This article, Muslim roots of the blues: The music of famous American blues singers reaches back through the South to the culture of West Africa, posits an interesting theory, but I'm very suspicious of its entire thesis and its presentation. For starters, the notion that the Blues came from Africa is attractive to many, but very hard to prove. After years of reading various theories on the matter, it seems to me that many musical traditions (e.g. lowering of the 3rd and 5th notes of the Pentatonic scale), sophisticated rhythms, and new instruments were brought to the new world from Africa, but that the Blues are a uniquely American phenomena. There is no reason to explain where Blues or Jazz "came from" apart from a need to deny America and its artists their originality. This article goes further, claiming not only that the Blues had its origins in West African music, but also in Islamic music. The problems with the article lie its in logical fallacies and dubious history. For example:

Bailey lives on Georgia's Sapelo Island, where a small community of blacks can trace their ancestry to Bilali Mohammed, a Muslim slave who was born and raised in what is now the country of Guinea. Visitors to Sapelo Island are always struck by the fact that churches there face east. In fact, as a child, Bailey learned to say her prayers facing east -- the same direction that her great-great-great-great-grandfather faced when he prayed toward Mecca

Churches face east in America, and Europe, for a couple of reasons: to face Jerusalem, and to allow the rising sun to shine through the stained glass behind the altar.

The article quotes a German scholar connecting Blues and Arabic music by their use of melisma and asserts that melisma is:

[S]omething that's very common in both blues music and in the Muslim call to prayer

That's true, but the article doesn't tell you that melisma is fairly universal in the musical world. Melisma occurs in musics as different as Gregorian Chant and Tuvan throat singing.

There is a general problem with musical history in that we have only had recorded music for a little over one hundred years, and music is always changing. When I listen to early recordings of African music by anthropologists it is hard to make out any similarities with the Blues. I can hear rhythms and instruments that sound very similar to the sounds of music by African descendents in Brazil and the Caribbean, but nothing that sounds remotely like the blues. It is only when I listen to modern African "roots" musician, like say Ali Farka Toure, that I can hear obvious blues elements. But which came first? Music is always changing. The most popular music in Africa in the XXth century was Soukous, derived from the Cuban rumba. Africa is a wonderful source of music, but so are the Americas. Let's not explain away the musical achievements of Americans.

The notion of Islamic music is problematic in itself. To turn things around, why does the article pertain to "the connection between Islam and American blues music"? Why isn't the article refer to the connection between Mahgrebian and Southern Baptist music? The article refers to the Arab Oud, but the Oud is not from Arabia. Egyptians and others played similar lute-like instruments before the Jihadis swept out of the Arabian peninsula. We don't hear of the music of Mecca or the instruments of Medina. Music referred to as Arabic cum Moslem occurs at the edges of the Moslem conquests, where the enforcement of the strictures of faith was laxer. Music occurs in inverse proportion to Islamic fundamentalism; witness the ban on music by the Taliban and after the Khomeini revolution.

There is much fine music from Moslem lands, but in Islam, the Hadith prohibit music, as explained here:

One hadith from the Bukhari Shareef, the most authentic Book of Hadith, further confirms unlawfulness of music and singing:

`There will be people of my Ummah who will seek to make lawful; fornication, wine-drinking and the use of ma`aazif ( musical instruments ).`
Detailed analysis of the Arabic word `ma`aazif ` shows that it refers to musical instruments, the sounds of those musical instruments and singing with the accompaniment of instruments.

Closer analysis of the wordings of the Hadith establishes the prohibition of music. Firstly, the words `seek to make lawful ` shows that music is not permissible, as logically one can only seek to make lawful that which is not allowed. Secondly, if music was not prohibited, then it would not have been brought within the same context as fornication and wine-drinking.

There were musical traditions in the lands that Islam conquered, and those traditions continue, and mutate, as music does, but the notion of "Muslim" music is problematic, to say the least.  ¶ 9:44 PM