Jay Z's Song Traditional African Americans

Africanism is a feature of language or culture regarded as characteristically African. The four Africanisms that will be listed are catergorized as oral, community, spirit, and matrifocal. These four cateories are all presented in the famoud Jay-Z’s music. These africanisms are all equally important in ones life. They all contribute to the building of a person in many ways. The most used african american core value carried from africa is oral tradition. Oral traditions were used many years ago, such as songs. Songs were song amongst African Americans ans passed down to family members and children. Modern oral tradtion today is music. According to Dr. Giddings “conventions include rhyming, repetition, tonal techniques, phrase and concept
Music is the most popluar way to protray spirit. In church we listen to a lot of upliftin and spiritual music protrays spirit excellently. Gospel music is the music that presents the most spirit but so does hip-hop. Accordin to Dr.Giddings Jay-Z presents spirituality in his song lucifer in his Black Album. He explains that we as people are money and power hungry and it is changing our morals and us as of people. He also expresses in his song traditional Africa American use such as Elijah Muhammad’s Black muslim “devil”. He uses this to show his “moral monstrosity” and to explain a metephor from the caucasian race, the metephor was used to explain enslavement along with racism. One of his metephors refer to chasing lucifer out of earth, when he states form of diamonds and lexuses. “No church in the wild” is a song prodiced by Jay-z that contains alot of spirituality, it adresses priest lying and how we glorify holidays instead of adressing the real meaning of them. “We love jusus,but you donr learned a lot from satan”. Jay-z’s raps have many religious statments that gets across to younger generations and those who choose not to listen to gospel. Spirit and religious is a core value that is still represented in music on a daily
Each of them are as equally important in forming us a people. I agree with oral tradition being an impotant value carried from many ansetore, because back in the day the only commincation they had was oral. Eventhough oral commincation can get mixed up once passed down, it has been part of our culture since the begginng of time. As for communal values they are important because the enviornment one grows up in is a representation of the person they are. The background of a person can explain how one acts tremendously, they either act as their surrounds, or the complete oppositie because they have learned what not to do to get different outcomes. Spirit and religion is also very important in our culture. Us as African Americans are known to attend church and beileve in a higher power reachin for faith. Matrifocal is important to African Amerians, having a strong black women in ones life is really empowering and motivating. Having a mother figure is really important, especially as an African American since life is hardeer because the color of our skin. As of now music protrays African Americans as “bitches” or “hoes”, we need to work on this value even more now, to bring music back to how Jay-Z protrayed