Michael Morris wrote:

I'm not going to argue that there are no African influences in blues and gospel - clearly there are - but in branding these uniquely American forms as African, you are frankly missing the point. Culture is not static. You listen to gospel and believe it sounds African; Ruff listens to the same music and believes it sounds Gaelic - two sides of the same coin, and both represent a limited and incomplete analysis.

Michael Morris, Blues and Gospel are "American" but it's pretty clear and obvious that musically/vocally and the over "feel" are much close to the African examples I gave than anything I've heard so far from Europe.


Michael Morris wrote:

Call and response, pentatonic scales, flatted thirds and sevenths, sliding, melisma, etc. are not specifically African, certainly not specifically Afro-Islamic

Nope, but you won't find anything as close to American Blues with these traits such as Senegambian-Sahelian-Upper West African music. Even traditional North East African music from North Sudan-Ethiopia-Somalia has a similar feel. I havan't heard any Anglo-Celtic European music as close to the Blues as those I just mentioned. Im talking both vocally and musically speaking. For example

Nubian Oud Jam


Description about Nubian/North Sudanese music


What they say bout Ethiopian music..


"At Friday's event, Gershon lectured on Ethiopian music with demonstrations by Atanaw, Dagnew, Shenkute, and Lebron. Ethiopian music, Gershon explained, is based on four five-note scales (pentatonic). Tezeta is a scale associated with "nostalgia and longing, the equivalent of blues or soul." Anchihoy is employed mainly in wedding songs, and as a jazz musician Gershon said he finds this scale congenial because of its inherent dissonance.

The song the group played to illustrate the scale bati had a propulsive, danceable beat. Shenkute snapped her fingers to it before reaching for the mike and beginning her vocal, which seemed to dive porpoiselike in and out of the instrumental accompaniment, sinking at times almost to inaudibility, then surging upward to a full-throated wail. The fourth scale, ambassel, also fits comfortably with modern jazz harmonies, Gershon said."

Ethiojazz' sets feet to tapping

A more technical description of Ethion music and how it's similar to Blues