Jazz and Blues Feedback to Jamaica :: essays papers

Jazz and Blues Feedback to Jamaica Music seems to mimic time in a way. As the human race passes through history, the music and its language acts in essence as a speculum of human culture and its path, lavish with its longings, its grief, but always stirring (Santoro, 2). In this paper, I will walk down this path, and show the significance music has played on the Jamaican and American cultures. This paper will illustrate the profound influence that American music, primarily jazz and blues, had on Jamaican reggae, and by breaking down each type of music to a simple rhythm, I will show the relationships between them. If asked about the origins of Jamaican folk culture, some people might answer that it originated in Africa and remained undisturbed by other cultures (such as Europe). Even though Jamaicans are mostly of African descent, Jamaica’s only language in none other that English (Chang and Chen, 10). Whether the race or language influenced Jamaica’s culture, has been a question of long debate. Professor Rex Nettleford, a noted social commentator, sees the language of a nation as ‘the primary bearer of social genes.’ Professor Nettleford answers the question by explaining the Jamaican experience: Africa is indeed tolerated in spurts of sycretised or reinterpreted folk-lore — a little bit of dance, a little bit of music, a little bit of story telling, and a few words lacing the Anglo-Saxon tongue with exotic tones and colour. But our formal education system, our accepted belief system, our art, law and morals, the legitimate customs and so many of our habits and perceived capabilities — all indicate of a so-called cultural sense are dominated by the European heritage (Chang and Chen, 10). The entire argument is conclusive and evident in most points, except the ‘little bit of [African] music,’ which is questionable. The roots of reggae music has been said to be fixed in slavery. The Rhythms, songs, and dances that survived well into the twentieth century in rural Jamaica are seen as solely African (Davis and Simon, 9). During the middle of the seventeenth century, Jamaica was basically a giant agricultural factory, used by a few British planters. The plantations worked by slaves imported from Africa made tremendous amounts of money, but the planters gleaned all the profits. Over the next 250 years when slavery was active, about thirty million Africans were brought to the New World, and is known as the largest forced migration in all of human history (Davis and Simon, 9).