The Impact of African Music

There are so many styles of music that are played in Africa. Ranging from Griot, Mbalax Reggae, and they even took in the Salsa. Now not all of these musical traditions started in Africa like Salsa and Reggae but they did spread to African areas. Some traditions come straight from Africa like Mbalax and Griot which are very important to Africa because Griot for instance is how they can tell stories of their past in song form. But they still have to play the song on something so they have their own instruments too! Ranging from the armpit drum and the sanza to the lute and the balafon. Africans tend to use a lot of percussion in their songs like small bongos, congos, or drums leaving their songs with a strong, solid, and funky beat.

African has been and will continue to influence many other types of music. Varying from rock and roll, jazz, the blues, and even modern pop, African music has traces in all kinds of music. In fact, there are not many genres that do not have even just a little bit of African ancestry.

Rock and roll is a genre that was started in the late 1940s and became especially large in the 1950s. MAny artists contributed to the fame of this infamous genre like Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis but by far the person that made it so big was the famous Elvis Presley. Rock and roll practically owes itself to African music because of how much it contributed. IF you added a perfect amount swing and boogie-woogie with a deep African rhythm and blues, you'd get rock and roll. Without its African traces, rock and roll would've never really been a thing which would literally mean that there would be no other types of rock genres today like rock opera from Queen, glam rock from David Bowie, psychedelic rock from Jimi Hendrix, or even folk rock from artists like Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. This just shows how important African music is in every music kinds history.

Well I said that rock and roll was the kind of music that started most of our music that we have today, but do you know what mainly started rock and roll? The blues. I'd say that the blues may be the most influential music of all time.Starting with just a simple percussion beat and a slow bass line, the blues doesn't just have traces of African music in it, it was started in Africa back in the early 1900s. The reason that so many people in Africa loved the blues and to write more blues songs because the blues is a way to get out what is bothering you or angering you hence the name the blues. The blues have grown so much since then to make so many different music types like rock and roll. As you can see, African music is so influential in all music types of the world.