Black Roots Music

Narratives

Gaby Moreno recently visited Fantastic Negrito at Blackball Universe in Oakland. Since moving to Los Angeles from her native Gautemala, Gaby won a Latin Grammy for Best New Artist. Her music has strong Black Roots influences. Fantastic Negrito later touched on this.

Fantastic Negrito: Every time I tour overseas to different countries, I notice one thing: they're playing Black music. So it's weird. And I get to another country, and it's still Black music with a different language. So what I learned was that as Black people - our history in terms of slavery and what we've gone through - our music is all over the world. I don't think people even know it. It's everywhere. 

It went to Latino people. It went to white people in England. It went to the French. But it's amazing. Think about music without slavery - what would that even be like? One of my favorite stories is playing a small place in England. We thought we could just be loose. We weren't expecting anything from that show. But in walks the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. He stood and watched our entire show. And afterwards, the conversation we had was about Black roots music. He's a white man - from middle-class England - and basically took this music that came from slaves. And that's fascinating about art and different cultures. And it's powerful.

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