As old as..

It is stated by many historical authors that “slavery is as old as organized man”. This sounds quite cynical, if not apologetic by itself. After all, also “rape”, “mass killings”, “discrimination”, “torture”, or more general “violence” and “intimidation” are probably as old as organized man.

The matter of modern-day slavery came more to the fore in recent times when news about the slave trade in African migrants in Libya became known. This reminded many of older practices, of – some said – centuries ago. Their enslavers were Libyan Arabs, although often aided by Black Africans, and slave buyers mostly local Libyans. This reminds indeed of the slave trade of Africans to the Americas, in which several European nations engaged (Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, Netherlands, even Denmark and Zweden, albeit in smaller numbers). Even non-unified territories that would later unite to form Germany and Italy are not “off the hook”; Genoese and Venetians traded in African slaves alongside the Portuguese, while some German kingdoms (like Brandenburg) were active in this African slave trade too. Independent American countries like the US and Brazil continued this African slavery for a period too. Brazil (by then independent from African slavery-pioneers the Portuguese) was the last country formally abolishing slavery, in 1888. Some readers may know all this.

Though these facts are historically correct in broad terms, regarding figures – numbers of slaves transported to the Americas, or of who died along the way -, place/region of origin of enslaved Africans, and some other aspects (e.g. reason for abolition) there is more controversy and discussion. This controversy turned out to be fruitful, and also recent studies increased our knowledge of numbers of African slaves transported, their origin (aided by the discovery of DNA genetics, used in study not before the 1950s), and other – less Eurocentric – perspectives on history. I applaud that.

Well, to some the dehumanizing slave trade of powerless African migrants in Libya reminds of this African Holocaust. I agree that it does.

DENIAL AND EVASION

In the margins of the discussion of this topical issue, there is however still much uneven and untruthful information. Every person interprets the news as he/she wants. This is not unlike the controversy some issues studied regarding colonial slavery of Africans in the Americas. Often, biases and emotions, unspoken yet sensed allegiances/identifications, distort the truth. No European nation likes to have an image of “wicked enslavers of Africans”, even if referring to a closed past. For that reason much distortion or avoidance is found, even in academic circles.

There is a professor in the Netherlands, White and Dutch, who kind of specializes in Dutch slavery studies, called Piet Emmer. He became criticized as apologist of slavery, going against claims of extreme cruelty and human rights violations. Emmer diminishes in his rhetoric the Dutch cruelty or even agency, and similar distortions. These, what were seen as “apologies”, understandably enraged some anti-slavery activists, and led to sensible counter-opinions of other scholars.

Early enslaving nations like Portugal, and a time after that Spain, are more of the “evading tactic”, as slavery of Africans is hardly discussed or studied academically as a theme, neither much by activists. Portugal was even a pioneer in slavery of Black Africans, practicing it long and widely in its extensive colony Brazil for centuries, while providing many African slaves for other states (like Spain). Also in several Spanish colonies, African slavery was common in most of its colonies and here and there even quite structurally present (Cuba, Dominican Republic, parts of Colombia and Venezuela). This slavery history receives some attention in academic circles, though also limited. It even begins to reach the political debate a bit, in both Portugal and Spain, if hesitantly. In Spain, Left-wing opposition party Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias mentioned it in passing during a televised debate about another theme. This is as “relatively much” as new attention for this slavery past in Spain.

Not that the academic or political attention in a country like the Netherlands is better, as the mentioned debate around Piet Emmer (a more general colonial historian) might suggest: there is not anywhere a – not even one - scholar active specifically regarding this part of Dutch colonial history. There is thus evasion here too. Distortion thus combines with denial in different European countries.

ARAB SLAVE TRADE

The slave trade in Libya also brings about another historical parallel, though. Also a matter surrounded with both distortion and denial: the Arab and Islamic slave trade and slavery. Of Africans. Myths, emotions, unspoken allegiances, and biases made many distort this history, again, even in some academic circles, though there is sometimes correction within those circles.

The biases and , let’s say, an unease with this theme – Arab and Islamic slave trade – surround this theme in my opinion. Some are part of what I call “historical Pavlov reactions”. Arabs or Islamicized peoples in Africa are non-Europeans and were colonized too, and are often seen as part of “the coloured peoples of the world” kept back or exploited by Western colonialism.

This is called by some by a French term “Tiersmondisme” – translateable as “Third Worldism” –, with some finding patronizing echoes of Rousseau’s “noble savage” in it, but also of a naïve Orientalism or exoticism.

At the very least, categorizing all non-Europeans as “the coloured peoples” is also Eurocentric, and hopelessly simplifying. Skin tone or ethnic traits are in fact irrelevant, even without the counterargument that many Arabs, Berbers, and Persians have similar features as many people in parts of Southern European countries, like parts of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. There are after all so many differences between cultures world wide, including often within countries and continents.

I think that the fact that Libya is an Islamic country also plays a role with this unease from bias. Islam is a major world religion, like Christianity, likewise spreading and converting – or rather: conquering -, but did not become the emblem of Europe, but outside it: the Middle East, and after that Third World territories. It has therefore a better image among Tiersmondistes, one might say.

However.. do these so-called “Third Worldists” perhaps have a point in this case? Did Islam spread less violently, or imperialistic when compared to Christianity? The answer is difficult.

Important for this post is to stress the role of slavery in the early spread of Islam. According to religious laws, the first Muslims could only enslave non-Muslims, or those refusing to convert. So they did, and in quite large numbers. These included many Black Africans as Islam spread throughout Northern Africa. Sudan, Chad, Cameroun, Ethiopia, and other areas, became “sources” for slaves for Arabs and later Islamicized Berbers or Arab-Berbers too. These included relatively many women for harems, also male domestic servants, and eunuchs.

Castrating male African slaves was quite common, not only for eunuch’s (being after all harem guards), but also for genetic – well, racist – reasons of rulers. Some racial mixture still took place in Islamic areas though. There are Afro-Turks for instance, people with African blood in Iran , as result of this slave trade, while in parts of South Morocco –around the city of Essaouira - there are part-sub-Saharan population groups, such as the Gnawa, with different ethnic and cultural features from other Moroccans. Also, there is a historical community of about 2 million Afro-Iraqi’s (mainly around Basra), as a result of the Arab slave trade.

UNPLEASANT TRUTH?

This may be an unpleasant truth to Islam adherents who connect with Black Africa – the US-based Nation of Islam for instance -, Islamic Black Africans, or those supposed “Tiersmondistes” among liberal white people.

Moreover, its legacies continue in the present times in several Islamic countries. Until recent decades (after 1950), a country like Mauritania had at least 10% of its population living as enslaved workers, generationally passed. These were generally the people with more sub-Saharan African blood in them, enslaved by lighter-skinned Arab-Berber groups. In 1956 it was outlawed officially, but continued for decades after it.

The treatment of African workers, from Ethiopia or Somalia for instance, in wealthy oil states like Saudi Arabia, Quwait, and Qatar includes abuse and situations of semi-slavery too. Racial discrimination of the darker “Gnawa” people is also still a social problem in Morocco, as well as of “darker” Africans in Egypt or Sudan, where many prefer to uphold an “Arab” national identity.

All unpleasant truths for some, but I prefer historical veracity, over distorting the truth for ideological reasons, or vague emotional preferences and identifications.

MOORISH IBERIA

Such distortions are quite common, also regarding other historical epochs. Especially interesting is, I think, in this regard the discussion of slavery in Islamic Iberia: the period between the 8th and 15th c. when large parts of Spain and Portugal were under Moorish, Islamic rule.

This followed on the spread of Islam in North Africa, and by then included many Berbers alongside Arabs and other people. Arabs were highest in the hierarchy, but many soldiers in Spain and Portugal were Berbers or mixed.

Simple and plain: I find that quite some nonsense has been written about this historical epoch, though to varying degrees. The Islamic Moorish society brought several innovations (like paper, related to agriculture, architecture a.o.) to Iberia, and was relatively advanced and “modern” for the time. It was, however, also an unequal society.

I am aware that Internet is a source of ideology, bias, interests, fake news, and is not a reliable scholarly resource. Not unfiltered, anyway.

Yet, even a more “serious” website like Wikipedia includes some strange biases regarding Moorish Iberia (though of course by contributors, not by Wikipedia itself). More impartial historians (Iberian and outsiders) have studied the area, describing how there was slavery by the Moors in Spain and Portugal, that included relatively many Black Africans, like in North Africa, alongside slaves of other origins.

There was a hierarchy in Moorish Iberia: Arabs on top, Berbers below them, and converted local people, and Africans at the bottom as servants and slaves (along with slaves of other races in lesser proportions). Non-Muslims (Christians and Jews) were further second-class citizens, having also to pay special taxes, perhaps a reason why early Islamic rulers did not always convert them immediately (though this remained a goal).

The two photos above I took in the mid-1990s, and are of the Alhambra (Moorish) palace in Granada, Spain. This was said to have been built by Christian slaves.

Within all this, there was not always a sharp distinction – must be said, and there was occasional flexibility. Some “darker-skinned” Muslims could reach an higher position, and so did some converted Muslims of local origins (for instance Galician, Basque, Castilian, Valencian or Basque) , such as as kings of certain kingdoms, called Taifa’s. Racial and ethnic mixture was also quite common, with resulting changes of social position.

Overall, however, the Arab image of the Black African as slave and servant, was noticeable in the general social structure of Moorish Spain and Portugal. The name of a documentary I once encountered: “The Moors in Spain: when Blacks ruled Spain” is therefore somewhat, well, mistaken, or distorted.

TIDIANE N’DIAYE

Some authors go further. Tidiane N’Diaye is a French-Senegalese economist and anthropologist who wrote about the Arab slave trade in his work ‘Le genocide voilé’ (‘The veiled genocide’), first published in 2008. N’Diaye was indeed kind of groundbreaking regarding this taboo matter of Muslims enslaving Africans. His work was largely based on historical facts, and could therefore hardly be reasonably disputed.

With such an emotional theme, that includes a sensed, by now multiracial identification – Islam –of course this book has come under close scrutiny. Quite some predictable apologist nonsense by pro-Arab and pro-Muslim critics, who couldn’t bothered to be impartial, and some more sensible critique the work has received, but the main historical facts remain there. Perhaps, like all authors, even scholarly ones, N’Diaye, might have some blind spots, but overall it was a balanced work, with the historical facts on its side.

N’Diaye and other authors – and current reports – confirm moreover the continued – but hidden - existence of slavery or semi-slavery in the Islamic and Arab world, often also of African people, even before the world heard about the slave trade in African migrants in Libya. Many relate this to the continued existence of racist views toward Blacks and Africans in many Arab and Muslim countries. Racism dehumanizes by definition, demeaning those affected to subservient, inferior roles in society. Human history more than proved this.

Some other intellectuals and authors were neither afraid to discuss the matter of the Arab slave trade openly. One difference is maybe that N’Diaye came himself from a (Senegalese) Muslim background.

MARCUS GARVEY Jr.

Marcus Garvey jr. is one of the sons of the early Jamaican Black Power advocate Marcus Mosiah Garvey. He continues his father’s work and movement more or less; promoting Black and African self-respect and pride, against the historical and continued White and western colonial denigration and discrimination, keeping Black people in inferior positions. To this Black empowerment agenda – or as part of it -, he added attention also to what has been done to Africans, not just by the British, French, Portuguese etcetera, but also by the Arabs. This lecture – based on written material and scholarly sources – is to be found on YouTube, and is more about “facts” than anything else: hardly any “activist” or biased distortions.

NED SUBLETTE

Also, in works on overall other themes the issue is discussed without fear. This is the case in the work ‘Cuba and its music: from the first drums to the mambo’ (2004), by Ned Sublette (who is also a musician). I referred to this work in other blog posts of mine, then in relation to cultural or musical issues. Yet, it has a general historical introduction.

That the author Sublette discusses the Arab slave trade in a book about Cuban music is not so strange. This relates to Spain’s Moorish, Islamic past, just prior its colonial ventures. Cuba was of course a Spanish colony, and the colonizing Spaniards were just recently under Islamic influence. This would feed partly into Cuban music, along with several influences from sub-Saharan Africans imported as slaves into Cuba.

Sublette looks from a musical perspective, and as part of that discusses the fact that many Arabs enslaved Africans, of whom many served also as musicians (and as prostitutes, domestic servants, workers and otherwise of course) in the Arab and Islamic world. He argues that with that inevitably traditional Arab music became more “rhythmical” and here and there even polyrhythmic, bringing that influence also to Spain and eventually Spanish music, and from that to other parts of Europe. Some Spanish folk music genres, like Fandango, Flamenco and Jota, are indeed relatively rhythmic (for European standards, at least). This can have other causes too, of course (earlier African migrations, colonial influences coming back to Spain etcetera), but Sublette examines all possible cultural relations.

Specifically about this Arab slave trade, anyway, Sublette even argues in this work that historically the Black African as “slave” was first “framed” in the minds as such by Arabs and early Muslims, even before the Portuguese.

He, and other authors, even go so far as to argue that the Iberians – at first the Portuguese – got the idea of “Blacks as (natural) slaves” during their Moorish period, from the Moors, and indirectly thus from Arab enslavement of Africans. Arabs and other Muslims not only enslaved Africans, but seemed to have a relative preference for them. This racist idea then would shape the Portuguese slave trade, and after that the African slavery in Portuguese and Spanish colonies. The British and Dutch (and others) later expanded and modernized plantation-based slavery in the West (the Americas), etcetera etcetera.

COPIED?

It is quite plausible, but on the other hand a bit too simple, perhaps. One can “copy” or adopt” practices of others by one’s own choosing. Those practices that fits one’s interests and prejudices are then copied, others not. It is documented that racist stereotypes - e.g. as supposed animal-like - of Black Africans existed for a long time in the Arab world. It is however likewise documented that such negative stereotypes existed in Europe before colonialism. Even in places where actual Africans were at that time hardly seen (Northern France, Northern Italy, Germany, Britain, Eastern Europe etcetera).

Broadly said, anyway, it can be impartially concluded that the seafaring Portuguese, Genoese, and soon after other Europeans, were influenced in trading in preferably Black Africans by earlier examples by the Arabs, when Islam “conquered” parts of Africa. This can hardly be denied, but does of course not rid the Europeans from own responsibility.

The current unfortunate reviving of slave trade of Black Africans by Lybians with an Arab identification is therefore “nothing new”, but because of that extra tragic. Not just that slavery still exists is a scandal, but that specifically Africans are targeted (including racial motivations) makes it extra painfully reminiscent, rendering it a sad “continuity” .

POINT?

With this essay I do not want to say –even if it might seem this way – that not only Europeans traded in African slaves, but also Arabs. Neither is it solely a “diss” of Islam, to use modern speak. That is not my main point. My main point is that I call for open recognition and excuses to sub-Saharan Africans populations. By both European states as Arab states, and others involved (in the Muslim world). Beyond stated excuses, even reparation is not out of the question in my opinion, especially in light of the relative wealthy that certain European countries and Arab countries nowadays are, when compared to most African countries. While it is true that Africans participated – some would say: collaborated – with this enslavement, this still seems just.

RECOGNITION

At the very least “open recognition” of these dark pages in history as severe human rights abuses and dehumanization, and factual genocide, seems to me nothing more than reasonable and just.

Persisting racism in several Islamic countries, as well as in Europe and North America, and among White Latin Americans, also relates to this denial, I think.

In the Netherlands, for instance, Black inhabitants object for some time now against the folk festivity (when children receive gifts) of Sinterklaas, taking place every 5th of December. As part of this folk tradition, Sinterklaas has traditionally Black helpers/servants, with White people wearing blackface and dressing up for the occasion. Some of these still put on fake Black people’s (e.g Surinamese or Curaçaoan) accents, making it even more offensive and, well, racist. Recognizing the dark epoch of African slavery also part of Dutch colonial history, really openly recognizing it, might help White Dutch people understand the sensibilities and argumentation of Black inhabitants of the same country, feeling demeaned by Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete” as these Blackface servant is popularily known).

Likewise and more broadly, this open recognition and knowledge about it, might limit negative stereotypes about Blacks still existing more generally throughout Europe. More blatantly known in parts of Eastern Europe, but certainly also present among some Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Britons, Germans, Belgians, Dutch, or Scandinavian people.

The greatest misconception is, I think, that this making excuses about the enslavement of Africans would taint the image of the national identity. I am Dutch and can only be good, also historically is a strange, disturbed, and megalomaniac way of viewing the world. It is found among other Europeans as well, and is caused by an irrational identification with a country and one’s known national origins.

Of course, each nation and culture or even religion (though I personally am not a believer in such large-scale, politically dominant World religions like Islam or Christianity) has an interesting history, with intriguing aspects, teaching potentially all humanity about human development, power play, human interaction, civilizations, and cultural mixture and change.. That is what makes travelling to and visiting other places interesting for many: differences in culture and history.

The way Dutch “handled” water is for instance interesting globally – and still outstanding today -, and likewise the interesting interplay between Celtic, Roman and other cultures in what would become France, Germanic, Celtic, Roman interplays in historical Britain, or the broad Mediterranean, Moorish, Roman and other historical influences that shaped a country like Spain. Also, Arab and Islamic history has interesting aspects, that even helped shape broader human history (e.g. influencing Europe through Spain, but reaching also all the way to Indonesia)..

Recognizing the wrongs committed as part of that same history – e.g. affecting another group - only shows the continuous dynamic of an open, educational, and humanitarian zeal, also present within those countries or cultures/religions. It would not taint their image, but rather improve it.

Moreover: knowing and recognizing history helps to avoid repeating the wrongs..

RACIALIZATION

Maybe the misinterpretation - mixed up, as Bob Marley sang on Stiff Necked Fools - “with vane imagination”, is that when some proud (patriotic) Portuguese, Englishmen, or Arabs hear “your people once enslaved Africans”, they hear more than what is said. They understand that “your people/nation is the “kind of” people that owned African slaves”. This is hardly the main message, since – as I said at the start of this essay: “slavery is as old as organized man” (not just “some kind” of man).

Despite this, it certainly can be argued that Arabs and Muslims began partly “racializing” slavery, even if they had slaves from different races (also European ones, but proportionally less than Black African ones), toward an association with Black Africans. This racialization was taken to even more extremes by European colonizers later, with the Portuguese and British having and trading in numerically the most African slaves overall up to and into the 19th c.. across the Atlantic. The total number of enslaved Africans that Arabs and other Muslims transported, before that, is however not much lower than that by Europeans to the Americas.

From this perspective, the current practices of slave trade in Africans in Libya – often also by criminals – beyond being just incidental, does in fact follow a cruel historical pattern. I see no sense in denying this.

Celebrating Africa

The Rototom Sunsplash festival - a Reggae festival - took place in Benicasim, Spain in August 2017 (so this year) again. For the seventh consecutive time after the Rototom festival moved from Northern Italy to Eastern Spain (Benicàssim in Valencian spelling, province of Castellón). I did not go this year but went the very first time it was held in Spain, in 2010. I wrote about it on this blog. It was a great experience for me then: music-wise and otherwise. The festival had a great line up in 2010, including Pablo Moses, Anthony B, Bushman, Bob Andy, the Abyssinians, Romain Virgo and others. “Older” and “newer” reggae artists combined. I stayed in a nice, relatively cheap hotel in the small town of Benicasim, avoiding thus my hesitation about “camping” among strangers. A hesitation that might have been exaggerated or unjustified, but I enjoyed the time in the comfortable hotel, with a nice fruit stand nearby. I only had to walk a bit more to the festival terrain than those on the camping. That it was in my maternal roots land (or “motherland”) of which I also spoke the language, was another nice detail.

Benicasim was furthermore located in a Mediterranean atmosphere and varied landscape, which I found pleasant. The festival terrain was orderly and well-organized, but with much open space, which one notices more as it was very hot (few trees for shade). Some days I walked to the festival terrain at 40 or 41 degrees celsius. Many of the visitors seemed to avoid the festival terrain with those temperatures. I was used to that from earlier vacations in Andalusia (including family visits), and maybe, who knows, somehow my Spanish genes (from the relatively warm South West of Spain), from my mother’s side, made me a bit more resilient. The visitors were as I remember okay, and the atmosphere was relaxed, even though groups seemed divided according to nationality. I imagined because of language barriers – or occasional disdain – between relatively numerous Italian and Spanish and others, like Northern European, visitors, but this showed more in distant rather than in aggressive behaviour.

THEME

Anyway, I remember great music concerts, the atmosphere, the stands, the heat, the natural surroundings, as well as debates at a Reggae University at the festival, interviews with artists.. I do not recall, though, if there was a “theme” of the festival. This latest, 2017 Rototom Sunsplash festival edition had, after all, a theme, namely “Celebrating Africa”. Possibly also because of the performing artists, including African artists like Seun Kuti (son of..), Youssou N’Dour, and other specific events or debates. "Celebrating Africa" seems a very interesting theme.

It also makes sense, and in what ways is what I aim to discuss in this post.

REGGAE AND AFRICA

The connections of Reggae with “Africa” are of course multifold. Reggae is created on Jamaica among people of African descent, under strong cultural African influences. That is self-evident. Reggae with its musical characteristics by itself celebrates Africa. The “celebrating” is thus a practical expression in culture, but soon became likewise manifested in Reggae’s lyrics, especially when the Rastafari movement influenced Reggae more since the early 1970s. With Marcus Garvey and Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia as central figures, and repatriation to Africa as goal, the Rastafari movement certainly focussed on Africa. Afrocentric also in the most literal sense.

IRONIES?

Yet.. there are some contradictions and issues here. Or “ironies”. The fact that one of the biggest Reggae festivals in “Europe” celebrates Africa is the least of these. Reggae is Afro-Jamaican music - created by descendants of slaves - that has “gone international” for a long time, being earlier successful in Britain. Both Britain and Spain have colonial and/or slavery pasts, as do France, the Netherlands, or other countries with Reggae festivals. Though of a 100% Italian (Genoese) background, Christopher Columbus started the whole colonial enterprise in the name of Spain, and became a naturalized Spaniard for his claimed efforts (“discovering” – not really, people already lived there -, but really “claiming” territories in the Americas for Spain). Some Caribbean schools taught that Columbus was a Spaniard (a Man from Spain), but he was as said not originally (but from Genoa, now Italy), and lived before Spain years in Portugal (according to some sources enslaving in that period Africans with the Portuguese on ships).

Of course, Columbus is criticized in Reggae lyrics as an early and wicked, Babylonian enslaver and colonizer. Yet, if a Reggae Festival in Spain is ironic, it also would be in Britain (building its wealth and cities largely on slavery and its empire, and more economically effective than Spain, where colonial wealth remained more within certain families), or Italy, whose Fascist leader also Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the 1930s, when Selassie was in power, accompanied by racist propaganda. We are well beyond this irony by now, and times have largely changed. Reggae has fans throughout and among different races and on different continents, including Europe, with Britain, France, Germany, and Italy being especially large reggae markets there.

Reggae at least broadened the consciousness about Africa, and Black people’s struggles, among white reggae fans in Europe. This as part of it spreading Rastafari messages. Organic, something which the beauty of art facilitates, more easily and accessible than an academic study. That is true.

LYRICS AND RASTAFARI

A difficulty with this is, however, that Africa functions often mainly symbolically in Reggae lyrics; as the homeland, the Zion one should return to, escaping the oppression and poverty in Western Babylon (Jamaica, Europe, US a.o.). The desired homeland – the promised land - in its stead is specifically Ethiopia, but in many Reggae lyrics broadened to Africa in general. Actual knowledge about the African continent in the present, recent political and economic developments for instance, is not ignored, but at times take second place to the symbolic, the spiritual, and the “promise”. That is understandable and human. Perhaps even necessary, for a tree cannot live without its roots.

Politics and economics are corrupted and artificial, mostly Western-influenced, aspects in Africa. The Rastafari adherents can therefore be forgiven when they do not pay too much attention to that, although some do. The question whether, say, democracy can increase in present-day African societies seems outside the realm of a spiritual movement, although several Rastafari thinkers have discussed this socio-political matter (Mutabaruka, and in several Reggae lyrics).

A bit more contradictory is the approach toward African culture as such, at least within much of the Rastafari movement. Not just Rastafari, but also other Black Power movements in the West have this problem. The Nation of Islam associated the Islam with Africa, yet does not plea for repatriation to the motherland, neither has Africa the same symbolic function as it has for Rastafari. Islam is of course no more African than Christianity, but Christianity is of course used by European colonialism and enslavement against Africans.

Rastafari is more Christian and Biblical influenced, more specifically Protestant influenced, which is simply neither African. The Bible is known as Middle Eastern and, probably, relatively more African than European, and Rastafari “reread” it from an African perspective, but still..

CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, AND AFRICA

What is lost largely in all this is the original African folk culture. Spirit beliefs apparently lacked the “sense of purpose” for some Black Power and Pride movements, instead drawing in their own way from main world religions or even other ideologies (e.g. Marxist influences some suppose on the Black Panther Movement).

Christianity in its later European form (Catholicism and Protestantism) was and is mostly a negative, invasive force in Africa, as is the Islam. The latter a bit more subtly and gradually. As the Islam spread from Arabia since the 7th c. AD, it soon reached Northern Africa and after that territories South of it. It also reached large parts of Spain and Portugal, where locals also converted. While Islam was in all these cases an invading force (Africa, Iberia, Asia) many local inhabitants chose to convert, at least in part. Some scholars relate this to the ease of conversion (clear, practical rituals), also for illiterates, when compared to e.g. (real) Christianity. Islam spread, anyway, throughout parts of Africa.

Within Africa, the Sahel and Mande-speaking areas (Guinea, Mali, Senegambia, Northern Ivory Coast a.a.) in time converted to Islam, as did Somalia and parts of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya. Ethiopia had an older, indigenous (non-European!) Christian tradition before this, along with some Animist traditions. Such Animist or “spirit belief” traditions were prevalent elsewhere in Africa too where Islam came, often replacing it, but partly also mixing with it, resulting in an own, distinctly African interpretation of the Islam in Mali, Guinea, and Senegal. In a book I recently read, the author pointed also at the different practicing of the Islam in Ethiopia and Eritrea (practiced freer), differing from its stricter interpretation in Arab-influenced Sudan, where Islamic fundamentalism has risen, increasing tensions between Islamic Sudan and neighbouring Eritrea and Ethiopia, that also have a largely Christian population, besides Muslims.

The Arab slave trade historically affected many Black Africans, since the Islam came to Africa after the 7th c. AD. Many, many Black Africans: over millions, became enslaved by (Arab and Berber) Muslims, legitimized by an upheld rule that non-Muslims could be enslaved by Muslims. Many of these sub-Saharan Africans were women and men, brought to the Middle East and Northern Africa (and European areas under Islamic rule like Spain, Portugal or Sicily). More women than men, historians point out, and part of the men were (castrated) eunuchs, guarding harems. Dehumanization, racism, and cruelty.

In Islamic-ruled areas in the Middle East and South Asia (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, India) there are as a result now minorities of partly African descent, such as the little known group the “Afro-Turks”. Mostly the result of Arab and Islamic slave trade – including also many deaths on the way -, predating the more organized European ones. Some historians even claim that the presence of Black African slaves among the Moors in Spain and Portugal, gave the Portuguese and Spaniards the idea of the later Atlantic slave trade. This is not a popular statement, as the Moorish period in Spain was also relatively “advanced”. It also contradicts the simplistic idea among some so-called Afrocentric thinkers that the Moors were Africans teaching medieval Europeans civilization.

In light of all this, “celebrating” Africa through the Islam is nonsense. Christianity has a longer history in Ethiopia than most of Europe, and the Rastafari’s use of it can perhaps be seen as a “reclaiming”, beyond European wicked lies and historical falsification with colonialism, that also knew dehumanization, racism, and cruelty only more intense and concentrated in time (millions were enslaved and brought to the Americas, or died as part of it).

There are still some difficulties with this, though. “Animist” aspects from traditional African spirit possession beliefs, that most slaves brought to the Americas, have been eschewed by early Rastas, claiming these to be “devilish”. A clear Protestant, European influence. White and other missionaries from evangelical and other Protestant groups active in Africa right now, do the same with present-day spirit cults in Africa. That is not “celebrating” Africa, that is destroying its original culture. This is then replaced by a European-minded Christianity.

Elsewhere Black Africans are indoctrinated nowadays more and more by an Arab-minded Islam, such as among the Hausa in Nigeria, Senegal and elsewhere, and also in Sudan. South Sudan is a new country, mainly Christian, made up of Black African people, but the remaining Islamic country Sudan has a population that is actually mixed African and Arab, yet sees itself as Arab. A type of racism connected to a religious sense of superiority. The same occurs in Egypt, where it occurs that people deny their African roots – even if having certain physical features reminding of it (Black African instead of Arab-Mediterranean, let’s say). Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (1970-1981) had to continue this denial, as racist Arabs attacked his African features. That is also the opposite of celebrating Africa.

REGGAE

Reggae, though, is mostly influenced by Rastafari. Not all Reggae artists are Rastafari-adherents of course, and not all Rastafari adherents are connected to Reggae. They are separate domains, yet the influence and connection is there. Many Reggae lyrics still point at African spirit possession lyrics, and mostly in a negative light (Obeah and Vodou are portrayed often as trickery by wicked and bad-minded people), although the Yoruba deity Shango – found in spirit possession traditions comparable to Vodou, such as Santería in Cuba - has a positive meaning among some. As a sign of African strength. Shango is a nickname of Rastafari-adhering Reggae artist Capleton. One of these contradictions.

BACK TO ROTOTOM

The 2017 edition of the Rototom Reggae Sundance festival included as said African artists, and many bigger and smaller events (also films, workshops) focussed on Africa. Too much to mention, but the Rototom website gives a total overview here (https://rototomsunsplash.com/line-up/). Acts/concerts on the main stage included Seun Kuti (son of Fela), Alpha Blondy, Nkulee Dubé (daughter of South African reggae artist Lucky Dubé, who is now deceased), and Youssou N’Dour, so stepping also outside of a strictly reggae focus.

Besides this, the line-up included mostly Reggae artists, mostly from Jamaica, as is after all the focus of Rototom Sundance. I do not get the considerations determining why some go on the “main” stage, while equally great artists to the “lion stage” (with live band, or not?), but that is another issue.

INNA DE YARD

Interestingly, there was this year an acoustic set, based on the Jamaican Inna de Yard series, with Nyabinghi-based, percussive songs by Rastafari-adhering Roots Reggae artists, now in a Nyabinghi, acoustic style. I saw the stream of Inna de Yard this year on the Internet and I loved it a lot. I really wished I was there. People who I spoke later, and actually went, confirmed that it was indeed great and magical at that concert, including Roots Reggae veterans like Cedric Myton, Kiddus I, and Winston McAnuff. Real, spiritual music.

The presenter – herself from Africa (Equatorial Guinea, Nguni/Kombe-speaking), and Spanish-speaking – introducing this concert, pointed out that Inna De Yard’s Nyabinghi-influenced music came closer to African folk music, such as from where she is from. That is true.

NYABINGHI

Again, there are some difficulties here, without wanting to nitpick. I know something about Nyabinghi (sometimes spelled as Nyahbinghi), and even played it with a group several times. Besides this I am also a broader percussionist, with interest in African and Afro-Cuban music. From what I learned and can deduce, Nyabinghi is indeed African-based folk music, practically in all its principles, drawing on Afro-Jamaican percussion traditions, notably Burru and Kumina, while later the music of Babatunde Olatunji (an internationally known Yoruba Nigerian musician and percussionist) influenced some Nyabinghi players.

Nyabinghi patterns indeed are strictly African in origin: including the role of the “heart beat” (one-two) bass drum, and the varying, higher-pitched drum patterns (on the “repeater” drum) crossing it.

Yet, due to the rejection of spirit possession by perhaps not all, but many early Rastas, this drum-based music obtained another function within Rastafari that is nonetheless spiritual and aimed at “grounding” . The singing/chanting with the drumming is for many just as important. The lyrics of these Rastafari songs often show a Biblical influence, and some songs are even melodically derived from Church or Gospel songs in Christian traditions, albeit with lyrical alterations.

Nyabinghi is thus somehow a “spiritual gathering”, with even perhaps magical qualities, but the singing and drumming patterns are not meant to invoke spirits “mounting” and taking over persons. This is the case in traditions like Vodou, Santería, Winti, Kumina, Shango in Trinidad in Jamaica itself, all directly derived from spirit cults for a long traditional in Africa among the Yoruba, Fon, Congo, Coromantee and other peoples. Each “spirit” has own characteristics and purposes, and therefore own rhythmic structures to invoke them. Thus a complex structure of rhythms developed in e.g. Vodou and Santería.

By comparison, Nyabinghi is rhythmically “simplified”, also in the musical “polyrythmic” sense. Much of traditional sub-Saharan music (spiritual or not) is characterized by multiple (more than two) rhythms played at the same time (thus: polyrhythms), interestingly interlocking around an implicit or explicit key (clave) pattern.

This call-and-answer principle, and polyrhythm as such, is certainly also there in Nyabinghi, mostly through the repeater drum “crossing” the heart beat base rhythm with varying, free patterns, but more limited.

Still, Nyabinghi is so much based on African musical principles – if simplified - that it is true that it “celebrates Africa”, not just through its Rastafari-inspired, Africa-focussed lyrics, but also musically. In addition, it is more pan-African than other traditions (more confined to specific ethnic groups, e.g. the Yoruba), as it combines percussive traditions from different parts of Africa: the kete drums are from Ghanaian/Fante-speaking-influenced Burru, while the “heart beat” comes from Congo-based Kumina, while there are also other (Yoruba) influences. The Afro-Jamaican and Rastafari Nyabinghi therefore certainly fitted the Rototom Festival’s 2017 theme very well.

The other acts – popular music with more modern, Western influences – still played Reggae, a Black music genre with evident African musical characteristics, combined with a European “chord” or harmony structure. African music knows “harmony” too, only not through chord schemes as such. Africa is still there defining the music and making it what it is. This was in that sense also celebrated.

For that reason, I found “celebrating Africa” to be a well-chosen theme for the festival, even if partly self-evident. Not just that it fits, but it takes a positive moral stance (“celebrating”) about a continent, that is still largely ignored and abused in these times: Africa. Media attention to Africa is still limited when compared to other parts of the world. When there is attention in current media, it is often limited and biased, with few complex nuances.

WORLD AND MEDIA ATTENTION

This creates the odd situation that even self-proclaimed (Black!) Rastafari-adherents object more about Palestina, US Middle Eastern policies, or Donald Trump, than about what happens in Africa, even if even more people die and suffer. Many Rastas might not know much about the world’s newest country South Sudan, or other conflicts, such as in the Central African Republic (some do).

Apartheid in South Africa made Reggae artists also justly focus on it periodically, but that was one part of Africa, and just for a period.

Not all Rastas can be blamed too much for this, though. That is how it is in the present-day world. This relates to recent Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorism, getting media and political attention world-wide. Many countries after the US jumped on that “Islam danger” bandwagon.

Do not get me wrong, there are tendencies that I call “Fascist” within Islam, especially its Fundamentalist, politicized and terrorist off-shoots. The line of reasoning among Osama Bin Laden and IS reminds me of the rise of Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler to power: violence, intimidation, denying rights, dehumanization, celebrating death and killing, machismo, intolerance of digression, collectivism..

On a side note: when I compared some interpretations of Islam as Fascist, some of my friends (with close Muslim friends, but maybe I have these too, what do they know) objected: Islam is peace, IS has been invented by the FBI, etcetera. A bit too simplistic in my opinion, but I only referred to specific “interpretations” of the Islam. Besides, I think I know what Fascism is: my Italian father was a child during the late chaotic stage of Fascism in (Northern) Italy but heard stories from his older family members. The term “fascism” is invented in Italy, by Benito Mussolini.

On the other hand, my Spanish mother lived – according to herself: “suffered under” – a Fascist(-like) regime in Spain, that of General Franco, reigning until 1975. Especially when she wanted to have fun and explore life as a youth, and in her late teens, when she had to look for a job to support (as one of the older siblings) her large and poor family, she felt the oppression and dehumanization herself (employers could exploit and abuse – or fire - workers quite freely in Spain back then), and noticed other flaws in Spanish society shaped by the unfreedom of dictatorship, denied rights, gender and class inequality, censorship, poor education, and poverty. Cynically, the Catholic Church was a conservative force largely siding with this semi-Fascist regime of Franco (my mother called it Fascist, not just semi-Fascist, haha).

Despite similar - and in my opinion comparable - tendencies also within Islam, I of course know that many Muslims, however, just find solace and direction in Islam for themselves, a perhaps conservative but in itself now peaceful religion, like other ones. Some even do good with their faith, helping less fortunate people, like some Christians, e.g. Catholic family members of mine giving food away - spontaneously - to even poorer families in the village. Some Muslims do that too, caring for their fellow human beings. Some misuse a religion like Islam for other, wicked goals: just like Christopher Columbus called himself a Catholic.

Anyway, all this attention to Islam takes attention away from poorer parts of the world, including in Africa. The average television watcher in Europe, Asia, and the Americas knows more about what goes on in Syria right now (or even in now non-war areas in the Middle East, like Afghanistan or Iran) than about what is happening in South Sudan, Mali, Sierra Leone, Kenya, or the Central African Republic. It’s a pity.

17th OF AUGUST

While the Rototom Festival was still going on in 2017, some wicked murderers, or Islamic terrorists as you can also consider them, killed and wounded dozens of people in the city of Barcelona, Spain. This was exactly on the 17th of August: which should be known only as Marcus Garvey Day (born on that date), in reggae and Rastafari circles, or even among all Black people. Marcus Garvey was a Black Power pioneer, influencing in time Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as well as African independence fighters like Kwame Nkrumah.

Barcelona is not too far from Benicasim, about 267 kilometers to the north. Benicasim is however closer 86 km away) to the city of Valencia - with about 800.000 inhabitants - in Spain (in a region named after this city, and not in Catalonia, that borders to the north).. The perpetrators in Barcelona were Spain-residing Moroccans, who knew they would get media attention, and most international media fulfilled their wish, with predictable background news items with “life stories” of the young terrorists: how they grew up, where.. etcetera etcetera. Killing people apparently makes one more fascinating, or so it seems.. The victims apparently are too boring, on the other hand. They had no “action” and therefore get less attention, hereby almost copying Mussolini’s Fascist world-view.

Unfortunately, the Barcelona attacks by Islamic terrorists, the 17th of August of 2017, has become on a smaller scale exemplary of a recurring pattern: Islamic terror stole and steals lives away – always sad – but at the same time also attention away from Africa and Africans.

Therefore, let’s indeed remember and “celebrate Africa”, but also learn about it..