left earlier colonizers like Spain and Portugal, economically behind as less-modern, while the Netherlands (with a Protestant ethic, but also a modern, financial strength) had more of these economically prosperous side-effects like Britain, as to a degree France.

Shortly, and somewhat simplistically put: slavery gains ended first up in some elite families in Portugal and Spain, but in time got invested more “smartly” in the entire economies in Britain, the Netherlands, and France, and with it wider Europe.

This has consequences - e.g. global inequalities between Europe and developing countries - up to today, aiding Europe’s and the West’s (also US) relative wealth in this world.

These are the cold, historical facts.

RACIALIZED

Important is also to add that it was “racialized” slavery. This increased racism. Race played a role in the initial starting of trans-Atlantic slavery by Portuguese and Spaniards around 1500, but in the early stage not even a dominant one. Principal motivations were at first economic: Amerindians could not handle the strain, and not enough Europeans wanted to migrate to the Americas, and Spanish colonizers then turned (as the Portuguese and Moors before them pioneered) to Africans.

Still, in time the dehumanization became cruelly racialized, with racist and discriminatory practices becoming the norm in colonial societies. Anti-Black racism, essentially.

Also this has consequences up to today. Economic and opportunity inequalities, persisting discrimination, racist policies globally (Apartheid ended only in 1990), but also inferiority complexes, are still realities of today, for who want to see them.

The Uncle Tom – or as put in Jamaican Patois “Boasy Slave” - syndrome: Black persons overly pleasing the White oppressor or boss, for some personal gain – of which the UK Conservative opposition leader Badenoch is now a particularly ridiculous example (at least in her response to the declaration), has been going on for centuries, also during slavery itself. In fact, many (for fear) compliant slaves kept the system working, but in still exploitation-based, albeit more moderate contexts, with less openly “brute” force, such as in present-day wage-based “modern slavery”, this phenomenon still shows, Badenoch only being a very noticeable example in higher circles.

Neoliberalism - modern, state-supported capitalism – stimulated since the 1990s “identity politics” to distract from economic inequality, benefitting the elite, and a part of the Blacks/people of African descent, seemed to have fallen in that trap, especially when taking a “politicized”, instrumental form within the system. Acting as “pro-Black” – even in a bully-like manner - to compensate for being a “boasy slave” elsewhere in their lives, occurs, showing the contradictory psychological disorders of people having lost touch with themselves and their history. That is the psychological dimension.

Even that is forgivable, as also many White people having to participate in this system likewise keep fooling themselves that it is their own free will (hiring and firing people, or on the low end: setting the alarm clock at 07:30 to go work for a boss), and maintaining the illusion that is not at all (labour, time, human) exploitation that they stimulate, or engage in. Just a job.

That is the unequal, make-believe world we are living in today.

Historically, this modern, moderate wage slavery of modern-day capitalism was financed by colonial slavery during the trans-Atlantic slavery period (1500-1800), which is historically both interesting and painful.

The African victims of that 1500-18XX trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery period can be seen as sacrifices for this.

On the basis of this, I opine that it indeed can be seen sensibly as “of the gravest crimes against humanity”, and making calls for reparation or compensation not at all irrational. How this should be worked out in a good manner, is another issue.

Troubled identification with Jamaica in reggae lyrics

Reggae music is of course for some time now a main “export product” of Jamaica, and especially since Bob Marley’s fame put it on the global map, since around the 1970s.

There is however one historical elephant in the room, or maybe an inherent contradiction: Reggae is Afro-Jamaican music, that arose among those who descend from Africans who were brought once forcibly to the island Jamaica, had to work as slaves, and remained in poverty on that island. There is thus a problematic identification with the nation of residence.

The same applies of course to all other Black music genres in the African Diaspora, from the US, to Cuba, Trinidad, Colombia, Brazil, and other former colonies, later becoming known for internationalized music. About 70% of what we call “Salsa” is in fact based on Afro-Cuban musical structures – with clear Congo retentions -, to which in New York were added influences, often also from the African Diaspora (Dominican Merengue or Afro Puerto Rican Bomba). Calypso (Trinidad), Blues (US), Samba (Brazil): also all created by descendants of Africans, in a place where they were brought by force.

This is an existential problem, shared throughout the African Diaspora, yet in different ways. Even if, say, countries like Trinidad, Brazil, or Cuba, seem celebrated proudly in lyrics as one’s home, the tragic undertone remains somehow there. Unease remains.

TRAUMA

That tragic undertone is the trauma. In essence, “trauma” can be defined as “losing control” of the situation, and in a sense “inaptitude”. One’s people did not choose to make Jamaica their home, but were pressured to do so, with a lot of abuse. Music helps to remind of the African roots, so that the tree growing can bear good fruits, even in alien soil, to quote Marcus Garvey (more or less).

The human rights abuses, violence, and deaths that came with trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery, added to the existential problem. After deracination, came dehumanization, and marginalization. Music genres developed among poor Black people answered that, contrasted that with roots, humanity, and self-expression.

REPATRIATION

This existential problem is shared throughout the African Diaspora, but in the case of Jamaica, that trauma of deracination or displacement, has been answered more manifestly with the Garvey movement – Back to Africa -, and the related Rastafari movement, since the 1930s.

Jamaica was and is for most Garveyites and Rastafarians not the ideal place for African-Jamaicans, who should according to them repatriate to Africa. They belong there. The sensed urgency of this repatriation might however differ per person.

While Marcus Garvey attempted in earnest to set up a steamship line to bring people back to Africa – the Black Star Liner – in the US after 1917, it was sabotaged and eventually ill-fated. More sabotage than mere “bad management”, as some claimed it to be.

Within the Rastafari movement, repatriation remained a goal, that seemed somewhat “stalled”. Poorer early (Rastafari-adhering) Reggae artists could simply not travel, whereas later Reggae artists making some money, maintained a lot of loyalties within their island of birth, Jamaica, or migration destinations (US, Canada, Britain). Only a few Reggae artists actually made repatriation efforts to Africa as such, some moving (partly) to African countries: Rita Marley being a known example in Ghana, while other Reggae artists bought land and property in parts of Africa (e.g. Sizzla).

This “back to Africa” focus of the Garvey movement and Rastafari is the most outspoken contrast to the initial trauma of forced displacement: (re)taking control of one’s lot again, as solution to the trauma. In theory to start with, as hopeful vision and, perhaps, consolation..

Elsewhere in the African Diaspora - outside of Jamaica - the same existential trauma is more implicitly referred to.

In Jamaica itself – after all a racially “majority Black” country - , some recent voices call for “Africanizing Jamaica”, instead of the unrealistic – or at least seemingly impractical – repatriation of Africans back to Africa. This cultural Africanization was however already happening all along, and at most will entail some policy changes in the higher circles of society, often more symbolic than anything else. The majority view among Rastafari adherents in Jamaica seem to still be repatriation, returning to the African homeland.

REGGAE LYRICS

Of course, Reggae music has been strongly influenced by the Rastafari movement, especially Roots Reggae (old and new), evident in lyrics, with a maintained Back To Africa focus, real or symbolic.

It seemed to me interesting, therefore, to study how (especially) Rastafari-adhering Reggae artists discuss their island of birth, Jamaica. Is there some sensed connection or sense of belonging with Jamaica?, or is the message that one is essentially just “stuck” there, still trying to make the best of it, while thinking of ancestral Africa?

With the recent hurricane called Melissa in 2025, causing destruction in parts of Jamaica, the sense of community and connection with the island as location was again put to the fore (and test), as rebuilding was required.

Rebuilding a Jamaica where you never chose to be in the first place, but had been made into home, also by your own direct ancestors.

The history of slavery is recalled a lot in Reggae lyrics, wherein Jamaica figures as “plantation island” where Africans taken from Africa lived in slavery, and later “ghetto island” where Africans lived in poverty. Jamaica forms part of larger "Babylon" (the corrupt Western world) in many Reggae lyrics. Of course this is all from the poor people’s perspective, excluded from high society.. or even middle-class society: the sufferers and ghetto dwellers, creating Reggae.

Other lyrics - dealing with current events, or later epochs – showed a broader connection with Jamaica, but mostly also one that is also “tainted”, as inequality between haves and have-nots persists. In many Reggae lyrics, from the 1970s to now, gun violence and crime, are added problems for identification with the island, for ghetto residents, also with a “class” aspect.

This became clear already when Jamaica became independent: especially some well-connected politicians, or Afro-Jamaicans with higher positions, exhibited an opportunistic sense of Jamaican identity and connection, aligned then to one’s position of relative power within the political system. The “Uncle Tom”-effect, you can say, or “Boasy Slave” in Jamaican parlance.

This is also critiqued in Reggae lyrics, such as the patriotic, national slogan, Jamaica had a while: Out Of Many One, in e.g. Mutabaruka’s lyrics. This slogan was copied from the US, but ill-fitted the Jamaican situation, where over 80% of Jamaica is mainly of African descent, so the other of the “many” get a privileged status, it seems. Indeed, minorities like the Chinese, Lebanese, Europeans, and to a lesser degree East Indians, are up to the present economically disproportionately powerful and wealthy within Jamaica.

Reggae lyrics by Rastas, therefore, when dealing with Jamaica include this critique and – one can say – alienation, and dreaming of Africa and Zion. This tragedy at the very least renders great musical art: as James Brown once said “soul” is the word “can’t”.. and Reggae Got Soul, as songs by Toots & the Maytals and later Fantan Mojah are titled.

CULTURE

“Celebrating Jamaicanness” – the other extreme - is found less in Roots Reggae lyrics, but is not absent, even vowing “never to leave it” songs by Eric Donaldson, Admiral Bailey, a.o.). Yet, even among Rastas, as a “cultural” rather than a “political” nation, Jamaica is appreciated: music, food, daily customs, family and friends, specific drinks, parties, specific towns/areas, natural landscapes, but also Jamaica as birthplace of cultural movements with global impact (Garvey, Rastafari, Reggae, a.o.) putting small Jamaica on the map, offering some sense of pride.

Even Sizzla is quite positive about developments – or at least freedoms – within Jamaica on his song In Jamaica.

The quite recent “club hit” The Voices Of Sweet Jamaica at the celebration of 50 years independence of Jamaica from British rule, in 2012, also celebrated food, natural beauty, and culture.

Chronixx has a nice, nuanced vision on Jamaica in Smile Jamaica, as some other Reggae artistes too (like Tarrus Riley, Etana, Jah Cure, a.o.), including mostly the historical existential unease.

Most of the more “conscious” Reggae lyrics (old and new) tend to emphasize the social problems within Jamaica, at most praising cultural resilience. Jamaica equates an involuntary lot or burden to overcome. It appears as such in lyrics of songs by Morgan Heritage, and earlier Culture, Peter Tosh, Hugh Mundell, Junior Delgado, Twinkle Brothers, Bob Andy, or even Bob Marley, the most internationally well-known Jamaican. This accentuates the problematic, conflictive relation, calling for wanting to go “home” (Africa)..

LATIN AMERICA

It also shows, on the positive side, the relative lack of censorship and free speech in Jamaica, and lacking social pressures, compared to other places in the Americas, where Africans ended up, and have less channels to express grievances, than in Jamaica. These grievances and inequalities are certainly there in places like Cuba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil, where – as also documentaries by Henry Louis Gosset jr. (Blacks in Latin America) showed - , Blacks/African descendants remained on the lower rungs of society, among the poorest.

In dictatorships like Cuba, this even caused some censorship problems and persecution problems of Afro-Cuban artists with direct criticism in the lyrics on the regime or inequality. Some artists in Latin America, like Cuban rappers, resorted therefore to more covert lyrics and “code words”, to express grievances, when questioning that myth of “racial, mixed democracy”. This also applies in Brazil, being the country outside of Africa with most people of African descent, but presenting the world a “mixed, equal” image, to hide actual race-based poverty and discrimination (also in e.g. police killings disproportionately of Afro-Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro).

GOOD AND BAD

Natural beauty in parts of Jamaica – certainly present – is also mentioned in both Reggae lyrics and earlier by Marcus Garvey in his writings on his growing up in rural St Ann. When I visited, I personally also liked the lush, tropical landscapes of parishes of Jamaica, like St Ann (where Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley were born) – more hilly -, and St Thomas – more mountainous – in Eastern Jamaica. I saw beautiful landscapes there.

Crucially, local living or “culture” is celebrated in such Reggae lyrics positive about Jamaica, more than nationalism. Nationalism, like patriotism – as the –“ism” ending suggests – serves often “politics and (economic) power” goals from élites, and thus top-down. It might influence those lower in the hierarchy, but remains partly artificial.

Culture is by contrast from the bottom-up, as folk culture is what you get when common people are left alone, to their own devices.

You don’t celebrate adversity, but how you “overcame” it, simply said.

Tellingly, the artist Ijahman Levi called Jamaica his “culture country”, where Marcus Garvey was from.

Burning Spear has a song “Land Of My Birth” (“I love you..”), and on his latest album a song called Jamaica (praising its culture), whereas Island In The Sun (rhyming with “fun”), appears in lyrics by group Israel Vibration, and others, quasi-positively, while also some places in Jamaica are described with some mild affection, such as Kingston, Montego Bay (a song by Queen Ifrica), Spanish Town (by Chronixx), or Negril, an affection mostly shaped because of friends or family there.

The mostly Rootical/Rasta group the Itals also have a nice, jolly song about Jamaican style of living and dances.

ALIENATION

The many good Reggae songs, also about this theme of alienation or connection with regard to the nation Jamaica, furthermore go interestingly against the Nazi-doctrine of “Entartete kunst” ..

When the Nazi’s took power in Germany in the 1930s, and turned it into a fascist and racist (Germanic supremacy) dictatorship, it entailed censorship of certain art forms, not fitting the national-socialist party line of Germanic superiority, and being too foreign, non-German, racially impure (made by Jews), or “entartet”, which is the German word for “degenerated”. This art thus deemed was condemned openly then banned, by that regime.

What Reggae – and other music and art in the African Diaspora - proves is in fact the contrary: art being valuable as precisely an expression of alienation and being deracinated, therefore all the more soulful and powerful.

More so than just confirming conservative cultural norms in closed communities, with lack of creativity and innovation, remaining safely on the well-trodden paths, to please the authorities. This occurs when people have not been displaced by outside forces, and remained in the same land as their ancestors, practically since years BC, only with some admixtures. Stagnation sets in those cases inevitably in. More travelling and persecuted groups like Jews or Gypsies had to be more creative with their art, yet those were precisely seen as “undesirables” in Nazi Germany.

To a degree, also more historically “mixed” Mediterranean nations (also culturally) like Spain (with a Moorish past), France, or Italy have this less than dominantly, more mono-ethnic Germanic or Slavic countries elsewhere in Europe, giving some more space for creative artistic periods in Southern Europe. Yet, also Vienna in Austria at the time of Mozart, was more multicultural than the rest of Austria, while also Amsterdam and Antwerp (and London) had long an international, “tolerant” image, enabling innovations, though at first mostly economically motivated, it increased variety and openness.

Jamaica was a British colony, and inherited more the Germanic/Northern European sense of “racial purity” and racial connection to a specific land, that the Spanish colonizers had less.

From the start, as even racist, ruthless colonizing conquerors following Columbus to the Americas, like Pizarro and Cortés, soon accepted racial mixture between Spaniards and present Amerindians, even allowing on occasion the mixed offspring some of the inherited power and material inheritance.

In British colonies, and the US, racial purity, segregation, and strict inequality was however more the norm, whereas societies like Cuba, Brazil, and others boasted earlier a “mixed” identity.

This more “mixed identity” in Latin America, proved on the other hand often however hypocritical in light of actual racial inequalities, - as already mentioned -, that persisted in places like Cuba and Brazil, where people of African descent, especially when darker-skinned, remain among the poorest of all groups, and descendants of Europeans among the most powerful and wealthiest. Up to this day: even the in name progressive and anti-racist Communist Party of Cuba, is mostly disproportionately “lilly-white”, or at least Spanish-looking, in its higher echelons.

Similarly, in Brazil, only very light Mulatto might obtain some political power, further the domain of also “lilly white” (European-descended) people, with only in sports and music (Pele, for instance) some status for Afro-Brazilians, similar to the situation in the US, for that matter.

NATIONALISM

US comedian Roy Wood jr. had an entertaining bit about the “conflicted relations” of African Americans with the US, inhibiting them from writing truly “patriotic” songs about the joy of being from the US, - as some White US artists did -, but instead created the lamenting Blues.

This more or less applies to Jamaica as well, and to elsewhere in the African Diaspora, especially in light of persisting racial inequalities, also in e.g. Colombia. The national projects simply went from colonial to postcolonial projects, any popular input in achieving or fighting for independence soon sidelined. Nationalism became an élite thing in the Americas, much more than in Europe.

Many borders in Europe developed historically in a rather haphazard manner (or through royal interests), hardly ever conscious political projects, though a shared ethnic base and history procured a sensed affiliation, even with political leaders. Italian unification – led by Garibaldi – seemed a project, but covered uncomfortably many regional identities within current Italy, and to a lesser degree also German unification.

Still, a sense of being where one historically belongs is present among most European nationals (and in Asia and Africa), resulting in stability and self-assurance, as well as arrogance.

My personal prediction in Late 2020: that the whole Covid virus ordeal or “scam” (according to opposers of it) impacting societies and limiting usual freedoms globally, but especially in Western countries, starting around March 2020.. this would (I predicted) increase nationalistic tendencies, rather than global rebellion. It is not my genius, but rather my knowledge of history that made me predict this well.

While political leaders in Italy, France, Germany, or elsewhere - both on the Left as on the Right – pay lip service to “patriotism”, their alignment with global élites is also evident, mostly for power and economic reasons.

Some right-wing popular movements or political leaders contest this with sometimes even xenophobic nationalism, and simplistic and generalizing “anti-migration” stances. Not positive, but showing that the “national belonging” is sensed and ancestral, with “outsiders” becoming intruders. Outweighing – harshly – global inequality or shared injustices.

This never developed as such in the Americas, only a bit more in more racially mixed societies like Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, or the Dominican Republic, where nation or a vague “Latino” identity becomes a substitute for uncertainty of identity, almost by necessity. This is not without creativity, and even understandable, but the “depth” of the connection with the nation should not be exaggerated.

I have met Cubans and Colombians of mixed race, knowing more or less of a Spanish ancestor, a Chinese one, and African one, and even where from in China, Spain, or Africa. I met a quite dark-skinned Cuban woman once in Cuba – adhering to Yoruba Santería btw –, who asked me if I have ever been to Asturias, as I was half-Spanish. I answered that my mother was more from the Southwest of Spain (close to Córdoba), and Asturias was rather in the North of Spain, having only visited it once. Apparently one of her ancestors came from there. She was mostly of African descent, though, so mixtures differ.

Anyway, the focus remained in the cases of people with mixed ancestry worldly and international, which in itself helps to keep an open mind, and makes identity less “strict”. Yet also more insecure.

FRICTIONS

While the result of a largely tragic history of inequality and exploitation, this “looser” national identity in the Americas is not without its merits. It avoids “redneck”-like small-mindedness and xenophobia, that even hides behind the “subtle” racism now common in Western Europe, or more open variants of xenophobia in parts of Eastern and Southern Europe.

The cultural friction with the also proud Islamic adherents - present among migrants - caused increased tensions and misunderstandings, as both in England as in the Netherlands – for instance – anti-migration parties – called “racist” by some, e.g. the National Front in Britain, or the Dutch Centrum Democraten, soon shifted their focus from people from the colonies of another race (but at least speaking the language and adapted in some ways), to the increased group of Muslim migrants, increasing in number.

This cultural friction is maybe lamentable, but to a degree universal, as such frictions are also found in mixed American and Caribbean societies, e.g. Guyana. There is then only no connection to "sacred" patriotism for the country, where one’s ancestors are after all not even from, but is more a matter of cultural frictions or irritations.

Reggae lyrics therefore also address the dominant influence of Chinese finance in Jamaica (Kabaka Pyramid in the song Well Done, or Vybz Kartel’s Poor People Land), partly in line with tourism promotion, sideling the local population, benefitting thus less from tourism. Kabaka Pyramid states that politicians “sell out the country” Jamaica, for their own gain.

This happens also in parts of Africa, along with neocolonialism trough the banking system (IMF), seemingly rendering repatriation to Africa as an idealistic, yet unrealistic daydream.

In a very recent song (late 2025), Kabaka Pyramid has a quite positive song about Jamaica as “sweet”, even stating as nowhere better, and its culture.

ONE’S GEOGRAPHICAL ROOTS

One - maybe - can “feel at home” in places where one’s (geographical) roots are not, especially when among one’s own people and family. The lack of a deeper connection need not to inhibit happiness.. or does it?

One may be satisfied somewhere else in the world, even a place nothing to do with their family, yet sense on occasion a lack of purpose, or “tranquility” and “security”. For that reason, most people when arriving in places where their roots lie – especially the first time – tend to sense stronger emotions than they thought, which some even describe as a combination of goose-bumps and tears. Migrants know how this feels, when returning to their native countries.

I recall from my youth that when once driving to our Spanish family for holidays - from the Netherlands where we lived -, my Spanish mother was reading or sleepy when driving through France, in the back of the car my Italian father drove, but that my mother started singing merrily when she knew we crossed the Spanish border. I found that funny – knowing how she was - , but my father mumbled something like “too proud and patriotic, always, those Spaniards”.

I had, however, similar feelings when arriving in Spain after some time, in different epochs of my life: recognizing accents, looks, names, knowing my ancestors lived there, gave me a special feeling of “calm”. I missed that growing up in the Netherlands. Afro-Americans – even mixed-raced ones - visiting for the first time Africa, have that even stronger, often with overwhelming yet satisfying emotions. There was after all a real trauma to resolve, based on slavery and forced displacement, lacking even the semi-voluntary aspect of migration.

One can be happy without that actual connection with one’s geographical roots, I imagine, yet to degrees, perhaps missing a dimension to make it perfect. On the other hand, humans have always travelled and migrated, so that is also humanity and fulfillment of another kind. Traveling, but then “back home” – or at least the promise of it , and totally by free will! - seems even more satisfying and consoling, as the Jamaican and Rastafari cases show. It helps heal the historical trauma.

Africa as home remains also in modern Roots Reggae lyrics, therefore. In some parts of Africa, the Islam is also quite dominantly present, or strict Christianity, not necessarily welcoming of a Rastafari people “influx” from the Caribbean. Luckily, some African countries, often heralded as “Zion”, and the main place of return for Rasta’s, like Ethiopia or even Ghana, have showed some tolerance for this migration, and do not know so much religious (Islamic or Christian) extremism, allowing tolerance. Ethiopia's Muslims tend to be relatively "mild" or moderate nowadays, some Ethiopian friends of mine told me.

Still: there are vested interests there, as shown in conflicts in Shashemane land in Ethiopia: a territory emperor Haile Selassie set aside for Africans in the diaspora for settlement, and a group of (Rastafari-adhering) Caribbean migrants indeed settled there. A land conflict with local Oromo people arose there, however, causing some tensions, as there were earlier with Ethiopian Communist and later governments, long (about 40 years!) even withholding Caribbean Rastafari-adherers in Shashamane recognition as national citizens, up to only about 8 years ago.

Still, repatriation as proposed within the Rastafari movement – and still in Reggae lyrics – is in theory not impossible, as the history of mankind shows, sometimes even led by leading “prodigal sons”, wishing to improve their country of origin, as a way to honor ancestors, in some way. It is by itself redemptive of the historical trauma, as I pointed out.

It is therein that I think that the “enduring wisdom” of Marcus Garvey’s “back to Africa” approach, inherited by Rastafari, lies.

IDENTITY

Elsewhere in the African Diaspora, - notably the US - fake, somewhat forced “identity politics” (rigid yet simplistic black-white distinction) has taken this place, with a less clear, often inherently contradictory direction. In Latin America however, African cultural and racial presence is as indicated more often “drowned” in a carnivalesque mix, which may seem pleasant or realistic, but is inherently infantilizing and patronizing as well, especially in less-democratic contexts. The goals seems all too clear to “depoliticize”, and defuse any rebellion.

On the plus side: the latter openness to local mixture makes all rigid, ancestral “national identity” relative and malleable, thereby allowing an open mind and flexibility, and avoiding parochial mindsets, rigid xenophobia or racial thinking, all too common elsewhere. This openness contributed to rich, and fascinating cultures in places like Brazil, Cuba, and elsewhere, including recognizable African retentions.

On the down side: one is more dependent on higher-placed others in a set location and on shaped conditions of inequality and poverty, for lacking another place of one’s own where one actually belongs, and the protection and consolation this provides. This is undeniably an existential need, that is then ignored and denied.

Interestingly, much Reggae expresses Rastafari views (repatriation, Afrocentricity, spirituality), along with serving as the “true, popular newspaper” of local conditions and problems, rather than the mainstream news in most countries, driven eventually by élite, upper-class interests, hidden or not.

Reggae lyrics seem to encompass both these spectrums (African roots and local conditions), in my opinion, even allowing a healthy “open doubting”, which makes one not only more “intellectual”, but I think also more fully human, “realer” as person. It also makes “art” – which includes music - more profound.

The latter might even have attributed to the international appeal of Reggae, since Bob Marley, who had deep lyrics about this, in simple language. Identifiable language and lyrics of a searching, spiritual individual, later found among many more Reggae artists, from Alton Ellis, to Culture, Burning Spear, Dennis Brown, Ijahman Levi, the Mighty Diamonds, Morgan Heritage, Luciano, Sizzla, Bushman, Buju Banton, and countless others. That spiritual searching can also be called “soul”.

Balafon story and AI

It was some time ago, in another stage in my life, that I walked into a – as I recall it – “third world-minded” shop in the town of Leyden in the Netherlands.

I did not live in Leyden, but it was so long ago (around 15 years ago?) that I do not even recall whether I lived in Amsterdam then already, or even still in my parental house in Nieuw Vennep: a village in the “busy” western Netherlands between Leyden and Amsterdam. I worked a period in Leyden, so it could be during a “break” at that job, during which I indeed used to walk through Leyden’s center with stores. The institute where I worked lacked an own “cantina”, dependent for that on university facilities.

One of my brothers also lived In Leyden, so it could otherwise be during a visit to him.

BALAFON FROM SENEGAL

Either way, I remember that in that store I was intrigued by a small balafon, with six bars/keys made of nice-looking brownish wood, tied with ropes in nice red, gold, and green colours, in sync with my other interests (Reggae, Rastafari). As in larger balafons, calabashes served as resonators.. for this small one two calabash gourds seemingly sufficed. I decided to buy it.

The total size was more than manageable: around 26 cm (10.2 inches) by 23 cm, and around 11 cm high.

Oddly enough I do not remember the “aftermath” of this purchase: did I come from my brother and bought that after my visit, on my way to Leyden’s train station? Did it fit well in my rucksack, I usually took along?

If during my job break.. did I keep it in my rucksack during final work hours, perhaps mentioned it to colleagues? I really can’t remember.

I do remember what I asked the man in (owning?) that shop – a seemingly middle-aged, greying Dutchman – : “where is that balafon from?”, I asked. “From Senegal”, he answered.

Strange how you, or at least I, often tend to remember “parts of events” , some “scenes” or “short conversations” instead of the whole event from beginning to end, a lot of it blurred to oblivion.

Anyway, after all those years, I still have that small balafon, as I am now living for over 20 years in Amsterdam, the Netherlands capital, a bigger city than Leyden, around 40 km Northeast of it. More spectacular, but perhaps less cozy or peaceful.

COMPOSITIONS

Though my house in Amsterdam has by now become similar to a “percussion museum”, with all the instruments I gathered over the years – more percussionists/percussion players I know have that – the balafon is more than a museum piece, as I regularly play (with) it - including sometimes brought it to jams to play live in clubs - , and used it in several of my recorded compositions, instrumental and vocal, often to add an African "feel”. The compositions I usually published on my YouTube channel.

This one was solely balafon-based:

On a recent song I released even “officially” for all main platforms (via TuneCore), called Truly Democratic, I used this balafon, as there was also a Djembe pattern in that song from Mali, bordering Senegal, where the balafon was from. Besides this nerdy “Mande African” connection, I also thought it fitted the overall sound and composition, moreover. It contrasted with high pitches the low-pitched djembe pattern.

Imagination running free and experimenting with sound are all very good in and for making music, but it’s good to remind ourselves that music develops within cultures, usually in communal/festive settings. The root and essence of “real” music remain more in that – communal culture -, than in the nowadays music recording, technical “blokes” who play around in a home studio, and have a computer with internet, in some Western city.

This cultural, "folk" roots is especially the case for traditional and acoustic instruments like the balafon, from traditional music in Western Africa.

Being since young an interest of mine, theoretically I knew something about Balafons – as African types of xylophones -, saw photos of it, and found out in what parts of Africa they were common.

I have a wider musical interest, including within African music, and at one point started to focus more on drum types, types of bells, and the balafon somewhat “drowned” in all this, and was sidelined..

Until.. some moments when I thought of a nice counterpoint to a drum (poly)rhythm in one of my compositions, and thought of the relatively high tones of my small balafon, creating a nice “overriding” melody.

Fun never done, in all creative freedom, but over all these years I still did not get to study more deeper the cultural heritage connected to the balafon, even if regularly recording with it.

Strange, because I over the years did study some drum types (African, Afro-Cuban), or other instruments I liked (the Udu vessel from Nigeria/Igboland, for instance).

So, time to fill these knowledge gaps about the Balafon.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Wikipedia is almost inevitable as source, but nowadays you have also AI sources like ChapGPT or Grok, assembling information from other sources. Like a Google 2.0 or “Plus”, as it were.

Also an interesting way to test the worth of such AI sources.. predictably glorified by capitalist money sharks, but do we – as common folk – can have any lasting benefit of Artificial Intelligence?

I am weary of wider economic uses of AI, I admit, especially for “work replacement”: as “unquestioning following orders” is a wet dream of the wrong powerful people, those who like to dehumanize others for their benefit.

As a search engine I can see the value of AI, though.

WIKIPEDIA FIRST

Wikipedia – often quite reliable - gave some interesting information, also about the wider xylophone family. The term “balafon” is related to a language in the Mande-speaking areas of Western Africa, notably around Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Eastward to Burkina Faso and Northern Ivory Coast. Beyond linguistic issues, similar xylophones are found elsewhere in Africa, with some differences in use, tuning, and construction, but often (not always) also with gourd/calabash resonators, Uganda (the Amadinda instrument), Mozambique, Zambia, are relatively a bit better known for balafon/xylophone traditions, but types of xylophones/balafons are found in several countries as yet unmentioned more, like Cameroon, Malawi, and Congo.

Interesting are the similarities and slight differences between these balafons and their use across Africa, the main shared characteristics being the playing style, with interlocking patterns of often a duo of players (with own differently tuned balafons often), and often calabash gourds as resonators. The keys are made of African hardwood – obviously – but rosewood seems the preferred type of wood, due to its strength and acoustic qualities. Rosewood is in recent times for these reasons, even starting to be used for the Spanish castanets in Spain (traditionally it was chestnut), and other, also more modern European/Western instruments.

SPIDERWEB SILK

Spiderweb silk strings are in balafons attached, with beewax, to the keys for a desired “buzzing” sound, preferred for most balafons in the Mande-speaking (”Guinea”) region, and other parts in West Africa (e.g. also for Cameroonian balafons/xylophones), but not in East Africa, lacking therefore much of that “buzzing” sound. According to my AI search in Ugandan xylophones banana fiber is instead sometimes used. In Zambia other “spider” products are used. Apparently, spiders as insects usually dwelled in gourds, triggering such use.

This is interesting, because it explains the sonic difference of the “bright” xylophones in East Africa (like Uganda), with the relatively more “buzzing” (spiderweb-silked) balafon sounds of Guinea or Mali.

OUTSIDE OF AFRICA

So, the continent of Africa has a rich balafon and xylophone tradition, but I also know of Asian xylophones, and Western ones. For instance, in the Netherlands, the xylophone is commonly used in basic music education at some schools, due to its seeming clarity.

Indonesian music I know often has traditionally some xylophones.

My, admittedly, small knowledge base, even more so outside of Africa, is however also a good starting point for AI searches. What I find most interesting – as a kind of “history buff” that I am – is the earliest origin of xylophones (wooden keys, tuned, played with sticks), and in what part of the world.

It turns out – as also Wikipedia describes – that the earliest xylophones were found in Southeast Asia, at least as early as 500 BC, in (indeed) Indonesia, but also mainland Southeast Asia (the Vietnam-Cambodia, and Thailand region).

Present-day xylophones in Thailand are known as “ranad” and also use calabash gourds as resonators as in Africa (with a resulting slight “nasal” sound), but without spiderweb silk, so less “buzzing”. Mostly bright sounds, therefore.

From Southeast Asia it spread to Africa via migrants, first via Madagascar, and explaining the strong presence in e.g. Mozambique. In Mozambique, the xylophones called “timbila’s” there, often played combined in orchestras, e.g. in the Chopi culture.

I further asked questions to AI about differences between African, Asian, and European xylophones, and was less surprised, as common notions about musical characteristics funnily seemed confirmed to me. Balafons in Africa were played with simultaneous polyrhythm and “interlocking” structures, often by various players at once, whereas the Indonesian or Thai xylophones fit in their more melodic cultures, though as I interestingly read: the Thai Tanad is equally used rhythmically (especially the lower notes), as, I cite from X’s AI searcher Grok: “In Thai music, the boundary between melody and rhythm is blurred, and the ranat family sits right in the middle of that overlap. They are essential for both defining the melodic line and driving the rhythmic pulse of the ensemble.”.

Another thing I did not know, although I of course used to focus more on African music, because of my love for rhythm and polyrhythm.

In Europe, the xylophone appeared much later, first in Bavaria (South Germany), in the Early 16th c., though steadily gaining a place in also orchestral music, and among classical composers like Camille Saint-Saëns, but also some pieces by e.g. Dmitri Shostakovich, Gustav Mahler, and others. Predictably, in European traditions, European music “harmony” laws applied, with a melodic and harmonic function first, and only a secondary rhythmic function.

To me, that made it not much different than guitars or piano’s, able to play the same melodies, only with a “wood-ringing” sound. Balafons intrigued me more, as I could fit it in my African-based compositions.

I was thus glad that I obtained that Senegalese, African balafon in that “exotic world stuff” store in Leyden – even if a small, six-key one: still nuff possibilities . I made good creative use of it, and so finding and acquiring it seemed "meant to be". Even if I don’t remember what I did the rest of that day or week..

I especially used it in “Mande Africa” referring compositions (such as my instrumental Bamako, named after Mali’s capital), as fitting its Senegalese origin.

Beyond that, however, I used my small balafon quite often in other African-influenced instrumentals (such as my vocal Soukous song Osilisi) I made, instrumental or not. The Congolese Soukous tends to have a driving, semi-rhythmic guitar, but I replaced that with a similar high, “bright” sound of the balafon.

I call some of my instrumentals “percussion instrumentals”, due to their main focus, but the balafon at times added some melody to such mainly rhythmic compositions of mine. I guess I also liked the “high” counterpoint to drum beats or lower bells.

I used it on some Reggae songs I made too (on Truly Democratic, for instance, as I said).

Enough about my own compositions for now, though. If interested, you can search on “Michel Conci” and Balafon (on YouTube), as for my percussion instrumentals, I tended to give instrument names in the Info text.

TOWARDS A CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I will focus on my knowledge, though, about the balafon/xylophone. I learned, now by searching through that modern “aid”(?) Artificial Intelligence, added to Google, Wikipedia, or some books I might have. Long overdue, in this year 2025, after having used my small balafons already in many of my (published!) compositions.

I did not really realize that the origins of the xylophone are in SouthEast Asia (back to BC), after that soon travelling to Africa, where it developed independently, according to own musical cultures. After all, many instruments travel: the South Spanish guitar (with Persian-Moorish antecedents), and its offshoots (e.g. the electric guitar) are best known, but also the (North Italian) violin, the Belgian-invented saxophone, the originally New Orleans/Jazz “drum kit” with cymbals, the Armenian-Turkish “cymbals” themselves, and in other posts on this blog I related how the Accordion and Harmonica (whether we want to, or not) originated in Germany.

This SE Asia to Africa migration is however another route than the usual “Western colonial” route, ending up influencing pop and Rock, only because Europeans or the US once could impose (or milder “bring”) their culture to e.g. to the Americas, or the whole world.

All these instruments are used in different ways in different cultures, adding the “soul” beyond mere material/technical aspects, the human creativity and natural playfulness, working out in different ways, within folk cultures.

Thus, the harmonica got used commonly in Blues, guitars rhythmically in Caribbean and African genres, according to African or African-derived norms, either “swing” based (as in Jazz or Blues, partly Reggae), or “straight rhythm”-based (as in e.g. Cuba, south Nigeria, and the Congo).

In the case of the xylophone, though, Europe had – for a welcome change – little to do with the spread from Southeast Asia to Africa: just from the people to the people, each in their own way. The xylophone has been unknown in European traditional music.

Or was it not?

TXALAPARTA

There is perhaps an exception in the Basque Txalaparta instrument, in Northern Spain, SW France. For all intents and purposes, this traditional Basque instruments is a “xylophone”. It consists of several wooden boards (often larger one, and around 6 or 8), differently tuned (though not very precise), and played with twos sticks, usually by two people.

Since some Basque traditions are very old (and some adapted influences from later), this Txalaparta-playing might well predate the arrival of the then “exotic” Xylophone in Germany, in the 16th c..

Even more interestingly, the type of playing has some commonalities with Balafon playing in Africa. “Without knowing it” a Basque musicologist assured (cultural colonial appropriation occurred often, after all, like the English “tea drinking”). Even polyrhythm and call-and –response patterns are shared between Basque Txalaparta and many African balafon traditions, and an overall rhythmic focus, perhaps unusual in wider Europe. The pentatonic scale is likewise – as in Africa – often used.

Only, traditionally no gourds are used as resonators among the Basques (traditionally ,anyway), and rhythmic structures on the Txalaparta are a bit different, less corporal and “hip-oriented”.

Musicologists relate these similarities to an older Neolithic origin, predating the arrival of later Indo-European peoples to Europe (the Basque speak an old, pre-Indo-European language), thus conserving some ancient polyrhythm aspects. Basque music, though, has quite some similarities with Celtic music (in NW Spain, Ireland, and elsewhere), also preserving older aspects, even if Celts result from mixtures with alter Indo-European migrants.

Genetically, the Basques have an ancient European origin (partly shared with some Celts), with hardly a connection to African roots. Even the Moorish period in Spain did not affect the Basques as much as other Spaniards. While also genetically, other Spaniards have overall more “Mediterranean” and “North African” DNA admixture, especially more to the South, so it’s not a “lost African tribe” in Spain, but, probably, shared human developments across the world, and similar inventions, causing the commonalities between Txalaparta and Balafon playing.

Humanity worldwide has as much similarities as differences, and the Basque Txalaparta had – broadly speaking - more or less the same functions (rhythmically) as African Balafons, and also a communal function, but a different one. In Basque culture, the Txalaparta was associated with “cider-making”, or other gatherings. A different climate zone as well, as the wood in Txalaparta tended long to be “chestnut” wood (later metal, recently also rosewood, because of international influences)..

Still.. a type of (wooden) xylophone, played for rhythmic and communal functions, is what the Basque Txalaparta shares with the African Balafons.

The mentioned “spiderweb silk” used in Africa to add a “buzz” to the sound of beaten keys is traditionally also absent from the Txalaparta, as are as said the calabash gourds. The latter is African.

Another thing I did not really know or realize. My small (Senegalese) balafon does not seem to have a strong “buzz”: it sounds bright and nasal (the calabash gourd effect), so I don’t think it has that added spiderweb silk and beewax.

I am not quite sure, and it is hard to check, without dismantling my Balafon too much.

I find it either way qua sound nice enough for compositions, adding a high-pitched, bright “ukulele”-like sound, but warmer, more African.

FINAL CONCLUSION

Now I learned more about the Balafon (I myself used in compositions), that I did not even know, and share this with readers of this post. In some artistic - or perhaps more: “cultural” or “spiritual” - sense I found this knowledge to be useful for me.

AI served me well in this case. I was surprised by the well-written summaries of AI answers to my question: in well-structured “human language” texts. This made me doubt if AI really did not involve human beings, or is there a bunch of writers/editors working behind the screen hired? Really all by machines and artificial?

It certainly added value to what I knew as search engines (like Google), and driven by our own curious questions, AI as an extended search engine could serve all humanity, rich or poor. Information gathering, extending our knowledge.

Rich capitalists, exploiters, money sharks, and even governments, want to go beyond this, I am afraid, drewling at “robot-creating” possibilities, for efficient (read: more profitable) production, creating the “robots” they always wanted, and first tried to make out of us humans. That would be less positive.

As a search engine, Artificial Intelligence, is enough, if it was up to me.

I worked in Leyden until around 2013 (for over 12 years), and went to Leyden a few times since.

Already in the later years after buying the Balafon in that store (near Leyden’;s central, wide Breestraat), I noticed the store had disappeared, noticing this unfortunately during one of my “break walks” in between my intensive “nose in books” library job at the KITLV institute I worked then. “What a pity”, I thought.

Yet, it is in this haphazard way, by chance, even in temporary stalls or stores, I bought many of my especially smaller percussion instruments, over the years.

A nice shaker with Marcus Garvey and pan-African colours on it (I also still use), I bought from a nice, dark-skinned Rastaman at a Cannabis Liberation festival in Amsterdam’s Westerpark, around 2003.

For a period, that typically Amsterdam (the “cool” side of Amsterdam, let’s say), and hippy-vibed festival was held, but stopped some years ago, as cannabis seemed liberated enough?

Other instruments I bought in other “fair trade” shops in the Netherlands, in other stalls in music/Reggae festivals (with e.g. African items) in Amsterdam, Spain, or elsewhere.

That makes my percussion collection all the more unique and personal. It’s not a common “one-big-music-shop” –thing, therefore showing more of original acoustic cultures. My balafon from Senegal is certainly part of that.

Imazigh and Zulu music compared: comparing extreme ends of Africa

I have focussed quite a lot during my life on “African music”. However, this requires specification, a specification I myself avoided to stay open-minded and flexible to learn.

DIASPORA

I specified over time, though. This relates in part to connections within the African Diaspora: the cultural survivals in the Americas. Ghana/Akan retentions in Jamaica, Congo retentions in Cuba, Brazil, Jamaica, and elsewhere, Yoruba retentions in Cuba and Trinidad, Senegambia-Guinea retentions in the US, Fon Ewe/Benin retentions in Haiti, etcetera etcetera.. All this of course living on in Black music genres like Blues, Funk, Reggae, Salsa, Samba, Calypso, Kompa, Merengue, Cumbia, and more.

In reality, in all these former colonies, slaves from different parts of Africa ended up, albeit with different percentages or emphasis.

Apart from the idea of cultural “survival” amid oppression and enslavement/dehumanization, I also liked the resulting cultural expressions that arose in the Caribbean, such as the music, but even beyond that: wider culture, language influences, food, and even spiritual movements, ranging from “nature-, dance-, and spirit-based” – like Vodou, Santería, Kumina – to Christian-based, yet Afro-centric reinterpretations (like Rastafari).

PERCUSSION

Strengthened by my later percussion activities, and by liking Afro-American music genres, I naturally began to study their “roots” in Africa, in Yoruba music, Igbo music, Congo music.. all places where many enslaved Africans in the West came from, leaving thus legacies to differing degrees.

I found that “Diaspora” connection interesting, triggering my interest. Through the Reggae and Rastafari connection, also Ethiopia and its music began to intrigue me, including the fact that big drums there are played usually within the churches.

I kept my mind open, because as a musical artist (as I see myself), I find all music in principle interesting, especially when “real”.. “Real” means here “from the folk”.

Most of my attention (in Africa), though, received “Forest Africa” (incl. Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Congo a.o.), as anthropologist Robert Farris-Thompson described it, historically sources for many slaves, and less influenced by Islam than “Sahel” areas North of it.. more purely African, one can say, strongly percussive, and rhythmically intertwined like – indeed – a forest or jungle, and drums being important. I love that.

Yet.. the whole continent of Africa consists of more, and whether and how it differs also interested me more and more.

NORTH AFRICA

Over time, my interest for North Africa increased, but notably the Berber or (better) Imazigh people, whose culture seemed “pleasantly mysterious”, also as survival amid Arab invasions and dominance. The “Sahara desert setting” also attracted me, for some reason (contrast with “humid” and well-organized Netherlands?).

I heard snippets of Imazigh music, here and there, e.g. among Moroccans in the Netherlands, but the intriguing band Tinariwen, a band of Tuaregs from the Algeria/Mali Sahara dessert, mixing Imazigh music “nuff funky” with modern Western influences, or other African influences, really made me more interested in Tuareg and other Imazigh music. As a percussionist I was also interested in traditional musical instruments.

As the Imazigh mainly remain in Northern Africa, more North West (Morocco, Algeria), but with historical presence also in what is now Egypt, an interesting “other” part of Africa – music-wise – would be totally on the other side: namely the far South East of Africa.

ZULU MUSIC

The Zulu people are a Bantu-speaking people of about 12 million people, being the largest ethnicity in especially Eastern parts of the Republic of South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal).

My interest for them began with the anti-Apartheid struggle in my teens, but especially (when I was older) with the Paul Simon album Graceland. I was then already a Reggae fan, but still liked that Paul Simon album, with its groovy mix of US folk and country “feels” with South African musical vibes. Turns out that the musical influences on the album Graceland were mostly from Zulu music.

Still later, active in percussion, I began to wonder what type of percussion and drums were used in Zulu music. They same thing I asked myself about Imazigh music.

Now it’s time to compare these two extreme ends of Africa: “Zulu land” and “Imazigh land”..

Despite obvious differences while on the same continent, are there similarities, thus connecting truly the entire African continent musically?

IMAZIGH MUSIC

The Imazigh are mostly light(er)-skinned, speaking an Afro-Asiatic (Hamitic) language, and mostly Islamicized and Arab-influenced, but with an own pride and desire for cultural survival.

Fun fact: genetic, DNA research on me (and my mother) showed that most probably about 10% of my DNA (and even more of my Spanish mother’s) connect with Imazigh and even Tuareg (!) people in North Africa. Spain’s history is long and varied, with Mediterranean variety, and including nearby Northern Africa, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Hannibal, and the Moors (many of whom were “Berbers”), besides less documented earlier strait crossings. There is thus even a personal connection in part of my DNA. There is another around 10% “Semitic” DNA in me - this study showed -, it seems too (also explainable). The rest (and most) of my DNA points more predictably at European-based pre-historic peoples like Basques, Veneti/Dinaric (from my NE Italian father’s side), and Celts, but still: I am also originally partly Imazigh/North African, DNA-wise.

This increased my interest, but I had to search a bit, to find specifics on what is Imazigh music (unmixed) really like?, what characterizes it? What percussion do they use?, for instance.

INSTRUMENTS

I soon found out that the Darbuka and Dumbek drums, also known in Northern Africa, are more associated with the Arab and Middle Eastern world. The Bendir frame drum, however, can be associated more with Amazigh culture. The Bendir drum – like a large tambourine without bells, but usually with a string attached to its back -, giving it its resonance – is regularly used as rhythmic time keeper among the various Imazigh groups, despite further differences among them.

Less known, though not absent, are drums of the other kind, like barrel-, goblet-, or bowl-shaped hand drums. The travelling Tuareg people know the Tendé or Tinde drums, made from mortar, with goatskin, interestingly played exclusively by women. Also interesting: it imitates the camel sound, or follow its walking cadence in part.
(see also: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-63684118)

Men play other types of drum too among the Tuareg, though in part borrowed from elsewhere in Africa (the Mande-region “Djembe”, notably).

While speaking an Imazigh (Hamitic) language, the Tuareg over time mixed with Black Africans more to the South, originally slaves and serfs, also influencing of course culture.

On the “upper”, invading side – on the other hand – also the Arab and Islamic Darbuka/Darbuka drums – known to be used in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt - began being used by Imazigh and incorporated.

However, as indicated, the Imazigh – Tuareg and others – have own drums historically. They are less made of wood than in sub-Saharan Africa, due to the desert, Sahara surroundings, and more often of earthenware or mortar.. The goatskin is however a commonality with many other African drums.

A tambourine with bells is also often used in Imazigh music, or in some regions, as are a type of metal castanets, known from Gnawa culture in Southern Morocco. The Gnawa minority descend from (once enslaved) more Southern, dark-skinned Africans, but were influenced by Imazigh/Berbers and Arabs over time. The name “Gnawa” is said to derive from the word for “blacks” in the local Imazigh language (Southern Morocco).

The metal castanets thus can be a Imazigh influence, or – just as probable – a welcome borrowing by Imazigh from the more “polyrhythmic” Gnawa culture.

Crucially, string instruments like a lute, a single-string bow – the latter also played by women -, flutes among some Imazigh groups, and local variations. The northern Kabyle Berbers in Algeria – known as relatively more often “blonde” or European-looking – have a type of mandolin as another string instrument.

CHARACTERISTICS

Don’t let the blonde(r) appearance of some of those Algerian Kabyle Imazigh fool you, though. Kabyle music tends to use several types of drums, besides the “driving” Bendir frame drum and tambourine, and often hand clapping, adding to the syncopation and even aspects of “polyrhythm”. Singing and vocal styles – moreover – often includes typically African call-and-response patterns.

In comparison - after all - to Arab music -, Imazigh music is more polyrhythmic, but differing per region and genre, sometimes being more monorhythmic like Arab/Middle Eastern music.

Whether this is “originally” Imazigh is a bit harder to discern. Especially with nomadic peoples like the Tuareg, and some other more nomadic Imazigh, it was hard to carry along - as nomads - large musical instruments, therefore having to borrow elsewhere, from other cultures, as they travelled along. This is comparable to the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”) in Europe, adopting e.g. the Spanish guitar, or Hungarian fiddle.

Some sub-Saharan African influence on Imazigh musical structures is however certainly proven, in a general sense. Tuareg - and generally Imazigh - more to the South, often mixed racially with sub-Saharan (“Black”) Africans, creating subgroups. Yet, even in Northern Algeria there were once African slaves, and not just – as the Right-wing exaggeration goes – European/Christian ones, though these were there too.. there were even Asian captives as well on the Barbary Coast, as the Algerian Coast was called then. Geographically quite close to Spain.

The best-known European captive in that part of Algeria was by the way a Spaniard: Miguel de Cervantes, who later wrote the famous, innovative Don Quixot novel, and who worked as a slave for a few years in Algeria for a local. Recently (speaking September, 2025) a historical study appeared of this period in Cervantes’ life, in a multiracial environment then (NW Algeria region). Interesting, but I digress from this post’s theme..

Anyway, even Kabyle music in the far North of Algeria (and Africa!) thus could have received sub-Saharan influences.

ZULU MUSIC

Zulu music places large drums more in the forefront, notably the Ngoma (a common Bantu word, also known in e.g. Uganda for drum), being large double-sided drums, and a common one-sided smaller drum (called Isighubu), interrelating with it. This already shows the polyrhythmic intention and structures.

There are further several single-string, musical bows among the Zulu, tending to have semi-melodic functions, such as accompanying storytelling.

Musical bows – with one string - are very common in Southern Africa, also in Angola, as the roots of the Brazilian Berimbau bow. Some assume a deeper origin among the original San/Bushmen population of South Africa, known for their small stature, and languages with “clicks”. Bantus mixed with them, resulting in the Xhosa and Zulu cultures. These Bushmen indeed lived as hunters-gatherers, as many now know because of the “international hit movie ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’.

Vocal and singing patterns in Zulu music are often complex, with interlocking call-and-response but also harmony, adding to a polyrhythmic complexity.

Further, flute and other reed instruments, and later guitars are used in Zulu traditional music. Typically, nonetheless, the drum leads the music, if it’s not only vocal, as in some Zulu genres, with nicely interlocking harmony and polyrhythm, even without instruments. We know that from Paul Simon’s collab with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the song Homeless.

DANCE

It depends on folk music’s function in both cultures (rituals, context), but largely the traditional music of Imazigh and Zulus alike are dance-oriented. As in fact most folk music of the world.

The driving (Bendir-led or otherwise) rhythms in a lot of traditional Imazigh music, - with syncopatic elements, reminding of the “swing” idea – makes a more African, hypnotizing,and natural way of dancing more easy when compared to e.g. Arab music, or a part of European folk music. Dances comparable to belly dancing, and even hip swaying and rotations, are common at Imazigh dances, despite the Islamic inhibitions regarding “suggestive female movements”.

In the Arab world – by the way – belly dancing occurred, but that was done by female slaves, for their owner/master, often also sex slaves. Islam’s sex segregation directive caused that partly.

The more polyrhythmic nature of traditional Zulu music, make even more complex, acrobatic dance patterns, more the norm among the Zulu.

A noteworthy cultural difference – increasing over time – is the gender separation in North Africa, influenced by Islam, even on “dance” events. In Zulu culture (as in most other Bantu cultures) genders mix on many occasions, creating in addition room for vocal variation in male and female voices. Some Imazigh music and singing has this too, but it decreased over time, due to Islamic cultural norms, as mentioned, sex/gender segregation in social spheres. This became over time generally upheld even in “looser” Islamic countries like Morocco and Algeria, though with differing degrees of strictness.

BACK TO DIASPORA AFRICA

Returning mentally to the parts of Africa I have studied the music already of before (Central and West Africa, “forest Africa”) more extensively, I should be able to note parallels and make (hopefully sensible) comparisons.

Feeling the grooves in Imazigh music reminded me of the “swing” aspect in music from the Sahel area: “Griot Africa”, as Robert Farris-Thompson describes it, often Mande-speaking: Senegambia, Guinea, Southern Mali, Northern Ivory Coast, and Northern Ghana.

Indeed also regions that were partly Islamized, and with historical connections with Imazigh people. In parts of Northern Mali the Tuareg Imazigh tend to live and roam, while South Mali is Black African, Mande-speaking, with a rich “Djembe” (and Kora) culture, for instance.

In several parts of Mali, often at marketplaces, there is interaction between different groups of Malinese from North and South, with people like Tuareg (or “men in blue”) and e.g. Bambara people interrelating.

SWING

The “swing” aspect in Mande/Guinea music, stemming from string-instrument like the Kora, mixed with rhythmic notions of syncope, has clearly echoes in Imazigh music.

Also “string-based”, as even without e.g. a lute, the string at the back of the Bendir frame drum – I have one , by the way – has a “stringy”, humming resonance, adding a “swing”, or shuffle, feel, even when the rest is monorhythmic or straight.

When several drums, percussion instruments, or clapping become involved, Imazigh music even becomes to a degree “polyrhythmic”, closer to sub-Saharan African traditions, but with an own accent, and less “multiple independent rhythms” as in “pure” polyrhythm, but hinting at it with strong syncopation.

INTERLOCKING

Predictably, maybe, Zulu traditional music has much similarity with Bantu music, especially in the Southern half of the African continent, tending strongly toward polyrhythm and rhythmic interrelations shaping the movements, “straighter” interlocking rhythms – with a layered groove - and less a string-based “gliding” feel that mostly characterize Imazigh rhythms. The latter nonetheless knows some rhythmic interplay toward syncope, and “swing”, or even flirting with polyrhythm in some genres.

What I found most interesting to conclude from all this, is that Imazigh music is far more “African” than Arab music, despite the Imazigh lighter skin when compared to sub-Saharan Africans -, and even the occurrence of reddish and blond(ish) hair among some Northern Berbers in parts of Algeria and Morocco, though Imazigh/”Berber” genetics (DNA) are mostly non-European. In turn, this Imazigh DNA ended up in parts of Spain, Portugal, and even in parts of Sardinia and Sicily.. and as I already mentioned, also in my South Spanish mother’s DNA, thus also mine.

Perhaps due to long, historical cohabitation on the African continent with Black Africans, adaptation to the natural environment, or perhaps the retention of “free, dance-focused culture” from pre-Islamic times, there are similarities between Imazigh and Zulu musical cultures. Despite the long distance between them.

Call-and-response is used in singing (and instrumentation) by both Amazigh and Zulu (more complex among the latter), and rhythm drives the music, with some “layers”, making percussion and drums crucial in the music, and adding syncopation to monorhythms. This is originally absent from monorhythmic, string-based Arab music, for instance. In some European folk music, something like “syncope” (around the main beats) is present in some folk genres (parts of Flamenco, some Celtic folk genres, parts of Balkan), but “polyrhythm” as such (independent, simultaneous rhythms interlocking), as well as “call-and-response” in the strict sense, are originally absent in European folk music, or in Arab music. That's African.

MAIN CONCLUSION

This I can conclude from this comparison between musical cultures of two indigenous people on extreme ends of Africa (NW Africa/Maghreb, and Eastern South Africa)..

Imazigh are much more culturally African than Arabs, which shows in the music, as well as in the greater role of women in their societies, though this was limited with increased Islamic strictness. The Imazigh identity is, however, still upheld among especially many Moroccans and Algerians as counterpoint to the dominant Arabs (having mixed also with Imazigh) risking a second-class position for the after all original inhabitants the Imazigh, even in (originally) “Imazigh” countries Morocco and Algeria. Many mix that resistance and asserted Imazigh identity, somewhat uneasy with a simultaneous Islamic identity as faith.

That spirit or resistance through identity is also shared with the Zulu in South Africa, after all having been also colonized by Europeans, and later also made second-class citizens and even near-dehumanized in their own country, during the White Apartheid regime (up to 1990).

That spirit gives both their music more “soul”. It also seemed to continue in the more modern “pop” styles that developed later in both areas: Raï in Algeria (Oran) – that received Imazigh influences -, and e.g. the Zulu-influenced Maskandi genre in South Africa, and in the work of several current artists.