Hail up Queen True, I especially liked the music you choose for your site, deep inner rhythm and the poetry of "Jah" music has a special potent affect on African consciousness. Which is why Hip-Hop can be traced back to it.
Many say Buju Banton sounds like a Lion speaking, we must realize there is a specific reason why such tones have an effect. The head chiefs who often lead African spiritual ceremonies also had deep raspy voices. The strength in a Man's voice is likened to the strength of a rope, the thicker it is, the more it can hold.
Thus in a spiritual ceremony a strong male voice is used to "invoke" the response from the Females. Some have even suggested that a strong enough voice can cause a Woman to climax- going back to sex magic, a Male with that ability is King. Remember the voices of Barry White and even Teddy Pendergrass had a profound affect on the female gender, and still does. When Teddy yells "turn it off!" in the song "Turn off the lights" That is the summoning voice of the Male African King, it is the same voice used to command the winds, and the same voice used for the mythical Jesus Christ who also commanded nature in the same way African Shaman still do today.
The voices of Tupac, Biggie, Jah Rule, DMX, even Busta Rhymes owe their worth to the Spiritual Males of Africa who designed the strong voice as a template of spiritual power. Also known as the "lion's roar" this heavy tone for speaking was also needed to speak above the sounds of drumming.
But you know some of our best "invokers" in this culture were actually blues and jazz singers. Take Robert Johnson for example, so many people living will tell us this Man indeed sold his soul to the Devil. Some would even swear to it.
According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery's plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson, tuned the guitar so that he could play anything that he wanted, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within less than a year's time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.
There's a scene in the movie "Black Snake Moan" with Samuel L. Jackson that demonstrates perfectly when most folks truly believe Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, it was because of the affect his music had on people.
What happened? When Johnson played his guitar, people who were known for being sinless, saved, Christian, of the lord- in christ- started dancing seductively, sometimes stripping, pouring drinks on themselves, grinding on their partners....why? It had to be the Devil, it just had to be. Because what would turn good Christian folks out like that?
In this piece the Devil is played by a Black Woman, which perhaps is more accurate in the context of the Goddesses of Africa that can be invoked by musicians for musical knowledge. Hathor comes to mind.
But it's this very spirit in blues and jazz that MJ tried to recapture in Thriller, and the unsuccessful "blood and the dance floor." Such does come from a Euro misunderstanding of African spirituality which to them has to do with the realm of Satan and the undead. But since the guitar is an African invention, and Africans are spiritual mediums, all our instruments were first used in ceremony to draw out and wake our Ancestors so they can come and meet with us.
It's not unknown for a white female to get possessed during a rock concert and start taking her clothes off, because this is what spirits do when they earn a new body. The strumming of a guitar is not very different from the strumming of the vocal chords, which is why most song writers find it easier to write by guitar, the tones blend well with the human voice. So the same science behind the "lion's roar" is found here as well, the vibrations of the strings manipulates dimensional barriers. The Universe is composed of vibrations anyway, and since the spirit world sits behind this sheet of reality any instrument that causes that sheet or fabric to flinch just enough for something to peek through is a good invocation instrument.
Here's some of the Gnawa Music Bro. BlackBird is speaking about.
I've learned also from other musicians that sometimes we will study the patterns of West African and Eastern music and use those melodies in hiphop and R&B, some of these rhythms are essential, because if we can't feel it, it's not a hit. Something in the chant of the lyrics or the chant of the music has to touch us.