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Religious basis of
African-American music profiling
SUMMARY: As evident from the title, the paper considers the musical-religious
principles of Afro-American culture. The analysis centers around music forms
originating from the ritual practice of „spirit receiving” among the people
of West Africa. The effects of the mutual appropriation of Black and Western
culture are viewed within the parameters of music, perceived as a unified body
of expressive cultural forms of folk art. The subject lends itself to a multispectral
approach, an interdisciplinary matrix as well as a descriptive form
and factography. The references are to studies within various disciplines and
fields of sociology, as well as to numerous „online” articles and encyclopedias.
The sociological approach enables an understanding of Black music as a social
fact par excellence, which tackles the issues of racial, political and musical
identity; collective historical memory and popular culture; assimilation and
resistance through music, dance and belief system. The guiding premise is that
Black music, as a category transcending genre, is an integral part of the wider
social-religious context and meaning and, as such, represents more than a mere
tradition preserving tool. By cultural crossover from the utmost margin to the
main stream, through different invocations and on different levels of social
totality, this music has transformed the Western experience; evidently as much
in the domain of „spiritual” as in the domain of popular culture.
KEY WORDS: popular music, African-American culture, „spirit receiving”
religions, voodoo, jazz, spiritual, gospel, blues.
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