The African Heritage: Going to My Roots
Written and composed by Lamont Dozier, “Going to My Roots” celebrates African roots in America.
In 1974, the Black South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela and the white American producer Stewart Levine decided to organize a festival in Kinshasa, Zaire, alongside the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, then the reigning heavyweight world champion. Masekela and Levine met in 1963 at the Manhattan School of Music, where they studied with pianist Herbie Hancock and trumpeter Donald Byrd. From that meeting grew a close friendship and a remarkable collaboration that quickly found success. In 1968, Masekela released “Grazin’ In the Grass,” a clever mix of R&B, jazz, and grooves from South African townships produced by Levine.
That track, now viewed as a classic, reached the top spot on the American pop charts and sold over two million copies that year. Six years later, recognized for their work as an artist and producer, they approached Don King, promoter of the fight, to present their plan. Inspired by the Festival of Black Arts launched in Dakar in 1966 by the author, poet, and president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Zaire 74 was imagined as a Pan-African festival celebrating Black identity at a time when African peoples were just emerging from European colonial rule. For the African American artists invited, it was also a homecoming to the land from which their ancestors had been taken.
The Zaire 74 festival ran for three days. Thirty-one groups appeared onstage between September 22 and 24. On the American side, there were James Brown, the Cuban performer Celia Cruz, The Spinners, Bill Withers, Sister Sledge, and B.B. King, while the African continent was represented by the Congolese singer Abeti and her compatriot Tabu Ley Rochereau, the South African Miriam Makeba—who, like Hugh Masekela, opposed Apartheid—and the Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango, among others. The festival was a great success, much like the boxing match, which drew millions of television viewers worldwide.
A high point of those three days was undoubtedly James Brown, backed by the full JBs, performing “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” which the crowd at the 20th of May Stadium sang along with. After returning to the United States, Masekela decided to produce a piece paying tribute to that Pan-African gathering. Written and composed by Lamont Dozier, “Going Back to My Roots” is a celebration of African roots in America. The song concludes with a Yoruba chorus, Yoruba being the language of many of the Africans from whom African Americans descend.
Between 1525 and 1867, it is estimated that 11 to 15 million Africans were deported to the Americas under inhumane conditions. They came from groups such as the Thonga, Barumbi, Ashanti, Ibo, Yoruba, Ovimbundu, Fang, or Bataké, each with its own social and cultural legacy. Their societies contained multiple languages, customs, religions, institutions, political structures, and economic systems; contrary to a common belief, they did not simply yield to the oppressor by abandoning their African heritage. Despite this diversity, important similarities emerged. Cameroonian musician Francis Bebey demonstrated how vital musical activity was across the continent. Community experience was fundamental, and music in African societies included songs, dances, stories, and games devised to pass on cultural values.
Music was part of ceremonies and daily life: children’s games were a type of education that was hardly frivolous. Indeed, these musical activities could be found in all areas of work—farming, fishing, hunting—and in events such as marriage, burial rites, and dancing. Drummer Kwame Steve Cobb, who played with Roy Ayers, Thelma Houston, Jerry Butler, and Ramsey Lewis, recalled, “Music was an integral part of day-to-day life for Black people. Every piece of music we heard contained the community’s historical memory. Griots, for their part, also had a major role as social critics, chroniclers, and musicians who helped resolve disputes.” As Bosco later explained about his own approach, the experience of Black people worldwide led him to create music aimed at sending a message back to the diaspora in the United States.
Music plays a central role in education by transmitting cultural values from one generation to another, and it also acts as a tool for social critique. Through music, people were able to denounce wrongs and injustices without incurring punishment. In the 17th century, for instance, in the Kingdom of Dahomey (today’s Benin), inhabitants held a yearly ceremony during which they improvised songs criticizing unfair laws and protesting the abuses they faced. The names of oppressors were never openly stated, but the crowd clearly knew who was being referenced. This way of challenging injustice through singing did not vanish when African descendants created music in America—spirituals, blues, and hip-hop testify to that, along with the devastating legacy of slavery. “If it’s not to reflect the times, the realities that we live, and what we can overcome through our art—things millions of people can’t say—then what’s it for?” declared Nina Simone.
Another element in the societies from which Africans were taken to the Americas is that there is no recognized institutional concept of music training in certain languages like Swahili or Douala in Cameroon. “Music is such a natural part of a person that there is no word to define it apart from that person,” it is said. Equally, detailed systems of instruction did not necessarily exist among African cultures. Every individual could be a musician since “music belongs to everyone.” This principle survived deportation and slavery in African American communities, as Nina Simone recalled: “From childhood, music was present in my everyday life. My family joined in making music with me. We learned it informally, the way we learned to walk or talk.” Or, as anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston—one of the first African American women to collect and write down songs and dances from the African diaspora—put it: “Any time there was news, there seemed to be a song that went with it. I never knew a Black preacher who didn’t come out with a stirring tune that answered a deep-seated need.”
Those same cultures preserved the tradition of improvisation as a cornerstone of Black music, letting each person express what they felt at a given moment. In communities where tradition was generally passed on orally, interpretation constantly shifted. A griot would never perform the same piece identically for a European audience. His creative focus was on the present moment, so the musical experience was always embedded in reality. Its reason for being was to mirror regular life and mattered only if it was shared. “It’s a pragmatic music, always renewed by daily life. Sentimentality, typical of certain ‘art’ music traditions, is set aside. As it expands, it sticks to real life.”
Music held even greater significance in West African societies, where languages like Yoruba or Akan are tonal. A single syllable can carry several meanings, depending on its inflection. In these cultures, certain songs were learned as a form of oration, sometimes performed before an assembly. Their effectiveness came from how the group interpreted them, and the words themselves were crucial because they safeguarded the community’s historical memory. The griot was master of the spoken word. Each locale had its own griot—often two—acting as commentator, historian, and musician, thereby easing social conflicts.
A similar figure existed in some European contexts: “Some were attached to a king or a dignitary, while others roamed from one village to another, spreading news. They were the keepers of tradition, responsible for rites and festivities.” Praise or protest—like in blues or hip-hop—was aired through their songs, depending on the circumstances. The Gambian griot Alex Haley, author of an autobiography, illustrated the role that such figures played in African American life. In the 18th century, some colonists observed that “certain griots were legends who could speak for three days straight without repeating themselves.”
African heritage is also seen in the forms and methods within African American music. One key element—call-and-response—includes improvised solos based on the moment or more rehearsed choruses in harmony. In most African or African-influenced settings, polyphony is highly developed. This tradition carries throughout the diaspora, from the Caribbean to Brazil and into the United States: “It is a communal approach that enables everyone present to help shape what is going on. Dancing, worship, labor, conversation—everything can fall into this participatory style, conveyed through mingled polyrhythms and polyphony.” In African life, polyphony appeared in songs and tasks that dealt with agriculture and gatherings.
This same call-and-response repetition, combined with improvisation, reappears in African American music, notably gospel, jazz, and hip-hop. In West Africa as well, multi-part singing was considered one of the most accomplished techniques, as shown by the African American vocalist R.H. Harris with The Soul Stirrers. He influenced Sam Cooke, who in turn inspired James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green. Their vocal skill symbolized Black masculinity in mid-century America. That symbol was hardly trivial within a society that labeled Black men as dangerous. As a certain researcher and pastor has pointed out, singing carried “the moral ambition in the Black community to move beyond imposed limits and reach a greater level of attainment.”
Nonetheless, vocal music remains at the heart of African musical expression without disregarding instruments. The voice is the primary means of preserving the spoken language, of conveying joys and sorrows, just as other instruments—tambourines, harps, xylophones, fiddles, or the banjar (ancestor of the banjo)—can fulfill the structure and melody, often in intricate interplay with a vocal line. In contrast to Europe, where the conductor can be dominant, in Africa, there might not be a single leader (whether for tempo or melody). This equilibrium is another characteristic of African and diaspora music. Harmony itself appears in African American music; Sidney Bechet noted it, and Jelly Roll Morton explained that jazz already existed in varied forms before it emerged openly in the United States.
Rhythms are present everywhere in African music. The drum-making craft is exceptionally refined among many African peoples, reaching an unrivaled level of perfection in heavily wooded intertropical zones like Cameroon or Congo. In The Story of Jazz, Langston Hughes notes that “in numerous African countries, you find orchestras made up entirely of drums of all shapes and sizes. Each drummer might maintain a unique rhythm, yet they all come together in a shared beat.” Hand claps, calls, foot stomping, and, of course, dance enrich the percussion. “We are a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets,” wrote the 18th-century abolitionist Olaudah Equiano in describing Ibo culture. Accordingly, any important event—such as a successful homecoming for warriors or other reasons for communal festivities—was commemorated through public dancing, with music and songs adapted to the occasion.
By dancing, one can pay homage to a benefactor, express reverence for a superior, claim one’s own superiority, or settle differences with a neighbor. This customary use of dance to tighten community bonds is at the core of African American music. “[The] sense of dance has always been part of my musical approach,” noted trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in his autobiography. In his view, knowing how to move gracefully and find your place was indispensable to playing jazz; each needed the other. He added, “Jazz must be a music you can dance to.” Langston Hughes echoed this sentiment: “Jazz is a music that triggers movement, which leads to dance; it is not just something you hear.”