more on that conversation between africa and the new world

powerful quote about the power of african music:

One of the most important events of the twentieth century was the marriage of African and European musical languages. It wasn’t just one marriage – but a series of marriages in the American South, in Cuba, in Jamaica, in Brazil, and, of course, Africa. There is something about each of the two music cultures that seems to need the other; European music provided harmonic progressions organized round a tonal centre – an idea which, once you’ve heard it, is irresistible. African music offered its polyrhythms, rhythms that occur in layers a kind of beat which, once heard, is hard to live without.’

Hard to live without. Africa is part of everyone’s life, whether they know it or not. Along with ivory, slaves, diamonds, gold and oil, it has given us the soundtrack of modernity.

granta: the many voices of africa