When many people think of African music, music in Africa, or music in the African diaspora, the first ideas, images, and sounds that come to mind are often of rhythm, drums, and dancing bodies. These perceptions are likely rooted in two sources: (1) emblematic African and African-derived genres such as West African drumming, funk, salsa, Brazilian samba, and some forms of jazz do feature these notions prominently; and, more importantly, (2) preconceived essentialized notions about Africa have been fueled over centuries of contact between the "West," Africa, and the African diaspora. These notions are, of course, problematic, as they reduce and often portray Africa and the diaspora as primitive, exotic, and monolithic.
In,
Africanness in Action author Juan Diego D�az explores this dynamic through the perspectives of black musicians in Bahia, Brazil. Bahia, historically the center of slave trade in the Americas and a province which today is strongly influenced by Afro-Brazilian culture, is a rich site to explore musical constructions of Africa due to the existence of a thriving African-derived culture that has been historically intertwined with discourses of black primitivism and empowerment. In exploring how musicians engage with notions of Africanness and blackness, D�az argues that black musicians from Bahia assert Afro-Brazilian identities, promote social change, articulate critiques to racial inequality, and connect to the African continent and other diasporic locales by creatively engaging essentialized tropes about African music and culture. Instead of mechanically reproducing these notions, musicians demonstrate agency by strategically emphasizing or downplaying them.
