The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166713   Message #4011305
Posted By: Desert Dancer
30-Sep-19 - 10:45 PM
Thread Name: What Islam Gave the Blues
Subject: RE: What Islam Gave the Blues
From the comments on the post on Facebook:

Stephen Winick: This isn't good analysis. She enumerates features that are characteristic of "reciting and singing in the Islamic world," but not distinctive to them; Irish Sean-Nos singing has all these same features, for example. Apart from that, she doesn't give any evidence that isn't purely subjective: "the holler sounds (to me) like the call to prayer." An ethnomusicologist trying to make this argument would analyze the two pieces musically to determine how alike they really are, not just claim you can barely tell them apart!

Even if they are quite alike, people point out (for example) the similarities between Gaelic and Chinese music without suggesting a direct historical link. So the similarity wouldn't be proof of a historical connection, but it would be a starting place.