Afropop Worldwide Folgen

There’s been a lot of speculation about the chain of musical events that link the blues back to Africa. Most of that chain is unrecorded and shrouded in mystery. But there is one chapter, just before the blues, that we do know quite a lot about. That’s the history of African-American string bands. This program explores the history, with music and memories from a special guest: the late string maestro Howard Armstrong. Along the way, we hear music from Canray Fontenot, Blind James Campbell, Hobard Smith and other legends of this little-known chapter in American folk and popular music. Produced by Banning Eyre. APWW #326

The season of Carnival (Carnaval), in Guadeloupe brings the unmistakable sounds of music from the local culture clubs to the streets like no other carnival in the world. Every Sunday from the new year to Ash Wednesday, The islanders take turns showing off their cultural traditions. Enslaved Africans, were prohibited from assembling because of Article 16 of the “Code Noir” promulgated by the King of France, Louis XIV, in 1685. After the abolition of slavery on the islands in 1848, They have been reorganizing by marching the streets with displays of traces of pre-colonial Arawak sounds of conches and the drumming and the singing of chants of their traditional folk music called Gwoka. In Pointe-à-Pitre “Ben Démaré" or in the sea, is a purification ritual for the “skin clubs”, which kicks off Carnival. Young men take to the streets with traditional whips used on their ancestors during enslavement and have created a counter-culture in their display of whipping the ground - reconciling the past present, and future. Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe was a special guest of Harry Durimel, the environmental lawyer and Mayor of Point a Pitre, and she experienced the Carnival, or Mas as it is called in Guadeloupe, from a unique perspective. She was at Place de la Victoire on Dimanche Gras the biggest gathering of the islands, bringing thousands onto the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre in the run-up to Lent. Produced by Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe. PA #012

This program traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own. Rhiannon Giddens, Bassekou Kouyate, Bela Fleck and more talk claw-hammers, trad jazz, Appalachian folk, African ancestors and the on-going story of American music, which would be woefully incomplete without a Black history of the banjo. Produced by Ben Richmond.