The Eurasian Century

If you're a modern middle-aged urban black man living in the U.S., what is your ethnic heritage in music? Is it the hot or sweet music that poured forth from those oldtime tube sets? Is it the lullabies your mother sang? Or the music of the marching bands? Or the sounds from the big bands and r&b groups at the local dance hall? Surely it's a bit of all this and probably much more. Underlying all the concrete musical manifestations of black America you will find two main sources: the African and the Eurasian. From Africa comes the group feeling, the collective music-making, the emphasis on sound and rhythm – echoes of bush schools and community rites. From Eurasian sources come the long solo lines, the emphasis on melody and text – echoes of the bards singing their lengthy epics. These musical heritages impinged when the Jihad of Islam swept Africa in the 8th century and again when the European colonial powers moved into Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, and again when the global music industry moved into every corner of the planet in the 20th century.