Re: Re: WAR and Curtis Mayfield

Simon Brown (zcfbm25@ucl.ac.uk)
Mon, 03 Jul 1995 19:16:35 +0100


Bizarrely enough African and Middle-Eastern music sound very similar and
this might not just be attributed to geographical proximity, but also to
rather interesting goings on in history. This, by the way, is half
remembered stuff I saw on a programme either on C4 or BBC2 (in England)
about Flamenco! It seems that the Moors, in spreading Islam across from the
Middle-East to Spain by the 15th century, took with them their musical
styles and fused them with the local styles. Thus the gypsy style flamenco
of Andalusia in Spain and traditional East European music eg. Hungarian and
Turkish, bear more than a passing resemblance to each other in chordal and
modal structure, or something. Basically this marks the fusion of music
types across national and continental boundaries. Except this was about
600-800 years ago! Seems that history repeats itself as this is exactly what
happened with the blues (brought across from Africa to the cotton-fields of
America) and now in a slightly less oppressive form eg. no religious
coercion, no slavery - (except to the rhythm) with our own, dear, acid-jazz.

By the way, I don't quite understand how this is linked to WAR and Curtis
Mayfield.

I just bought a Curtis CD with the long version of Move On Up on and it is
absolutely FANTASTIC. Even better than Move On Up is the track Don't Worry
(if there's hell below we're all gonna go). Normally songs with messages are
corny but, sorry guys, this song is SO GOOD!!! All the time I'm humming it
to myself! (sad or what?). And the weird echo on his voice when he says
'gonna go' sends shivers down my spine. OUCH!

Better take a cold shower now - see y'all soon,

Simon

P.S. Go to the Blue Note Allstars Jam on Wednesday at the Blue Note Club, 1
Hoxton Square, London. As we used to say up in Manchester, "It's ace"
But then again we had no life...