Happy Kwanzaa

First off, I hope everyone is having an awesome holiday season spending time with friends and family. Kwanzaa starts today and I wanted to mention this often overlooked celebration. Kwanzaa is a seven day event with the typical candle-lighting, feasting and gift giving aspects we find at most holiday gatherings. Kwanzaa is a pan-African celebration and promotes ideals such as unity, cooperation, purpose and creativity. These are ideas I personally agree with and acknowledge, especially when listening to the heavily spiritual music that has come from Africa to shape music in America, much as Kwanzaa is a purely American holiday with strong roots in Africa.

The music I play owes a lot, directly and indirectly, to musical traditions which originated in Africa.

To sum up a semester's worth of ethno-musicology in one broad statement, you might say that music in Europe came about by written tradition, whereas African music centers largely around improvisation and group creativity. Given that fact, what we do in Frogs Gone Fishin' exists in a much more African, rather than European, context.

Beyond relying on group improvisation to make music, several of the genres and musical devices we employ come from Africa. Afro-beat, the blues, jazz, reggae, New Orleans, call-and-response melodies, syncopated rhythms, "dirty" sonic textures... all have their roots planted on the African continent.

So happy Kwanzaa everyone. I personally recommend going out and getting a Fela Kuti record to celebrate.

My next post will be the first in a series about starting a career in the music business and everything that might mean to you. Whether you'd like to perform, promote or sit in your bedroom and write songs for money, there will be a post for you sometime in the new year.