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African Music
1. One continent, 54 states
2. General cultural differences from Europe, Middle East, Asia, Americas
3. Many internal differences: between and within states
4. 1000 languages: 50 with more than 500,000 speakers
African regions:
• Sub-Saharan Africa– West africa– Southern africa– East Africa– Central Africa
• The Maghrib: – Mediterranean coast North Africa– But we must be careful of generalising stereotypes
African Music?
• Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Birom, Hausa, assorted Jarawa dialects, Idoma, Eggon, and a dozen other languages from the Nigeria-Cameroons area do not yield a word for music gracefully. It is easy to talk about song and dance, singers and drummers, blowing a flute, beating a bell, but the general terms ‘music’ and ‘musician’ require long and awkward circumlocutions that still fall short, usually for lack of abstraction. Charles Keil, Tiv Song (1979).
Traditional vs non-traditional music
• Traditional– Group linked: same ethnic or linguistic group– Share place: eg group of households, village,
small town etc– Share social historical interpersonal
knowledge– Participants might be related or know
interpersonal relationships
Non-traditional contexts
• Social life and relationships not based on kinship or ethnicity
• Eg educational, occupational. Religious affiliations
• Associations, political parties, trades unions
• Eg popular music, church music, public entertainment music etc
• Commercial and professionaised
African music characteristics
• Typical Instruments and ensembles:• Drum ensembles• Xylophones• Various idiophones: eg mbiras (“hand pianos”)
• Distinctive musical styles:• Call and response• Interlocking parts• Polyrhythm• Time lines• Speech/musical interactions
Vocal style features
– Call and response– Typically:
• Leader: higher part• Chorus: lower section, alternates with leader• Sometimes overlapping• Musical example: see Worlds of Music CD disc1 track 19
(African-American example: recording of prisoners work gang, Mississippi, 1947)
– Tonal languages: • Verbal and musical pitch contours
Ugandan Xylophone Players
• From VSFVAMDA vol 1-item10:– (=JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Africa (MV video 781.620096 J98))
• Mbaire: larger version of xylophone• Music to accompany marriages, celebrations,
funerals• Singer/players form call and response pattern• Interlocking cyclic, polyrhythmic instrumental
lines
Musical Example: Ghanaian Postal workers
• In CD Worlds of Music, Disc 1 track 1.• Group of workers cancelling stamps on letters• See description in extract: Worlds of Music (on-
line article) pp 72-78• http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/mus1100/04118227.pdf
• ((note this reading is also in second edition, held in Music-Multimedia, but with different page
numbers: pp 73-9)
• Musical elements:– Whistled melody (1+ another)– 3 rhythmic lines
Music and context
1. Music making in a social context– Not “autonomous music”– Yet valued aesthetically
2. In what sense is this (or is this not) “Music”?See James Koetting’s interaction with the
“music makers” in on-line reading
Music of the BaAka People
• BaAka : “forest people” sometimes referred to as “pygmy” people
• Hunter gatherers, Congo rainforest area• See studies eg Colin Turnbull The Forest People• Cooperative, classless, non-hierarchical society.
– What are the musical implications of this?– Can we generalise about relationships between
musical structure and social structure?
Musical example Makata
• “Makata” (Worlds of Music CD 1/16)• Description and analysis in on-line reading:• pp 129-39, in Titon, Worlds of Music,
– http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/mus1100/04118227-1.pdf– (note this reading is also in second edition, held in Music-Multimedia, but different page numbers: pp108-
115)
• Net Hunting song• Vocal ensemble: leaderless group (“acephalous
choir”)• 2 drums, clapping• Many vocal layers
Musical Elements
• Text: few repeated words, “meaningless” vocables or syllables
• Voices; repeated phrases in different ranges
• Drums set up repeated pattern• Varied vocal tone colours, head, chest
voices• Alternation of vocal registers>>Yodel
sounds (characteristic of forest people)