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Africanisms refers to characteristics of African culture that can be traced through societal practices and institutions of the African diaspora. Throughout history, the dispersed descendants of African people have retained many forms of their ancestral African culture. Also, common throughout history is the misunderstanding of these remittances and their meanings. The term usually refers to the cultural and linguistic practices of West Africa and who were transported to the Americas during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Africanisms have influenced the cultures of diverse countries in North America and South America and Caribbean through language, music, dance, food, animal husbandry, medicine, and folklore.
The language spoken by African Americans is greatly influenced by the phonological and syntactic structures of African languages. African American languages were not initially studied, because scholars thought Africans had no culture. "Recent linguistic studies define a language variously referred to as Black English, African American English, or, more appropriately, Ebonics."Holloway 68 Some West African languages do not explicitly distinguish past and present. Instead, context allows statements to be interpreted as past or present. The early language associated with cowboy culture was influenced by African phonology.Holloway 56 African words that became part of the American language include banana, jazz, boogie and zombie.
African-Americans in the United States continued some African naming traditions throughout slavery and beyond, including naming themselves for seasons or days of the week, and using more than one name in a lifetime.
African and African-American linguistic structures, as well as the traditions of rhythmic speech, call-and-response and verbal battles, developed into Rapping and hip-hop, which has had a global influence.
The Gullah dialect of English spoken in the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas has retained many African features.
The musical instrument the banjo was created by African American slaves, copied by memory from African instruments with similar names, like the 'bania' and 'banjo'. The slaves taught European-Americans how to play the instrument, and it became a mainstay of several genres of American music, including Bluegrass music and folk music. Other musical instruments of African origin, from the Bantu peoples culture of Angola, include drums, , , the washtub bass, jugs, , bells, rattles, Idiophone, and the lokoimni, a five-stringed harp.
African and European musical traditions came together in New Orleans, Missouri and Mississippi to create the foundation for jazz. In New Orleans, a city filled with people of French, Latin American, West Indian and African heritage, lighter-skinned Black Creoles sometimes trained as classical musicians, where they learned western music theory. Paid musicians in New Orleans in the late 19th century were generally of this Black Creole class. The African tradition of music as a public and collaborative event rather than a private performance helped create gatherings of musicians in New Orleans' Congo Square, where they combined French, Latin and African musical traditions to form early jazz. Ragtime, a late 19th century precursor to jazz, blended elements from minstrel-show songs, African American banjo styles, and the cakewalk with European music.
In Latin America, African influence could be heard as early as the 17th century in songs called Negritos, whose lyrics mixed Spanish and African languages and whose call and response patterns and rhythmic groupings came from Africa. Other African-influenced Latin music includes bachata, batucada, cha-cha-cha, conga, funk carioca, mambo, Tango music, Pachanga, reggaeton, rumba, samba, son, Salsa music, tropicalia, and zouk. In Argentina and Uruguay, African rhythms and practices influenced the development of candombe drumming and Tango music.
African cuisine was born in East Africa, the cradle of human civilization. From there, recipes, spices and culinary techniques spread through migration and trade to Asia, Europe and indigenous cultures of the Americas.Spivey
During the Transatlantic slave trade many foods accompanied enslaved people to the Southern United States including okra, and African rice. Okra is a green vegetable which may originally have been domesticated in Ethiopia or Egypt. It appears in a variety of soups, stews and rice dishes. Enslaved Africans passed their recipes on to their descendants, as well as to Southern whites. These dishes became known as soul food with origins in former slave states. Many of these recipes continue to be popular and became one of the most well-known aspects of African- American and Southern American culture.
The Louisiana dish 'gumbo' comes from the West African word for "okra", nkombo. Jambalaya and gumbo are similar to West African dishes such as dchebuchin, which originated in the Senegambian region.
African culinary traditions have had a substantial influence on Caribbean and Latin American cuisine, as can be seen and tasted in dishes such as mondongo (Chitterlings), fufu, giambo, sancocho, Picadillo tembleque, bean soups, chinchulines (another form of chitlins), and other dishes.
One dance that was adopted into the broader American culture is the Charleston. The Charleston was adapted from the ancient African dance of the Ashanti people. This dance and the Charleston have common movements. Similar dances were performed across the American South during slavery. "The Charleston is a dance that was performed by the descendants of African slaves in the American south. Like its sister vernacular form, jazz, from which it takes its rhythmic propulsion, it is a blend of African and European sources, and it has had a broad influence on American life and art. The name derives from the fact that the dance was supposedly seen performed by black dockworkers in Charleston, South Carolina. It is probable that they came from one of the black communities on an island off the coast."Lille 1 In 1923 the Charleston was made popular by African-American James P. Johnson.
Other popular dances of the 19th and 20th centuries with African-American roots include the cakewalk, the black bottom, the Lindy Hop, the jitterbug, the twist, Breakdancing and hip hop.
The African influence on Latin dance included polycentric rhythms and movement, bent knees and a downward focus, improvisation, whole foot steps, body isolations, and exaggerated hip movements. These influences combined with indigenous and European traditions to create many of today's Latin dances, including salsa, samba, mambo merengue and bachata. Capoeira is a popular Brazilian dance and Martial arts form derived from the Engolo tradition of Angola that was originally brought by enslaved people to South America. Argentinian Tango was heavily influenced by the dance traditions of Africans in Argentina and Uruguay.
The traditional Afro-Haitians dance Yanvalou has roots in the voudou traditions of Benin, West Africa. The dance, a fusion of multiple ethnic traditions, united diverse groups of African descendants in the fight against slavery, with its spinning, undulating movements echoing the flexibility necessary to resist slavery.
Some early enslaved Africans had been influenced by Portuguese Missionaries and brought Christian beliefs with them when they arrived in the Americas. But a scholar on the religion of enslaved people in North America, Albert J. Raboteau, has said "During the first 120 years of black slavery in British North America, Christianity made little headway in the slave population." Missionaries noted that slaves in the southern United States continued to hold on to African practices such as polygamy and "idolatrous dancing". During the Great Awakening religious revival of the 1740s, Christianity was increasingly adopted by enslaved people and used as a coping mechanism. Sects such as , , and Pentecostal supported education, spirituality, and political views. Christianity offered a way for African-Americans to interpret their oppression, and as Black Christian Churches proliferated, they became centers of hope and resistance, incorporating traditional African call-and-response techniques as a way to unite preacher and congregation with spirit. Others created a syncretic Christianity which held on to earlier African practices and beliefs. In the United States and Haiti, this blend of Christianity and African traditions created new spiritual practices, like Hoodoo, Louisiana Voodoo and Haitian Vodou
Historians have estimated that somewhere between 10% and 30% of the enslaved people brought to America between 1711 and 1808 were Muslims. These people brought practices of prayer, fasting, diet, naming traditions and knowledge of the Qur'an with them.
The Yoruba religion religion of Western Nigeria and of Dahomey has continued in religious practices in the Americas that survived the Transatlantic Slave Trade and are still practiced in Havanah, Salvador, Brazil, and in Hispanic barrios of certain cities of the United States, especially Miami and New York. Candomble is a Brazilian religion that combines Yoruba, Fon and Bantu beliefs. Santeria in Cuba combines Yoruba and Catholic Church beliefs and practices.
Scholar Joseph E. Holloway claims that the medical practices of the enslaved herbalists and root doctors who came to the Americas in the Colonial Era were "generally superior" to the European doctors of that time. An enslaved healer named Panpan was freed by Lieutenant Governor William Gooch because his herbal treatment was able to cure syphilis and yaws. Others were freed for developing herbal cures for a variety of ailments, including stomach problems and rattlesnake bites. Samson, the man who developed the rattlesnake bite cure, walked into the Commons House of Assembly in South Carolina in 1754 and pressed several rattlesnakes against his skin until they bit him. He then returned three days later, completely recovered, after using an herbal concoction to cure himself. He was freed and given a cash annuity for life. Enslaved Jane Minor was emancipated because of her medical expertise during an 1825 epidemic in Virginia and eventually ran her own hospital, using her earnings to free at least 16 slaves. Akan women used inoculation to prevent their children from getting yaws. African Midwife brought their skills to the New World; midwives delivered 90% of babies during the Antebellum South of the early 1800s.Holloway 53Stacy Hawkins Adams. " Jane Minor", Richmond Times Dispatch, February 23, 1999, D-1
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