"Black Music”, by Leroi Jones, speaks on different aspects related to black music and what exactly he thinks it is. It’s basically his opinion; however, he incites arguments that cannot be overlooked. One argument in particular deals with “cultural rape.” “The slave ship destroyed a great many formal art traditions of the Black man. The white enforced such cultural rape. A ‘cultureless’ people is a people without a memory. No history. This is the best state for slaves; to be objects, just like the rest of massa’s possessions.” Jones continues to argue that “the breakdown of Black cultural tradition meant finally the destruction of most formal art and social tradition. Including the breakdown of the Black pre-American religious forms. Forcibly so. Christianity replaced African religions as the outlet for spirit worship.”
“Another such reference, or such stripping, is an American phenomenon, i.e., it is something that affected all of America, in fact the entire West. This, of course, is the loss of religiosity in the West, in general.”
If you have no memory, no history, you’re an object. Objects don’t have feelings much less opinions between right and wrong or religion versus spirituality.
I don’t have a problem that Christianity replaced African religions as the outlet for spirit worship because I believe, from my Christian (for lack of a better word) upbringing, that there is only “One God, One Spirit and One Baptism. Biblically speaking, God usually persecuted or put “His people” in bondage or captivity after He tried other means of trying to get through to them. The people went astray and followed other gods/spirits. This happened with the Israelites and I’m convinced the same thing happened with the Africans as well.
What I do have a problem with is authenticity. The original names of people and places have been completed Westernized and because of this, has lost a lot of depth and meaning. Religion has taken the place of spirituality. Yehoshua (the real name for Jesus) plainly stated in the scriptures to worship God in Spirit and in truth. Religion is a set of man-made rules and dogmas. Every religion claims they have “the truth” whereas the truth is Yehoshua ha Meshach (Jesus the Christ).
The problem isn’t only the” loss of religiosity in the West”; it’s the loss of knowing who God is in the world.
-- David Severin
