Slavery brought into contact people from different origins in radically new situations which were characterised by intense violence and absolute domination. Yet these contacts, in spite of the environment of brutality and oppression in which they took place, generated dynamics of blending and creation the outcome of which was the emergence of new expressive forms, especially in music. This article aims at providing a comparative analysis of the social and musical processes which, within the context of slave and post-slavery societies, underpinned the invention of original musics in the United States and South Africa.
slavery; memory; "world music"; mass culture; creolization; diasporas