Numerous titles in most regions in the former colonial languages and subjects that are more political than we might expect? The song, music is a communication tool in Africa and is commonly used in this way. When the song is in an African language, we do not always understand what she says but with a little education you learn to understand and I heard a lot of songs on Lumumba in Zaire in his time, as well as singing songs presidents in place in many countries. It is not uncommon for a song to be composed opportunity for a political or social event. Music always has a social dimension in Africa, even though less in North Africa or music is often originally religious and developments such as the Rai is not always appreciated at their true value.
But what I like in this music is the very systematic polyrhythm, whether directly expressed by two rhythm in the song or it is understood, implied in the song, in a rhythm of the song transpires like sweat of a runner in Kenya. This polyrhythm is what Africa has brought richest in the world of universal culture. This triumph in the popular music known worldwide, especially Rock and all its churches, chapels and cathedrals came from African music of marriage with European music in North America from the time of slavery and its Immediately after emancipation, with exchange of instruments and invention of the battery, the instrument of polyrhythm. We can no longer imagine the world without music this African heritage in our scores and practices.
If you take this music and these rhythms, bous enter another world, the world of Vodun, the world of rhythm so rapid that it means a trance, a lockdown in this rhythm and your whole hypnosis that rhythm. As said Johnny Cash, "Get the rhythm When You get the blues," and this rate will give you up because it will make you touch the sky and caress your soul in the sense of pleasure without which life is no longer life. Some will say that this is an artificial paradise. Maybe, but I do not regret a single minute of dance which I practiced on these crazy rhythms. I remember a Homecoming prom night in a high school where I was teaching at the time in North Carolina, the first year of racial integration of the school, the circle that formed when I took the African rhythms of the music of the orchestra Black and Soul. It was a white man who dared to be blacker than the night. Not so simple but perfectly easy to live to experience the vertigo that takes you.
Practice African music as if it was natural, because it is natural and you'll never get bored. There is deep within each of us a Black Minstrel hiding, but just a rhythm, just music, to fall all white tinsel skin we wear to no more than men and women in the vast humanity which belongs to us because we belong to him and that nobody has the right to cut into social block, nationality or race, because that would castrate us, emasculate, sterilize us from this which is our deepest blood, one which flows directly from the heart to the brain. I am the color of music I listen and changes color like a chameleon as soon as I change the CD on the turntable. And I'm happy as a clam in the sky or a bird in the depths of a river. I want forever suffocate me in the water of this river of life and drown myself in the highest of the spirituality of heaven.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
