African blues

African blues is a genre of popular music, primarily from West Africa. The term may also reference a putative journey undertaken by traditional African music from its homeland to the United States and back.^[1] Some^[which?] scholars and ethnomusicologists have speculated that the origins of the blues can be traced to the musical traditions of Africa, as retained by African-Americans during and after slavery.^[2] Even though the blues is a key component of American popular music, its rural, African-American origins are largely undocumented, and its stylistic links with African instrumental traditions are somewhat tenuous.^[3] One musical influence that can be traced back to African sources is that of the plantation work songs with their call-and-response format, and more especially the relatively free-form field hollers of the later sharecroppers, which seem to have been directly responsible for the characteristic vocal style of the blues.^[3]

Albums such as African Blues by Ali Farka Toure have a noticeable African and American Blues influence.^[clarify] The death of Malian guitar legend Ali Farka Touré has inspired a new round of speculation about the roots of the blues in Africa. Touré famously argued that the beloved American genre was "nothing but African", a bold assertion. The question has received extensive scholarly attention in Gerhard Kubik's book Africa and the Blues, and in Paul Oliver's Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues.^[2]