Links between Ireland and Africa

Through my research into the Ubuntu website and my further research on the links between Ireland and Africa I came across some interesting and very unusual articles which discuss possible cultural links between them.

One area which I had already known of through previous research I had done a few years ago was the Irish- African musical connection and the history of singing. Both Ireland and Africa have an unusual type of singing, specifically rhythmic singing without music, typically the sean nos singing in rural Ireland and a similar type of singing found in Africa. Often this singing may be accompanied by a bodhran, in Ireland, or a drum, in Africa.

http://journalofmusic.com/focus/atlantean-irish-irish-musics-north-african-connections

The Atlantean Irish: Irish Music's North-African Connections

In an extract from his forthcoming book on Ireland's oriental and maritime heritage, film-maker Bob Quinn looks at the musical connections between Ireland and the Arab Lands.

I just find this article so funny that I wanted to reference it. The article discusses an African man who decides to travel around Ireland and cannot converse with an English man but who has no problem speaking to a lady from a very rural part of Ireland. 

http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/IrishLanguageAfricaUJA7-1859/index.php

Is the Irish Language Spoken in Africa?

Taken from the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Volume 7, 1859

FROM time to time statements have appeared in different quarters, asserting distinctly the existence of the Irish language, at the present day, among certain tribes in the North of Africa. Though these statements bore marks of great improbability, I considered the subject sufficiently curious to induce me to preserve a note of them, with the view of endeavouring at some time to ascertain whether they had any true foundation. The first that attracted my attention was a short notice published in the Dublin Penny Journal in 1834 (vol ii, p. 248), which was as follows:—

I am interested in the cultural similarities and historical which can be found in between two such different and diverse societies. This makes me ask how different are we all really?