First published 30th June 2023 on the Sugarfoot Stomp Facebook Community Group.

Hey everyone! As one of the cultural officers for 2023, I wanted to share my thoughts on a fascinating book I've been reading: "The Power of Black Music" by Samuel Floyd. In this post, I'll focus on the first chapter, which explores traditional African religion, legends, and songs.

The book delves into the music theory of African music, but I'll highlight what we, as practitioners of Black dance, can learn from traditional African culture. Next week, I’ll write about traditional African rhythm and dance more specifically. In a future post, I'll discuss how these cultural elements transformed through slavery to create early Black American music and dance styles like ragtime, spirituals, and blues. In another post, I'll explore how these traditions evolved during urbanisation and the Harlem Renaissance, ultimately giving birth to jazz and the Lindy Hop. Let's begin with a discussion of African religion.

African Religion

The book emphasises that while Africa is a huge and diverse continent, African spirituality is largely unified. “It is proper and useful to speak of an African religion.” This religion includes the senior God, Olodumare, a pantheon of lesser gods such as Orulna (god of wisdom), Ophosi (the provider) and Esu (the trickster). Under the gods are the common spirits.

Unlike western religion, African religion is not supposed to be believed literally. My understanding is that African myths and legends are more like a western fairytale than a bible story – nobody believes that Little Red Riding Hood got eaten by a wolf dressed as her grandmother, but we tell this story to our children to teach them not to trust strangers. African myths and legends also propagate through the generations, but unlike western stories they usually come in the form of song, and they are much more fundamental to their society. “African myths ratified, rationalised, and justified African community, social, and political systems.”

African Legends and Song

We are intimately familiar with many African legends and songs, as many of them survived slavery almost perfectly preserved. For example, Why Monkeys Live In Trees, the legend of the trickster god Esu, in the form of a monkey, tying a lion's tail to a tree can be found in both African folklore, is preserved in the blues song The Signifyin’ Monkey. As we will discover later, Esu as The Signifyin’ Monkey as a symbol of metaphor, indirection and trickery was crucial to the rebellious part of black culture throughout the blues lyrical tradition, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Key Takeaways

We swing and blues dancers can learn a lot from these stories – the lyrics of the music we dance to is full of symbolism and references to African American legend – just think of every blues song about an unfaithful lover, waking up worried in the morning, or going back down south. If you are curious, here’s a video about the blues lyrical tradition - We Need To Talk About Blues Lyrics - 12tone, and here's one about the meaning behind popular jazz lyrics - Jazz Lyrics & References - Why History Matters - Laura Glaess.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed it and learned a thing or two! Next time I’ll cover how traditional African religion and legends were practised through rhythm and dance, and see what our dancing can learn from traditional African dance.

Cam