>>> Chris Doss >>>
Does suffering have a 4/4 rhythm, a I-IV-V chord progression, and a song structure involving alternating verses, choruses, and bridges? Does it use a pentatonic scale?
I don't know, but I suspect that -- given that slaveowners tried to wipe out traces of African tribal cultures, and hence African music, in their slaves -- "Black" music was derived almost totally from 19th-century "White" Southern folk and church music. Since that is the only stuff black people would have heard.
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CB: There are studies of this. Anthropologist Merville Herskovits finds African cultural survivals in African American culture. For example, Santaria.
Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka and Angela Davis disagree with your speculation of no African culturalness to Black American music.