African Culture In The Americas

Katso Sebina
1623703
Tutor: M Suriano
Tutorial group: H
The effect of the African Diaspora on cultural continuity in the Americas
The African diaspora in the Atlantic world, specifically in the Americas, brought about the alteration, preservation and transmission of African culture to new environments through the transatlantic slave trade. Among the settlements of the Americas, the influence of African culture can be vividly seen in various aspects of cultural forms. These cultural forms include languages, music, spiritual beliefs, martial arts and many other cultural aspects such as food. The influence of African culture and customs will further be discussed in order to depict their presence in the Americas. The advancement of localised regions

This also extended to martial arts. Firstly, in the coastal regions of the Americas, specifically Brazil, Upper Guinean slaves embraced their core beliefs. Their major belief was that there was a single creator, whose name varied in societies, who made all natural and supernatural entities. This belief system spread throughout the eastern coastal areas of South America. Secondly, Central Africans made a major contribution to cultural forms through martial arts and the spiritual underpinnings. These martial arts are of paramount significance in the Americas as they were thriving in areas where Central Africans did not contribute to much of the enslaved African populations. Central African cosmology linked combat with the interplay of spiritual forces from across the kalunga, the threshold between the realms of the living and the dead as well as the sea, rivers and God. The East was linked to conception while the North represented maleness, noon and one’s peak of strength. Kalunga was adapted in North America as knocking and kicking, and Kalunga became, much like batuque, a national symbol of Brazil. In combat, a counter clockwise motion was thought to bring the fighter or warrior into contact with supernatural power from across the kalunga (known as the danmye secrets) and that the fighter would have access to ancestral power that was believed to be able to paralyze the fighter’s opponent. Knocking and kicking was practiced by African-American secret societies and performed a dance that was accompanied by African polyrhythmic patterns. These activities sparked possession that was manifested by jumps, kicks and bodily contortions. Such rituals were the result of the immense extent of Central African culture, beliefs and