Pardon me if this is too serious a comment for this thread. But I feel the need to get right down to the real nitty gritty...

With regard to the article whose link I provided, that author wrote that cadence calls "takes lyrical fragments of social history and sets them to riffs and patterns hot-rodded from blues and rock & roll, and more distantly, the call-and-response of gospel and African music".

Given that the genres of blues, and rock & roll, and gospel, and African music" [as a broad brush generic category] all originate from Black folks [at least the type of gospel I believe the author is talking about] and given that Willie Duckworth [whose 1944 Sound Off chant is rightly considered the beginning of modern military cadence calls] is African American, and further given the fact that the other name for military cadence calls is "jodies" and the name "jodies" came from the African American literary character "Joe de organ grinder", given all this plus the mention of the call & response pattern and sexual braggadocio features of military cadence calls, it seems to me that it would be correct and proper to consider the genre of "cadence calls" as a part of African American cultural heritage. And if that goes too far, at the very least, it seems to me that it would be correct and proper to acknowledge that cadence calls are heavily influenced by African American cultural heritages.   

It also seems to me that people think that they have to tip toeing around the mention of race or be considered racist. One consequence of this is that recognition of the accomplishments of African Americans and other people of color may be "invisiblized".

Previously, recognition of Black accomplishments were discounted, trivilized, and/or invisiblized or claimed by others because the powers that be were indeed racist. And that beat is still going on today a lot of times and in a lot of places, though- I hasten to say-not on this particular Mudcat thread and not usually on other Mudcat threads.

For a number of reasons, I don't think it's a good thing to discount, trivilize, and indivisibilize Black accomplishments and the influence Black people have had on specific music genres and other parts of history and cultures.

For a number of reasons, I don't think it's a good thing that African American accomplishments & influences are claimed by others. I also don't think that it's a good thing that no acknowlegment of the racial background of folks is given at all since in this "White is the default race" world, many people will automatically think that White people were the creators of the primary influencers of whatever it is that folks are talking or reading about.

This is not to say that people of other races and cultures have had no part in the creation of blues, rock & roll, gospel, or military cadence calls. But, if truth were told, all of those genres have been and are now most heavily influenced by African American cultures and other Black cultures.

**

I just needed to say that.

You can take all of it or some of it or leave it all behind.


Azizi