“Siftings of Centuries”: Language and Melody in West Africa and its Diaspora

FAIN: FEL-283020-22

Aaron Michael Carter-Enyi
Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA 30314-3776)

Research and writing leading to an open-access digital book on West African melody and its cultural retentions in African American music. 

What do Händel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”, Èkwúèmé’s “Óbi Di´m`kpa´” and the African-American spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” have in common? They are all great music—yet, their melodies defy concepts of “good” composition taught in US music courses. This project is based on field research on the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family of ethnolinguistic cultures, concentrated in the densely populated coastal region of southern Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon. This region was known as the “Slave Coast” and has hundreds of tone languages, including Ìgbò and Yorùbá. These cultures have had a global influence on music through the African diaspora. This project synthesizes a decade of qualitative and quantitative research into an open scholarly resource on West African melody and cultural retentions in African-American music.