Morgan Stevenson Cooper explains how African polyrhythms, which layered twos against threes, sounded alien to European ears and were deemed wrong. This cultural bias toward European musical logic helped justify the slave trade. Music, he argues, was spiritual fuel for freedom.
Our musical expectations are governed by where we're from. Pitting twos against threes in this manner was foreign to the European practice. What the Africans heard is music. Europeans heard as wrong, alien, uncivilized. When the Europeans came to impose their will upon the Africans, these cultural biases played no small part in their justification for what would become the most atrocious imposition in human history. The transatlantic slave trade. There's a.
Bigger evil hand in keeping somebody from feeling that a thousand percent. Because music speaks to our spirit. Music motivates people. Music's like freedom.
