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.

Twee boekrecensies in één: Hans Kaldenbach en Paulien Cornelisse

‘Doe maar gewoon: 99 tips voor het omgaan met Nederlanders’ is een boek(je) geschreven door “intercultureel adviseur” Hans Kaldenbach, eerst geschreven in 1994.

De titel suggereert een soort inleiding voor nieuwkomers, hoewel het dan mogelijk voor sommigen vertaald moet worden. Hij refereert ook naar Marokkanen, Turken, en Surinamers, en de verschillen tussen hun culturen en de Nederlandse, en wat in Nederland gebruikelijk is.

Inderdaad waren dat in 1994 (bij schrijven) al de grootste migrantengroepen in Nederland, maar het geldt uiteraard voor alle mensen van buitenlandse origine, zo te lezen. Uit Kaldenbach’s vergelijkingen lijkt hij vooral de wat exotischer buitenlander voor ogen te hebben, niet direct omliggende “Germaanse” landen, met veel meer culturele overeenkomsten (of we nu willen of niet).

Dit via 99 “tips” die eerder als thematische uitleglemma’s kunnen worden gezien.

Een klein boekske op zich, van 53 pagina’s.

PAULIEN CORNELISSE

Een ander boek dat ik al eerder had gelezen, werd geschreven door Paulien Cornelisse, en is mogelijk wat bekender: 'Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding’, eerst geschreven in 2009, dus een tijdje later.

Het boek van Paulien Cornelisse is wat dikker dan Kaldenbach’s boek, met zo’n 229 pagina’s, en zelfs een heus register.

Ook hier: verschillende subonderwerpen/lemma’s, maar dan rond taalverschijnselen en –trends - in het moderne Nederlands.

Het boekje van Kaldenbach gaat dus over de Nederlandse “cultuur” (voor buitenlanders uitgelegd), en dat van Cornelisse over de Nederlandse “taal”.

Dat lijken twee verschillende dingen, maar uit studie van de antropologie blijkt dat in historische zin cultuur – en verschil erin - begon met taal, betekenis ontlenen via (eigen, nieuwe) metaforen. Het legt ook het praktische vast via symboliek.

Toen ik een keer de antropologie bestudeerde was dat gegeven, dat culturen met taal beginnen, iets wat ik niet wist, maar eigenlijk ook weer wel. Verhelderend, in ieder geval.

HANS KALDENBACH

Hans Kaldenbach beschrijft in ‘Doe maar gewoon’ Nederlandse gewoonten zoals op tijd komen – de klok wordt strak aangehouden – en andere haast clichématige zaken, die we wel vaker gehoord hebben, maar meestal ook wel (deels) ware cliché’s zijn: je kunt niet zomaar onaangekondigd op visite komen bij Nederlanders, noch automatisch mee-eten als op visite. Kinderen gaan vroeg en op tijd naar bed, en de omgangsvormen zijn wat ingehouden: men praat rustig, danst weinig. “Genieten lijkt wel een zonde”, stelt hij in een van de tips, dit relaterend aan een calvinistische invloed in Nederland.

Hij noemt ook positieve, minder saaie Nederlandse cliché’s als eerlijkheid, eerder schuld toegeven (vergeleken met? Buitenlanders hier?), eerder een persoonlijke mening geven (ik- versus “wij” cultuur), en beschrijft het begrip “gezelligheid”, soms samen vallend met een kopje koffie met een enkel koekje (misschien zelfs twee!).

Mogelijk is “gezellig” te vertalen naar andere talen – het Engelse “cozy” komt in de buurt – maar het is toch ook weer typisch Nederlands.

Ik herinner mij dat mijn Spaanse moeder dat woord vaak in Spaanse zinnen niet vertaalde, maar in Spaanse zinnen als leenwoord gebruikte: “era bien “gezellig” ahí dentro” (het was best wel gezellig daarbinnen).

CULTUUR EN TAAL

Zo zijn er meer taalgerelateerde dingen in Kaldenbach’s boekje, wijzend op de onvermijdelijke connectie tussen een cultuur en de bijbehorende taal.

Andersom zijn er om dezelfde reden ook culturele verwijzingen in het boek over taal van Cornelisse. Eigenlijk logisch, dus.

De Spaanse filosoof Miguel De Unamuno zei ooit: “Het ras is de taal..”. Hoewel ik het vaak met Unamuno eens ben, en hij veel zinnigs zei, was ik het hier minder mee eens. “Cultuur is de taal”, klopt al wat meer, denk ik zelf. "Ras" is als term te vaag.

Een belangrijk verschil tussen beide boeken is dat Kaldenbach spreekt over culturele gewoontes die al wat langer mee gaan, en wellicht bij jongere generaties zijn aan het veranderen, terwijl Cornelisse het vaker over huidige “taaltrends” heeft: juist die veranderingen dus, maar ook wel oudere uitdrukkingen hekelt.

Cornelisse doet dat leuk en grappig, en ik begrijp waarom het boek een bestseller werd. Van het gebruik van woorden als “gewoon”, de vage toevoeging ..”en alles”, gebruik van aanhalingstekens, voetbaltaal, “subtiel opscheppen”.. Grappig, want vaak herkenbaar om ons heen, op het werk, in ons sociale leven, of in de media.

GENERALISEREND

Kaldenbach heeft wat minder leuke humor, maar geeft wel wat interessante indrukken van de Nederlandse cultuur. Die herken ik vaak ook, maar niet altijd.

Mogelijk vanuit Nederlandse trots of verwantschap heeft Kaldenbach soms een te rooskleurig beeld van Nederlanders en hun gedrag, soms positief generaliserend, maar soms ook negatief generaliserend.

Hij stelt dat Nederlands “altijd” schuld zullen bekennen en excuses maken. Hij zet dit geniepig af tegen ander culturen (Marokkanen), die dus blijkbaar leugenachtiger en ontkennender zijn. Vooral dat “altijd” van Kaldenbach maakt het onzin. Hij verbindt dat aan een schuld-cultuur, versus een schaamte-cultuur, en een ik-cultuur, versus een wij-cultuur, maar is gewoon niet voor alle Nederlanders waar.

Kaldenbach bestudeerde ook weleens “hangjongeren”, wat mogelijk voor wat vertekening zorgde. Bij wetsoverteding zullen betrapte Marokkanen ontkennen en leugenachtig zijn, maar hetzelfde geldt voor Nederlandse misdaadplegers, of andere bedriegers en beroepsleugenaars (politici, verkopers). Die heb je onder elk volk, zoals ook de neiging om de schuld bij de ander en niet bij jezelf te leggen, vanuit een misplaatste trots, of het grote eigen ego.

PRATEN

“Je laat elkaar uitpraten” schijnt ook zoiets positiefs Nederlands te zijn, volgens Kaldenbach, en dat is wel iets meer waar, althans in formele gesprekken,of in talkshows op tv, en dergelijke. Ik zag ooit bij familie in Andalusië (Spanje) op tv een Spaanse talkshow waar er door elkaar heen “getetterd” werd, en men herhaaldelijk (tientallen keren) moest vragen “Me vas a dejar hablar?”, mag ik even uitspreken?.. Ook was het luider of zelfs “bozer”, de rustige, beheerste toon van Nederlanders ontbrak. Als iemand zijn stem teveel verheft, en men “boos” klinkt, in een Nederlands talkshow, wordt deze meestal het woord ontnomen, en de microfoon weg genomen of uitgeschakeld. In Spanje blijkbaar niet.

Ook dat “laten uitpraten” is echter generaliserend. Als Nederlanders je niet mogen, of wantrouwen, zullen ze in het sociale verkeer geen open gesprek tot stand laten komen, zoals overal, en je je zinnen niet af laten maken… een kinderachtige, en eigenlijk antipathieke, trek, - we zitten immers niet meer op de middelbare school -, maar “des mensch”.

Rustig, zonder stemverheffing, praten is volgens Kaldenbach hoe dan ook in het algemeen typisch Nederlands, wat ook wel nog steeds een beetje zo is, alhoewel verschillend per sociale groep (voetbalsupporters?, dronken feesters?).

Paulien Cornelisse heeft een grappig stuk in haar boek over zo’n uitzondering: een buurtgenoot van haar in Amsterdam: een fanatieke Ajax-fan die de gewoonte had om hard op straat “Joden!”, “Joden!” te roepen, wat nogal rabiaat anti-semtisch lijkt, als je niet weet dat Ajax-aanhangers zichzelf zo noemen.

Toch raar: stel dat een ander (wit) iemand “Chinezen!”, “Chinezen!” op straat roept. Dan vermoeden we toch een gevaarlijke, racistische frustratie bij deze persoon.

Hoe dan ook, en met welke intentie dan ook: niet alle Nederlanders praten altijd rustig en ingehouden, weet ik ook uit eigen ervaring.

Noodgedwongen grijpt Kaldenbach dus naar generalisaties, vooral vergelijkend met Marokkanen, Turken, Antillianen, en Surinamers. Het is meer sociologisch, of het nu altijd helemaal klopt, of niet.

Het leuke boek van Cornelisse is daarentegen meer psychologisch, en gedetailleerd op taal gericht, ook bij een-op-een interacties. Taalgericht, weliswaar, maar ook op dat detailniveau uit zich de cultuur van een land.

Veel van wat Cornelisse beschrijft is hoe mensen zich interessant of intellectueler proberen te maken met woordgebruik, zoals in de zinsnede “ik geloof niet in veel tv kijken”, versus “ik kijk niet zoveel tv”, of “het is een aanvaller, maar van een ander kaliber dan EEN Lionel Messi”, zoals in het Voetballiaans. Dat “een” geeft een analytisch tintje, even zeer als zeggen “ik geloof niet in..”. Dat beschrijft ze grappig.

OOGCONTACT

Niet alles herkende ik van wat Kaldenbach zei. Zo zouden Nederlanders elkaar langer en meer in de ogen kijken. Niet alleen onderschat hij daarmee man-vrouw verhoudingen en (ongewenste) seksuele spanning, maar ook in andere sociale contexten zijn ook veel Nederlanders wantrouwend, of, wat liever, te onzeker of verlegen, om oogcontact te maken, vooral in drukke steden, met etnische scheidslijnen.

Dat geldt uiteraard ook voor andere nationaliteiten en groepen, ook wat “geslotener” gemeenschappen als strengere moslims, bijvoorbeeld.

Het is geen halsmisdaad, maar sympathiek is vermijding van oogcontact natuurlijk nooit: iedereen wil “iemand die me ziet” om uit een songtekst van Doe Maar (song Radeloos) te citeren: het ontspant de relatie en sfeer, en opent mogelijkheden tot beschaafd, en wie weet zelfs inspirerend contact.

VERBONDENHEID

Dat Kaldenbach dat positieve in de ogen kijken als “typisch Nederlands” ziet (wat ik dus betwijfel) zal met de verliefdheid op eigen land – de “oer-connectie” via wortels met het eigen Nederlandse volk die hij voelt, te maken hebben. Die val je niet af, en verdedig je/praat je goed.

Ook dat is niet typisch Nederlands, maar ik merk wel dat ik (half Italiaans, half-Spaans, geboren in Nederland) die rotsvaste, eenduidige identificatie soms mis. Mijn ouders maakten grapjes over elkaars landen, met soms zelfs kritiek, en weer andere grapjes/kritiek over de Nederlandse buitenwereld.

Ook vaak grappig, maar verwarrend voor mij. Voor mijzelf probeer ik dan speels te combineren - laverend "tussen culturen in", maar het blijft ergens dubbel.

Germaanse volkeren als 't Nederlandse, zijn ook wat etnisch – en deels ook cultureel - “zuiverder” (sorry voor de dubieuze connotatie) dan “mijn” Mediterraanse landen Italië en Spanje, met veel meer historische etnische vermenging, en vooral in Spanje veelzijdig (Feniciërs, Basken, Kelten, Romeinen, Gothen, Berbers, Joden, zigeuners etc.). Dat “zuiverheid” denken wordt met zo’n historische mengelmoes lastiger.

Toen de Germanen naar Nederland kwamen woonden er al mensen (denk aan de pre-Saxische “hunebed” bouwers in Drenthe), maar het land is al met al relatief eenduidiger.

Die diepe verbondenheid met zijn Nederlandse roots schijnt door in Kaldenbach’s boek - tussen de regels door, zogezegd -, vooral in de (te) rooskleurige benadering van de Nederlandse volksaard, in vergelijking met andere culturen die daarmee negatief gekarakteriseerd worden: Nederlanders zijn eerlijker met meningen, maar ook in het schuld bekennen, terwijl die anderen (bijv. Marokkanen?)… liegend en bedriegend door het leven gaan?

Mogelijk is Kaldenbach’s oordeel vervormd door gesprekken met criminele Marokkaantjes – gepakt voor wetsovertreding - : die dus al verkeerd bezig waren. Die zijn niet per se representatief.

Kaldenbach verwart soms sociale positie met cultuur, en vergeet soms dat discriminatie bestaat. Nederlanders “durven te vragen naar promotie op hun werk”, stelt hij in een “tip”, terwijl mensen van buitenlandse afkomst in zo’n bedrijf dat niet durven, en door hard werken hopen promotie te maken.

Waarom zou dat nu zijn? Als je met de baas die “oer-connectie” deelt, tot hetzelfde volk behoort, dan ben je geen buitenstaander, maar een soort “insider”. Je kan wat meer maken en vragen.

Menig buitenlander - als buitenstaander - vreest vaak toch dat bij al teveel openlijke ambitie en uiting van een promotiewens in dat bedrijf, hij of zij als eerste weg moet bij een volgende ontslaggolf, juist vanwege teveel ambitie. Dat is dus meer sociaal dan cultureel.

Die subtiele discriminatie kennen Nederlanders in hun eigen land wat minder, en ontsnapte mogelijk ook de aandacht van Kaldenbach.

Ook Kaldenbach’s “tip” dat Nederlanders veel over het weer praten is dubieus. Dat is meer universeel, dan alleen typisch voor deze vochtige rivierdelta in NW Europa die Nederland heet. Ook in bijvoorbeeld het hete Andalusië in Zuid-Spanje, waar ik familie heb wonen, wordt over de hitte geklaagd, zelfs als niets nieuws onder de zon (ha!). Interessant feit: Zuidwest-Spanje - waar mijn "maternal roots" liggen - is formeel het warmste/heetste deel van gans Europa (over het jaar genomen).

Zoals Tom Waits terecht zong in zijn song Strange Weather: “Strangers talk only about the weather. All over the world, it’s the same..”

Andere “tips”, beschrijvingen van Nederlandse culturele gewoonten sneden wel wat meer hout, denk ik (precieze indeling van leven, ingehouden/rustig, geldgericht), in algemene, generaliserende zin dan.

Wat Cornelisse schrijft in ‘Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding’ is óók vaak waar, maar meer op detailniveau, met meer psychologische diepgang. Soms lijken observaties futiel, maar toch grappig. Het steeds bredere gebruik van het oorspronkelijk existentiële woord “eigenlijk” in het Nederlands tot zoiets als: “ik was eigenlijk op zoek naar een krop sla”, in een groentewinkel.

Daar heeft ze veel leuke voorbeelden van, ook bij een woord als “toch”.

CALVINISTISCH

Ze vermoedt een calvinistische oorsprong veel gebruik van “toch”. In die protestantse interpretatie is de mens geboren met een erfzonde, als zondaar dus, die misschien door heel hard te werken/goed te doen mededogen van de Here God krijgt. In het katholicisme is er ook wel zoiets als een erfzonde, maar is het verder niet zo rigide. Hoe dan ook, vertelt Cornelisse, zegt dat “toch” dat we ondanks dat we zondaars zijn die altijd iets verplicht zijn in het calvinisme, we vandaag “toch” even gezellig en lekker zaten te eten, bijv.

Grappig en interessant, en elders verwijst ze ook naar een calvinistische invloed, zoals in relatie tot het woord “genieten”.

Daar is een parallel met het boekje van Kaldenbach, waarin hij het erin gestampte “genot is zondig” principe van het calvinisme/protestantisme noemt als verklaring van veel ingehouden cultureel gedrag van Nederlanders. Niet alleen bij praten, en feesten, maar ook qua kleding, eten, architectuur, etcetera.

Grappig genoeg zegt Cornelisse ongeveer hetzelfde in haar boek, ook in relatie tot “genieten", maar dan als taalkundig woord. Een citaat uit haar boek:

“Het probleem met Nederlanders en genieten is natuurlijk dat we er te veel over nadenken. We mogen pas met vakantie als we er eerst hard voor gewerkt hebben. Een beloning zonder dat daar eerst voor geleden is, past niet bij onze calvinistische mentaliteit.”

Om dezelfde reden wordt het woord “genieten” vaker diffuus en algemeen gebruikt, terwijl het in andere talen vaak in relatie tot iets is: “enjoying the concert”, bijv. Ook in het Spaans, weet ik “Disfrutar (genieten) DE (van).. iets.. Het genieten staat in het Nederlands daarentegen meer op zichzelf.

CONCLUSIE

Beide boeken zijn lezenswaardig, en in verschillende mate leerzaam. Bij Kaldenbach kwamen veel cliché’s langs, maar ook enkele dingen waar ik nog niet aan heb gedacht. Ook wel enkele dingen die niet leerzaam zijn, omdat ze niet waar zijn, of te simplistisch.

Deels is er ook patriottische “wishful thinking” over zijn geliefde eigen Nederlandse volk. Ik kan hem dat verwijten, ware het niet dat zoveel mensen in de wereld dat hebben. Als “intercultureel adviseur” moet je daar (van die etnische oer-connectie) echter ook los van/boven kunnen staan, vind ik.

Cornelisse behandelt deels schijnbaar futiele zaken als woordkeuze en taalgrapjes - en humoristisch - , maar is al met al psychologisch leerzamer, met - nog veel meer dan bij Kaldenbach - dingen die ik nog niet zo opmerkte (soms wel aanvoelde). Wat ze schreef over “subtiele zelfverheerlijking”, bijvoorbeeld, bij persoonlijke gesprekken, en meer verhulde egotripjes en onzekerheden via taalgebruik.

Daar zit een “spel” met taal in, dat weer dat “ingehoudene” en sobere van Nederlanders (volgens Kaldenbach) juist tegen spreekt, maar wel weer “calvinistisch” gematigd en taalgericht (de Schrift, de Bijbel), en soms ook "berekenend" qua taalgebruik, in plaats van echt artistiek.

Een Franse leraar die ik ooit had, zei dat Fransen hun taal breedsprakiger en poëtischer praten en schrijven, dan meer pragmatische en zakelijke Nederlanders met hun taal. Datzelfde “breedsprakige” geldt op een iets andere manier ook wel voor die landen van mijn ouders (Italiaans, Spaans).

Dat is misschien nog wel waar, Nederlands wordt niet (evenmin als andere Germaanse talen) al te snel poëtisch gebruikt, maar “spelen met taal” is er wel degelijk, waardoor Cornelisse ook zo’n leuk boek kon schrijven.

De mens is van nature een sociaal wezen, maar ook een “spelend” wezen, zeg ik altijd maar. Daarom zijn ook al die verschillende culturen in deze wereld ontstaan..

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.

NOI, Garvey, and beyond

Funny how things go..

As I got into Reggae music around my 11th year, and since then learned more about the associated Jamaican culture, “Black Power” as such I first encountered in Marcus Garvey and Reggae lyrics.

Yet, around the same time (Late 1980s), more US influence came through television and mass media, in the Netherlands. Hearing about Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan, and movements where Rappers belonged to (5% nation), I initially thought they were “trying to imitate” Jamaicans, or – nicer said – “were inspired”, by e.g. Marcus Garvey, or even Rastafari.

I was even right, to a degree. The influence of Marcus Garvey – active in the US since 1917 into the 1920s -, and his movement, were present in all these US Black Power movements, including the Nation Of Islam (NOI).

Yet, they worked out in different ways. As I later focused on Malcolm X as person, the Nation Of Islam became a backdrop, though I still learned something about the NOI, and its ideas.

There were also differences with Garvey, I noticed. For one, Garvey was not a Muslim, but neither (as a Christian) religiously aimed: his goals were social and political, keeping religion more in the private sphere, though still criticizing “pro-White” religious teachings in general.

Beyond this: what are the differences between the Nation Of Islam, and e.g. Rastafari, why ‘Islam” , Black nationalism, etcetera?

A good excuse, moreover, for me to study the Nation Of Islam more in detail, for comparing, with what I have studied already in detail: connecting knowledge I acquired, personal reflections.. the synthesizing essence of the “essay”, in short.. While learning myself along the way..

NATION OF ISLAM

My knowledge about the US organization the Nation Of Islam (henceforth: NOI) was – to be honest – “medium”, and here and there sketchy. Reading more and more about it, I saw more dimensions: “zooming out” or “bird’s view”, to put it in either digital or pre-digital terms. I could compare better with what I have read about and by Marcus Garvey, and general history.

Tellingly, the aspects in which the NOI differed from “mainstream Islam” were aspects that shared similarities with Garvey and Rastafari, but also with ancient African folk beliefs. While the Islam is seriously adhered to, and even seen as the “original religion of Black people” (which – IMHO – is at least a debatable claim, though some want to believe it), at the same time the NOI’s Islam serves similarly as Catholicism once did among Yoruba African slaves in Cuba and Brazil in colonial times, simply as a mask and “front” to hide own beliefs.

STORIES

Own interpretations, deviations are all parts of “story telling”, and history of mankind has taught us that a “good story” can connect masses of people to external, then internalized, goals. For better or worse, certainly. The Bible being a prime example. Also Fascism, Communism, and other totalitarian regimes, – after all - had stories that convinced many, to bind the populace.

There’s a lot of quite imaginative “storytelling” within the NOI I noticed, with several story lines, creatively describing the history of mankind and races. Originally, in the NOI’s teachings, Whites were a race created by an evil scientist on a Greek island named Patmos (strange detail..), lacking all virtues of the original (Black) man, and having only vices and wickedness in them, therefore at one time banned by the supreme being to Western Asia (actual Europe) to live in caves. This view was later sidelined, but was also what Malcolm X was taught, as he entered the NOI: whites were a race of devils.

Absurd?, maybe; racist?, probably; vindictive?, certainly.. but still a creative and powerful story, in some sense. Of course, more nonsensical stories can be found within the NOI, as well as some more positive and plausible ones. In essence, that is the same with the Bible. The strength of Christianity lied in the engaging story: it convinced, and was well-written. The Bible had good, thrilling “plots”.. But.. is what the Bible relates all true, did it really happen? Some scientists doubt that, even beyond the obvious absurdities like Moses splitting a sea, or Jesus walking on water. It is still a good story/plot, and culturally interesting. Moreover: it is of course about the “symbolic” value, the metaphorical meanings, not to be taken literally. Some fools do, though (in all religions).

The latter also applies to the NOI, in my opinion, interesting cultural response through stories/storytelling, but in this case a clearer symbolic, and “social” role and response, namely to the racist conditions and inequalities disfavoring Blacks in the US. That gives it a dynamic, “activist” vibe. One of self-protection, making it more understandable, and – in a sense – more benign.

MAINSTREAM ISLAM

The interesting “off-shoot” of the NOI, “the Five-Percent Nation”, founded in 1964, in the 1970s growing among Black youths, was also nominally Muslim, but strayed even further from mainstream Islam as such. Its (the Five-Percent Nation's, as well as the NOI's) views of Black self-sufficiency and pride are echoes of Garvey, whereas their idea that each Black man is a god, goes toward the Rastafari concept of “I and I”, e.g. God/Jah “within man” (inna man).

Likewise, the NOI has a different view on the “afterlife” than in mainstream Islam, emphasizing more to live good today, with Rastafari adherents having similar ideas, though probably earlier in time. This allows a more activist stance during one’s actual lifetime, more seeking one’s rights while living.

This sets Islam as older (and Arab) religion apart from such later emancipation movements. Islam began as an ideological religious movement among some Arabs on the Arabian peninsula, and became a spreading, conquering religion.

The Garvey movement and NOI were mostly occupied with finding and defending oneself, one’s own group. Seemingly, the Islam served to give “structure” to such goals, for the NOI, while Marcus Garvey kept religion out of his movement, though considering himself a Christian (first Methodist, later Catholic).

Religion is essentially “power”, else it would be a loose spiritual movement, so adding Islam to Black Power probably provided that power base.

For the same reason, though more gradual, the Early Rastafari adherents, largely fitted their views in a Biblical context, and Christian world view, as common in Protestant-dominated Jamaica. A sense of stable power.

Garvey, however, focused on economic organization and international organization of all Black people as source of “stable power” for the UNIA movement. Though not just that: Garvey left religion out of it, but origins certainly not: Africa as Black motherland became equally a (desired) power base, once freed from colonialism.

Therein lies the crux of the difference between the NOI in the US, and the Garvey movement, of which Rastafari can be seen as a branch: the role of Africa, the motherland/continent of origin.

BIGGER WHOLE

Marcus Garvey famously and eloquently said: “ I won’t give up a continent for an island” (meaning Africa for Jamaica). This was later quoted in some Reggae song lyrics by Rastas.

This answers to common human, psychological needs to belong to “bigger wholes”, which is healthy when it is natural. Unhealthy when it is fiction, and only effective for so long, crippling over time, as it alienates someone from oneself.

That psychological need for “a bigger whole” was among the NOI answered by the Islamic faith, after abandoning the “repatriation goal” to Africa, while recognizing the African roots as (merely?) “something of the past”. That is less natural, and not even historically totally correct. Islam originated on the Arabian peninsula by Arabs, then spreading with armies conquering toward North Africa, further into Asia, and even reaching parts of Europe (Iberia, Sardinia, and Sicily).

The connection with Africa – of Islam - is therefore more indirect, as the North African countries “converted” to Islam, were before that Christian, without even European imposition.

This is a fictional element that need not be destructive for a movement, but is nonetheless distracting from truth. Only focusing on the truth secures a strong, lasting foundation.

Eventually, the NOI “gave up on the continent Africa”, as in its pleading for separatism, and a separate homeland for African Americans, it meant (even explicitly stated) a separate state for Black people “on American soil”.

Another key difference, thus, with Garvey’s UNIA movement, which kept aiming at repatriation to an independent Africa. The Rastafari movement in Jamaica, one of the heirs to the Garvey movement maintained that.

AFRICA

Is one Black Power movement therefore better than the other? Mutabaruka describes Rastafari as a “Black power movement with a theological nucleus”. In itself true, but when comparing – as I do now – with the NOI, a word should be added: “with an OWN theological nucleus ”, namely on Haile Selassie – many Rastas consider divine - and Ethiopia, while reinterpreting the Bible. NOI copied an Arabic religion, adapting it also a bit to its own needs, but maintaining its tenets and banner.

The abandonment of a focus on Africa in the NOI started quite early in the movement. The NOI claims that the early precursors of the NOI were the enslaved Africans who were Muslims in parts of the US. A reference to Africa, where parts in the wider Sahel region – from Senegambia to Northern Nigeria -, were Islamicized earlier by Islamic invaders, mixed in within the local culture. This occurred before English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and so on, got their slaves from there.

While it is true that Africans from those Islamic areas ended up in the US – even relatively more than in Latin America -, they were still not the majority among enslaved Africans in the US, who mostly had other “religions”, “beliefs”, spirit/nature religions before Christianized. The Mississippi Delta was a region in the US South where relatively many “Senegambia/Guinea/Sahel” Africans ended up, having an interesting echo in the Blues, and guitar playing (and the swing/shuffle feel).

Another caveat is that – as many who travelled through different parts of the Islamic world can tell you – that Islam in African countries like Guinea, Senegal, Mali, parts of Ivory Coast, northern Nigeria, Cameroun, parts of Burkina Faso, etcetera, is evidently an own, local, “free” interpretation of the Islam, especially when analyzed beyond the superficial “main pillars”, upheld there too (5 times prayer a day, no alcohol, women dressed with veils and modestly, no public nudity/sexuality, fasting, diet, etcetera). Islam is in Guinee/Sahel Africa mixed with own African traditions. Also among, e.g. the Hausa (a quite numerous ethnic group, also in neighbouring Niger) in northern Nigeria, although a violent Islamist group like the Boko Haram seeks to enforce a stricter Islam.

While – musically - the Mississippi delta Blues, and “swing” in other US Black music styles echo and reflect the heritage that Africanization of Islamic influences (like e.g. “string” instruments) of the rich Guinea region “griot” (travelling musicians) tradition, the Nation Of Islam (NOI) apparently did not attempt such a cultural Africanization, even over time leaning more to the “Orthodox Islam”, the original “Arab model”, so to speak. This also came to the fore in the Malcolm X movie by Spike Lee.

AFRICAN CULTURE

What about more historically accurate alternatives, one might ask? Just like among some Rastas, directly African-derived spirit religions, surviving now in Haitian Vodou, Santería (Cuba), Candomblé (Brazil), or Obeah (Jamaica), known “spirit possession” religions seem to be viewed as backward and “devilish” within the NOI.

Among Rastas, Haile Selassie, and “old” and indigenous Ethiopian Christianity seemed a better foundation, or just some Biblical/Christian aspects “from an African perspective”.

This disdain of Vodou-like actually African religions within some Black Power movements is interesting for its connotations. Of course it relates to a cultural inferiority complex, because of the colonial and slavery past. It also has to do, however, with an already mentioned “stable power base”, and the idea of/believe in "one supreme God". The old-fashioned, rather conservative views on male-female relations within the NOI and (to a lesser degree) among some Rastas – with the man as “head” of the household, women serving him and dressing modestly and behaving sexually conservative, of course are also found in the Bible and the Quran (and Hadith: extra, oral accounts of Mohammed). Stable, strong families, must be the idea, but with a patriarchal structure of male dominance, even bordering misogyny at times.

There’s the idea that matriarchy – or mother/female dominance within families – within Black US (and Jamaican) culture arose from the disruption of family ties due to slavery conditions. This is partly true. Many of the enslaved Africans, though, came from areas in Africa with quite matriarchal, often polygamous cultures, even with polyandry (one woman having several men), and loose relations between even those sharing children. The “extended family” was in such cultures much more important than that Western “nuclear family” idea. Partners (even sharing children) often even did not live together (separate places for women and men, with occasional, let’s say “visits”, haha).

This was the case in many societies from Southern Ghana to Central Africa, which the Islam reached less. North of it (the Sahel zone), remnants of this were somehow fitted in Islamic male patriarchy standards.

In short, male dominance was originally not the family culture in much of Africa, also parts where many slaves came from (percentages dependent on colony: Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroun, Congo, or Angola).

Some historians even claim that colonizing Spaniards of the time of Columbus were more patriarchal culturally than Yoruba or Congo men in that time, ending up as slaves in Spanish colonies (often brought and sold by other Europeans), or many Amerindians, due to Spain’s religious (Catholic and Moorish/Islamic) conquest history, both upholding male patriarchy and “machismo”.

Further relevant facts: the enslaved Africans in Jamaica came for over an estimated 40% from the (non-Islamic) Ghana region, while Afro-Cubans in nearby Cuba for about 40% from the Congo region, and in also nearby Haiti Africans from the Benin/Togo area were dominant..

To the US went/were brought quite some Senegambian and Guinee-region slaves – Islamic-influenced before -, but also many from non-Muslim areas (many from Igboland, Nigeria, for instance).

The legitimacy of choosing the “Islam”, by the “Black Power movement” NOI, seems thus weak, at best. The NOI thus chose mostly fiction over reality. This is dubious, in my opinion. It betrays political, hidden goals, without knowing what’s hidden.

Reality is the African origins, from which African Americans (and Afro-Caribbeans, of course) were forcibly taken. Reality is however also “cultural heritage”. Culture is very much neglected in political discourse, probably because it is “feared” as too free and liberating for the masses, especially folk culture.

Rastafari is reasonably connected to culture, also to African retentions in Jamaica. While an African retention like Obeah is by some criticized as “devilish” magic, African remnants are in many small and big things in Jamaica, with a “Western” or British superficiality, or even influence, but always mixed.

The connection of Rastafari with Jamaica’s rich musical tradition (and notably Reggae), and Bob Marley’s global fame, brought Rastafari influence in Reggae music, and more African-derived percussion, for example. Subtly woven through Reggae music (and its precursors), the African polyrhythmic and harmonic musical heritage has, by the way, always been present and essential to it.

In addition, the “back to nature” focus of many Rastafari-adherents, with communal self-sufficiency and natural living, also draws on African traditions, long-lost in most of Europe and the Western world since its modernization and industrialization.

The NOI also has acquired economic power and ownership of businesses – along Garvey’s lines –within Black US, but simply fitting in the US capitalist society, without even much of a “cultural” change.

These contradictory aspects in the NOI were forgotten with extremely communicative and intelligent leaders like Malcolm X, keeping it together.

IDENTITY

In time, however, the “slippery slope” of “identity” politics slipped in the NOI, with as effect a superficial and political “identity”, totally detached from (lived ) culture stemming from an actual history. This can have – temporarily – a beneficial, emancipatory effect, but can go terribly wrong, especially with totalitarian regimes. After all, the German Nazi’s had as political identity “the Aryan”: a superior Germanic race, that should rule the world (according to them).

I now also live in a country (the Netherlands) said to have (like Germany) mostly a Germanic/Teutonic (ethno-historic) origin, and in time I got to wonder: what is this own Dutch, originally Germanic (in English also Teutonic) culture? Maybe some countries, like England, the Netherlands, and Germany modernized and industrialized too soon too much to maintain much “original culture”, and the Nazi’s replaced that, indoctrinating the people with a mythical, absurd “racial supremacy” notion, at the cost of others.

Nowadays, despite hidden ancient, Germanic cultural “remnants” (beyond the language), the Netherlands people are international, even imitating aspects of other cultures: from the US (even Black culture), more Southern parts of Europe with presumably more “temperamental” and “life-enjoying” people, or other parts of the world. I noticed this identity crisis – in hindsight – among White Dutch people I encountered, trying to “out-Black” me, because I (of South European descent) showed some appreciation for Black culture: a Reggae t-shirt or patch, for instance. For some odd, mistaken (slightly psychopathic) notion they considered themselves “gatekeeper” (for having more Black friends, maybe?), a phenomenon - White gatekeepers of Black culture) still found here and there. Seems almost like politics.

I guess that “culture” keeps the mind softer and opener than politics..

A Black Power movement based on Vodou-like beliefs would be strange – or to be honest: I would find it funny and intriguing -, but without going so far, still a fruitful, open-minded balance can be found, as is achieved in the Rastafari movement, lacking authoritarian, strict rules.

A balance seems most reasonable in the case of the African Diaspora in the West: colonial past, adapted to other societies, but knowing one’s roots. Realistic about one’s history, roots and routes.

The NOI – for all its interesting aspects – seems to deny some “realistic” aspects, but that is just my opinion, and it’s their prerogative..

IMPLICATIONS

Still, this choice to “abandon” Africa, the continent, as focus among the largest “Black Power” group in the US, the NOI, can have in my opinion negative connotations. For one, it replaces solidarity with the brothers and sisters on the African continent, with a semi-fictional one with the Arab world. You notice this even in the Palestina protests. Fine, and even noble, that Black people feel solidarity with the Palestinians’ cause, and critique Israel’s harsh, brutal, and discriminatory policies in Gaza and elsewhere. Too often, though, these same “selective” activists do not mention what happens elsewhere in the world, such as Africa, with genocides also having occurred or attempted in Sudan (e.g. Darfur) – some say still going on - , and some brutal regimes and violent conflicts here and there (I mentioned already Boko Haram).

Could it be that the fictive/symbolic alignment with the Islam as a “Black man’s religion” – popularized by the NOI – made many turn a blind eye to whatever is done in the name of Islam in Africa, especially when combined with a nice, melanin skin? Could it be that superficial?

People in Islamic (Northern) Sudan call themselves “Arabs”, while clearly mixed with Black Africans, pointing at cultural annihilation and depreciation of Africa and its people. Not unsimilar to what occurred among some African-descended people in the Americas. In the Dominican Republic, most people are mixed (mostly Spanish-African) and Mulatto-like, but long upheld a vague “Hispanic” identity, derived from European Spain. This differed among Dominicans (some saw themselves as mixed also culturally), but was the political norm. The same in Jamaica, where the political elite long fought the Afro-centric Rastafari movement, including even brutal repression and raids up to the 1960, and customary discrimination even into the 1970s. A “Black British” culture aimed at the Anglo-Saxon world, was the proscribed norm for the populace, it seemed.

BLACK-WHITE

Another negative implication is the Black-White discourse. In my opinion, this has gotten out of hand. In the early stages of emancipation it had a function, and even a positive, path-making one, as also Marcus Garvey used that dichotomy (albeit in his days (1910-1930s), also with now old-fashioned terms like Negro and Coloured).

Garvey however never forgot or abandoned the connection of “Black” with Africa.. Despite the politically (and historically) correct now common moniker of “African Americans” for US Blacks (along the lines of Irish American, Italian American, etc.), in common parlance “Black” and “White” is still the norm, not even just among stand-up comedians, for comedic effect (of variable quality in my opinion, though sometimes funny, I must admit).

This seems innocent, and just words, but psychologically can legitimize superficiality of skin color, over a rich African heritage, from even way before slavery. Even the interesting history from “way before Islam came to Africa (7th c. AD)” for that matter.

In my opinion, one’s sense of its (true) origins and culture makes one truly stable and stronger, and even more balanced. Ironically, also more open-minded, as less involved in “politicized oppositions”.

If you know “who you are”, as some put it, you are honest and spiritual enough to show sincere interest in the true beings of other humans – and other cultures! – as well, without games or hiding.

You also are more able to step out spiritually of the “rat race” of Western politics and economics, and apply other worldviews, with distinct, more natural and communally based lifestyles, also found in the African tradition, and applied (in their own way) by e.g. Rastafari adherents in Jamaica or elsewhere.

Also, in different ways, Vodou practitioners in Haïti, or those Afro-Cubans involved in Santería (Yoruba-based) or Palo Mayombe (Congo-based) spiritual faiths, kept open their mind for “alternatives ways of looking at Western culture ”, the (in this case) Catholic colonizers forced on them.

CULTURAL IDENTITY

Sometimes forming one's own personal cultural identity is a matter of “taking the best of both worlds”: I have known in Cuba some (pitch-) black Cubans – who would physically hardly stand out in Lagos or Kinshasa -, who only spoke Spanish proficiently -, and who could quote some poems by Spanish poets (like Federico García Lorca), and even from the famous Spanish novel Don Quichot – while at the same time attending Santería gatherings, and dressed in African/Yoruba attire on occasion, or playing Batá drums.

Rastafari artist and radio personality Mutabaruka also said in an interview that he tries to get the best of both worlds (Western modernity/technology and Africa), and learn about different parts of the world, while at the same time seeking to expand (also in his radio show) the knowledge about Africa and its history in Jamaica and beyond. It broadens one mind, in short, also to compare better internationally.

Though there were interesting and open-minded intellectuals within the Nation Of Islam (NOI) in the past and present – knowledgeable about global affairs, and sometimes say something sensible about it, even Louis Farrakhan – most of its rhetoric deals with the US situation.

Even if this is often just and right criticism of a certainly racist system and society in the US (and also other Western countries, for that matter) – keeping African Americans back structurally -, I think the knowledge of an own origin, and knowledge of one’s culture, offers more ways to deal with this, in an enduring, fruitful way, than playing along with that superficial (colonially inherited) game of “skin colour”. Even if your color is used against you, you can stand above that with pride in your own culture, your actual history, as a “true identity”. True self-assurance and true self-confidence.

That is also the power of a “story”, but more importantly: an indestructible power base in “truth” and love.