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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Africa, Brazil and jazz: African commonalities in music from rural Brazil and the United States
| Panel |
40. Contemporary African Art: A Rhetoric of Change
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| Paper ID | 656 |
| Author(s) |
Russell, Robert Ashley
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | A collection of Brazilian field recordings made in 1938 and consigned to storage vaults for decades has recently come to light; these remarkable recordings demonstrate that rhythms and tonalities from Africa resonated in the forests of Pernambuco at that time much as they did in the Mississippi Delta. There are striking similarities between the folk music of Brazil and American blues, underscoring the role of the African Diaspora in the creation of musical forms in both South and North America.
My presentation will incorporate selections from the 1938 Brazilian field recordings as well as from contemporaneous recordings made in the Southern United States. I will identify characteristics originating in Africa and found in the music of both cultures; I will also demonstrate selected elements live on guitar and percussion instruments.
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