Does the Blues link Africa and Asia?

Question

if you dont know what a pentatonic scale is this is way over your head.

What is the link between the use of the pentatonic scale in asian traditional music and African music. Is this a result of cultural exchange? if so when?

its common in other parts of the world to, but it seems to me to be most common in Africa and Asia.

you_annoy_me - not really a good comparison. Since both were european and lived basically around the same time. Not to mention Newton is only credited with "inventing" calculus (Leibniz is also credited with doing so and is the person who gave us the name "calculus).

Answer 1

"its common in other parts of the world to, but it seems to me to be most common in Africa and Asia."
----I agree. While pentatonic scales are found in much of the world's music, there seems to be a wider variety in African and Asian music. Exactly when and why this is the case, I don't know. But, to me, it's particularly noticeable in Black American music and Asian American music. I think Black American music has had a profound effect on Asian Americans and that such is heard in their music- that perhaps the social, cultural, and political awareness and empowerment present in Black American music (particularly the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s) has touched Asian Americans and given them strength as a people who have also been victims of the white establishment's racism in the United States (laws forbidding Asians from marrying whites, Asian immigration exclusion acts, and discrimination in housing, education, employment, etc...). The Black Power Movement, along with the Black Arts Movement, not only reached out to Black Americans but reached out to Asian Americans as well. And it placed the Asian American struggle along side the Black American struggle and the influence of Black American music within Asian American music.

Answer 2

Huygens and Newton both developed calculus independently of each other. Engineering and science in Germany and England had both advanced to the point that no further advancement could be made without calculus. It is possible that similar music may have independent origins. Similarity does not necessarily mean collaboration.