Harmony and Howling — African and European Roots of Jamaican Music

Harmony and Howling — African and European Roots of Jamaican Music

English colonial rule began in Jamaica in the year 1655. The growth of a plantation culture in the West Indies quickly changed the need for labor in the area. Between 1700 and 1786, more than 600,000 African slaves were brought to Jamaica. These slaves were required to work for their English colonial masters who would purchase them from slave traders at various ports around the island.

Slaves were abducted from various regions of Africa, and brought over to the New World in large boats, packed to the teeth with the Africans. The slave trade over the Atlantic served as a connection between the West Indies- islands in the Caribbean, and what was to become the United states. In fact there was a large amount of interchange of slaves between these two regions. Therefore, an American reader with an understanding of the Atlantic slave trade in his own history will have some sort of an understanding of how this system worked.

Slavery was not a system designed to accomidate freewill. Slaves were literally kidnapped from Africa, and as soon as they were in custody of slave traders they were assigned a submissive position under the white and Arabian merchants. When the slaves entered the New World, they remained in this submissive role and were forced into labor. Any freewill was instantly compromised the moment a shackle was placed around the limb of an African.

European, Spanish, and Arab slave traders did not particularly like the Africans who were "volunteered" into slavery. Their actions, which were considered ugly and unacceptable reinforced their submissive position under the Europeans. An example of this kind of thought is the practice some African people had of "picking lice off their heads, with their fingers, putting them in their mouth and eating them." According to this slave trader, monkeys "had a parallel custom." Observations such as these reinforced the stereotype of slaves being monkeys. This is an example of how blacks, in a white mind, could descend to the level of an animal.

Today we have a term for this: Ethnocentrism, but in the days of slavery this European view drawn from their own culture only served to further compromise the dignity of the Africans in the slave trade. This degrading view of Africans also made the moral aspect of slavery easier to digest. The E...

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...ngs that created Reggae music. This music came out of a struggle between black and white, and the return to Africa reinforces the black nature of the music, almost subjecting the European tradition to a submissive role. In this respect Reggae music is a response to the European traditions that were inflicted onto black slaves in Colonial times in an unjust manner.

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The exploitation and eventually liberation of the Jamaican people have produced a very unique social condition. Reggae music is an optimistic answer to the history of oppression that draws upon the past, and uses it as a resource. In order for there to be a good future, the past must be considered and accepted. There is no way to right the wrongs of Jamaican history, but there is a way to promote awareness of these wrongs.

The harmony that exists in reggae music between African and European tradition is a symbol for how it should exist in the world, and perhaps it is a map of how to get there. If two different combating traditions can exist in one music, then it is very possible for them to exist in every other facet of our society. Is this possible? What one person considers a howl is another's harmony.