| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Now, Muslims also invented the blues |
| 2004-08-15 |
| Sylviane Diouf knows her audience might be skeptical, so to demonstrate the connection between Islam and American blues music, she'll play two recordings: The Muslim call to prayer (the religious recitation that's heard from mosques around the world), and "Levee Camp Holler" an early type of blues song that first sprang up in the Mississippi Delta more than 100 years ago. "Levee Camp Holler" is no ordinary song. It's the product of ex-slaves who worked moving earth all day in post-Civil War America. The version that Diouf uses in presentations has lyrics that, like the call to prayer, speak about a glorious God. ("Well, Lord, I woke up this mornin', man, I feelin' bad . . . Well, I was thinkin' 'bout the good times, Lord, I once have had.") But it's the song's melody and note changes that closely parallel one of Islam's best-known refrains. As in the call to prayer, "Levee Camp Holler" emphasizes words that seem to quiver and shake in the reciter's vocal chords. Dramatic changes in musical scales punctuate both "Levee Camp Holler" and the call to prayer. A nasal intonation is evident in both. "I did a talk a few years ago at Harvard where I played those two things, and the room absolutely exploded in clapping, because (the connection) was obvious," says Diouf, an author and scholar who is also a researcher at New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. "People were saying, 'Wow. That's really audible. It's really there.' " |
| Posted by:TS(vice girl) |
| #15 Ala 'How Blue Can You Get' by BB King: "Nobody loves me but my Allah, "And He may be jivin' too..." |
| Posted by: borgboy 2004-08-15 6:18:14 PM |
| #14 #5 And the hard core fellows have banned music entirely and even frown on kite-flying. They opt instead for kike-frying. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-15 6:14:56 PM |
| #13 "Oh Fatima, tell your children not to manage convenience stores" LOL |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-08-15 6:08:05 PM |
| #12 Mosque of the Desert Sun There is a mosque in Medina they call the holiest one It's been the ruin of many a pilgrim and Allah knows I'm one My mother wore the full hajib she stitched my keffiyah my father was a firebrand cleric way down there in Mecca Now the only thing an Imam needs is a muezzin and Qur'an and the only time that he's in paradise is when he's martyring another man Oh Fatima, tell your children not to manage convenience stores to spend their life amongst infidels and make eyes at their whores I've got one arm in my bomb vest the other's got a sprain I struggled when they tied it down to scan me for a brain There is a mosque in Medina they call the holiest one It's been the ruin of many a pilgrim and Allah knows I'm one |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-15 6:04:49 PM |
| #11 I thought the blues were invented last year in North Korea. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-08-15 5:29:22 PM |
| #10 Ya gotta jump down [hhnh] spin around [hhnh] and pick a bale of fatwas ... Ya gotta jump down [hhnh] spin around [hhnh] and pick a bale of surahs too. [/FST] |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-15 5:26:32 PM |
| #9 LOL WOT It reminds me of that old EU song..... I'm not working in on the railroad! Not for 10 more days! Someones in the kitchen with Kerry Someone I know I know! Someones in the kitchen with Kerry! Selling off the country we know! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-08-15 3:50:44 PM |
| #8 Like the lyrics Abdul and it's got a fair beat to it.... |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-08-15 3:45:36 PM |
| #7 Oh my house blew up My metal shop blew up My truck blew up My wife blew up My kids blew up My goat blew up And I blame it On the Joooooooooooos |
| Posted by: Abdul 2004-08-15 12:57:31 PM |
| #6 Well. at least we can ALL agree that THEY invented the Internet and not Al Gore. |
| Posted by: 98zulu 2004-08-15 12:54:16 PM |
| #5 If Muslims invented the Blues it would be just another thing invented and then forgotten by Islam in their quest to be the low tier culture in the world. What happened to the mythical Golden Age of Islam? Once Arab traders were everywhere. Once Arabs invented Algebra and preserved great writings. Once they developed the Blues. Now they have one product to sell and don't have the technology to drill it without help. They haven't invented anything in over a thousand years. And the hard core fellows have banned music entirely and even frown on kite-flying. |
| Posted by: Yank 2004-08-15 11:57:09 AM |
| #4 The connection between Hollerin' and Blues is tenuous at best. Never mind that white folk in hill country did more Hollerin' than blacks on the levees of Mississippi. |
| Posted by: Asedwich 2004-08-15 11:54:43 AM |
| #3 John Lee al-Hookah |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-08-15 11:45:57 AM |
| #2 everyone knows Kim Jong-Il invented music! A sea of fire upon these pretenders! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-08-15 11:01:40 AM |
| #1 Jeebus Cripes - they're just like the Soviets were, claiming they invented/discovered everything. Next they'll claim they invented air, too. And probably demand reparations from us for breathing it. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-08-15 10:53:50 AM |