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“This book represents without [a] doubt one of the most important contributions in the field of Afro-Brazilian music, and this [is] not merely with regard to the rich material and the facts it presents, but also to the type of approach which the author makes it convincingly clear is appropriate to the study of Black African cultures transplanted overseas…. It is because of all this that apart from being a contribution of fundamental importance to Brazilian musicology, [this book…] has the merit of being a work equally recommendable to all scholars and people interested in the field of human sciences who may be engaged in research or investigations into Afro-Brazilian culture in its most varied aspects.”
—African Music
The transplantation of African musical cultures to the Americas was a multi-track and multi-time process. In the past many historical studies of African diaspora music, dance and other aspects of expressive culture concentrated on events in the Americas. What happened before the American trauma and simultaneously in Africa was examined un-historically. In this book, ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik considers African music and dance forms as the products of people living in various African cultures which have changed continuously in history, absorbing and processing elements from inside and outside the continent. African diaspora music then appears as a consequent and creative extension overseas of African musical cultures that have existed in the period between the sixteenth and the twentieth century. Using field research and documentary sources, Kubik tracks down the Angolan dimension in the panorama of African cultures in Brazil, and addresses methodology in the wider African diaspora.