1. Introduction - 1.1 Overview

Before the subject of black music can be discussed, a basic definition has to be decided. For the purposes of the research, “black music” will describe Western black popular music and the term “African music” will describe music of Western Africa. Also, due to the subject of African music being outside the scope of the research, it will not be discussed at length in this dissertation. The different genres and musical elements categorised under the term “black music” cover a large spectrum of Western popular music, in their purest forms or merged with other genres. The existence of black music is known within the music industry and academia but it cannot be clearly distinguished by any succinct definition without exceptions. As popularity has increased, this elusive definition has become more difficult. Authors such as Paul Oliver, Olly Wilson and Simon Frith (Oliver, 1990; Wilson, 1983; Frith, 2007) have agreed that the origins of black popular music derived from Africa but in using that as an identifier, it would require calling all Africans black, which is genetically incorrect as Northern Africa is considered to be part of the “Arab world”. Because of this and other defining issues, some authors have refuted the idea of “black music” altogether (Oliver, 1990; McRobbie, 1999). Oliver, in his book “Black Music in Britain” (Oliver, 1990) looked deeper into the idea that black people carried a “supermusic” gene and made the point of interracial breeding and since slavery, people of darker skin tone would have bred with people of a lighter skin tone and if the notion that darker black people carried this gene more so than lighter skinned black people, that this gene would become less dominant over generations (Oliver, 1990). However, by looking at musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Charlie Parker of a darker tone we see or hear no relevant or distinguished superiority or even inferiority in their music or performance compared to those of a lighter hue such as Billie Holiday or Lester Young (Oliver, 1990). This shows that people of purely black ancestry are no better or “worthy” of playing what is called black music than those with a mixture of white (or more specifically European/Caucasian) in their ancestry. There is no supergene and therefore nothing is lost in the process