Gates’ and Wilson’s Theories on African Diaspora Musics Essays -- Musi

Gates and Wilsons Theories on African Diaspora MusicsSome scholarly persons theorize that the Middle Passage to the Americas was so traumatic that most African influence was eradicated, and that few traces of Africa subsist in Afro-American music. This cultural tabulala sic rasa theory is rightfully rejected by many scholars (Wilson 3). The inflow of African people to the New World was brought on by the founding of slavery, and resulted in the creation of a sort of extension of the African immaculate in a different hemisphere. In his article The Significance of the family relationship Between sic Afro-American Music and West African Music, music scholar Olly Wilson refutes the tabula rasa theory, and provides extensive examples of the ties that continue to exist between the deuce distant geographical regions. Another prominent scholar who recognizes the integration of African elements in American musics is Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Though his much deeper and more analytical s nuggle to African musics is divergent from Wilsons, both scholars acknowledge African diaspora musics and examine them in different ways based on different criteria.Cuba is considered one of the places where African music has been most fully preserved. Within this island nation there exist many secular and religious genres of Afro-Cuban music. These genres are associated with the spread of palo monte and santeriatwo of the many neo-African syncretic religions in the New World (Den Tandt and Young 251). The approximation of syncretisma mixing of the beliefs or practices of different groupsis very popular in many aspects of analysis of the New Worlds Africanization. With respect to religion, the terminal figure refers especially to the combining of characteristics of native... ...racteristics of and approaches to African and African-American music. Gates advocates a deep examination of the musica literary-style analysis exploring layers of meaning within music, intertextualities, a nd modes of expression. work CitedDen Tandt, Catherine and Richard A. Young. Tradition and transformation in Latin American music. The Cambridge chap to Modern Latin American Culture. Ed. John King. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2004.Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey. A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York Oxford University Press, 1988.Rodriguez, Omar. Emancipation the Caribbean ExperienceAfro-Cuban religion and Syncretism with the Catholic Religion.Wilson, Olly. On the Significance of the Relationship between African and Afro-American Music. The Black Perspective in Music 2 (1974), 3-22.