There is something unmistakably and undeniably familiar about this drumming and dancing. I ask myself, How is it that people so far separated in space and time from the modern world could lay down a beat so obviously inspired by the hip-hop music that dominates my own homeland? And it's then that I realize I've crossed this ocean and gone WAY back in time and somehow landed at the source of the music. Now this is really cool.
It reminds me of an article I read a couple years back in National Geographic, "Hip Hop Planet". The author, James McBride, visited some of the same places in West Africa as I did last summer to trace the roots of this global force, this sometimes soaring, sometimes primal music. Check out some of David Alan Harvey's photos, too, and read the captions for a mentions of the same theme I discuss here.
The crazy twist is the way the seedling music was carried on slave ships to the New World and transplanted hundreds of years ago. It then grew so large as an American tree that its branches eventually overshadowed and dropped their fruit on West Africa, where it has mixed again with the traditional music and the reggae and seems to be naturalizing in its ancestral soil.
So now I've come full circle to my original question: is the beat I'm hearing as this tribal chieftain swirls, crouches, and high-steps in front of me the chicken or the egg? Either way, it's pretty sweet to be standing here right now.
