Music of Africa

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
African Music
)
"African Music" redirects here. For the music journal, see African Music (journal).

Given the vastness of the

enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music.[1][2]

Like the music of Asia, India and the Middle East, it is a highly rhythmic music. The complex rhythmic patterns often involving one rhythm played against another to create a

drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira or "thumb piano."[2][3]

Another distinguishing form of African music is its

call-and-response
style: one voice or instrument plays a short melodic phrase, and that phrase is echoed by another voice or instrument. The call-and-response nature extends to the rhythm, where one drum will play a rhythmic pattern, echoed by another drum playing the same pattern. African music is also highly improvised. A core rhythmic pattern is typically played, with drummers then improvising new patterns over the static original patterns.

Traditional music in most of the continent is passed down through oral tradition. There are subtle differences in pitch and intonation that do not easily translate to Western notation. African music most closely adheres to Western tetratonic (four-note), pentatonic (five-note), hexatonic (six-note), and heptatonic (seven-note) scales. Harmonization of the melody is accomplished by singing in parallel thirds, fourths, or fifths (see Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony).

Music is important to religion in Africa, where rituals and religious ceremonies use music to pass down stories from generation to generation as well as to sing and dance to.[4] Additionally, music is important to the culture as a whole, not only as a form of religious and self-expression, but also as a form of media to communicate about important demographic issues, politics, and morals.[5]Music in Africa is embedded into every aspect of life and at every social transitions.[6]

Many other cultures have studied African music though time, hence the mass influence that it has had on others. For instance, in December 2002, the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology held multiple conferences in an attempt to study the music of Ghana. The ethnomusicologists taking part in the study looked to learn aspects of history through music, along with its traditions. Additionally, some ethnomusicologists, such as John Collins, looked to study more specific aspects of music from Ghana, such as the presence of Christianity in popular music.[7]

African Music has a deep relationship with the community. African music is made for both public enjoyment and public participation; which makes African music fall under the category of Community Music, where active community and public participation in music making is encouraged. It is this importance of community that establishes Christopher Small's idea of Social Happiness and musicking[8], which is wildly important in this culture.[9][10][11]

Music by regions

North Africa and the Horn of Africa

Main articles: Middle Eastern and North African music traditions, Arabic music, and Middle Eastern music
Umm Kulthum

Roman rule, while Carthage was later ruled by Romans and Vandals. North Africa was later conquered by the Arabs, who established the region as the Maghreb of the Arab world
. Like the musical genres of the
Andalusian classical music: its popular contemporary genres include the Algerian Raï
.

Aar Maanta performing with his band at Pier Scheveningen Strandweg in The Hague, Netherlands

With these may be grouped the music of Sudan and of the Horn of Africa, including the music of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Somali music is typically pentatonic, using five pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale.[12] The music of the Ethiopian highlands uses a fundamental modal system called qenet, of which there are four main modes: tezeta, bati, ambassel, and anchihoy.[14] Three additional modes are variations on the above: tezeta minor, bati major, and bati minor.[15] Some songs take the name of their qenet, such as tizita, a song of reminiscence.[14]

West, Central, Southeast and South Africa

The

ethnomusicological pioneer Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) observed that the shared rhythmic principles of Bantu African music traditions constitute one main system.[16] Similarly, master drummer and scholar C. K. Ladzekpo affirms the "profound homogeneity" of Bantu African rhythmic principles.[17]

African

traditional music is frequently functional in nature. Performances may be long and often involve the participation of the audience.[18] There are, for example, specialized work songs, songs accompanying childbirth, marriage, hunting and political activities, music to ward off evil spirits and to pay respects to good spirits, the dead and the ancestors. None of this is performed outside its intended social context and much of it is associated with a particular dance. Some of it, performed by professional musicians, is sacral music
or ceremonial and courtly music performed at royal courts.

Musicologically, Sub-Saharan Africa may be divided into four regions:[16]

Muslim regions of Africa, and in modern times, the Americas and Western Europe
.

Azande song from the Congo performed with xylophone.

Afrobeat, juju, fuji, highlife, makossa, and kizomba are performed in West Africa.

Islamic world of the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries." In terms of instrumentation, Kubik notes that stringed instruments (including ancestors of the banjo) were traditionally favored by Muslim West Africans, while drumming was traditionally favored by non-Muslim West Africans.[19]

Musical instruments

mandole

Besides vocalisation, which uses various techniques such as complex hard

double bells, different types of harps, and harp-like instruments such as the kora and the ngoni, as well as fiddles, many kinds of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets. Additionally, string instruments are also used, with the lute-like oud and Ngoni
serving as musical accompaniment in some areas.

There are five groups of Sub-Saharan African musical instruments: membranophones, chordophones, aerophones, idiophones, and percussion. Membranophones are the drums, including kettles, clay pots, and barrels. Chordophones are stringed instruments like harps and fiddles. Aerophones are another name for wind instruments. These can include flutes and trumpets, similar to the instruments you hear in American music.In Northern Nigeria, Niger Republic and Northern Cameroon, Algaita-a double reed instrument is very common for festive events and seasons.[20]

Idiophones are rattles and shakers, while percussion can be sounds like foot-stomping and hand-clapping.[21] Many of the wooden instruments have shapes or pictures carved out into them to represent ancestry. Some are decorated with feathers or beads.[21]

Drums used in African traditional music include

rain stick
, bells and wood sticks. Also, Africa has many other types of drums, and many flutes and stringed and wind instruments.

The playing of

gravi-kora and gravikord
which are new modern examples.

Relationship to language

Many

drum languages (talking drums).[22]

Influences on African music

Traditional drummers in Ghana

Historically, several factors have influenced the traditional music of Africa. The music has been influenced by language, the environment, a variety of cultures, politics, and population movement, all of which are intermingled. Each African group evolved in a different area of the continent, which means that they ate different foods, faced different weather conditions, and came in contact with different groups than other societies did. Each group moved at different rates and to different places than others, and thus each was influenced by different people and circumstances. Furthermore, each society did not necessarily operate under the same government, which also significantly influenced their music styles.[23]

Influence on North American music

See also: African-American music

African music has been a major factor in the shaping of what we know today as

bluegrass
, among other genres.

jazz rock band Traffic
often used West African rhythms

On his album

Afro-rock avant-garde drummer, laid the initial drum patterns that created the Afro-rock sounds in bands such as Ginger Baker's Airforce, The Rolling Stones, and Steve Winwood's Traffic. He continued to work with Winwood, Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger throughout the decade.[27]

Certain Sub-Saharan African musical traditions also had a significant influence on such works as Disney's The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, which blend traditional African music with Western music. Songs such as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" "Circle of Life" and "He Lives in You" combine Zulu and English lyrics, as well as traditional African styles of music such as South African isicathamiya and mbube with more modern western styles.[28] Additionally, the Disney film incorporates numerous words from the Bantu Swahili language. The phrase hakuna matata, for example, is an actual Swahili phrase that does in fact mean "no worries". Characters such as Simba, Kovu, and Zira are also Swahili words, meaning "lion", "scar", and "hate", respectively.[29][30]

Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Babatunde Olatunji were among the earliest African performing artists to develop sizable fan bases in the United States. Non-commercial African-American radio stations promoted African music as part of their cultural and political missions in the 1960s and 1970s. African music also found eager audiences at Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and appealed particularly to activists in the civil rights and Black Power movements.[31]

Afropop

Main article: African popular music
rumba, derive to varying degrees from musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by enslaved Africans. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, soul music, and rhythm and blues. Similarly, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music.[34]

In 1933,

Mbube" was the first African record to sell over 100,000 copies.[35] One of the most important 20th century singers of South African popular music was Miriam Makeba, who played a key-role, in the 60s, in drawing global audience's attention to African music and its meaning. Zenzile Miriam Makeba was said to have been one of the most influential and popular musicians of Africa, beginning in the 1950s. She was a part of three bands, including one all-woman band and two others. She performed all types of jazz music, traditional African music, and music that was popular in Western Africa at the time. Miriam played a majority of her music in the form of "mbube", which was "a style of vocal harmony which drew on American jazz, ragtime, and Anglican church hymns, as well as indigenous styles of music." After she moved to the U.S., problems with Makeba's passport occurred and she had to stay in America, it was said that she put an American twist on most of her African music. She had a very diverse scale of her vocal range and could hit almost any note.[36][circular reference] "The Empress of African Music" died at the age of 76.[37]

In West Africa,

saxophonist Manu Dibango's ,internationally inumerably sampled "Soul Makossa" was released. "Soul Makossa" is the most sampled African record, in history.[41]

The 2010 FIFA World Cup afro-fusion and soca theme-song, "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)" featuring Shakira and Freshlyground sampled the makossa presumably soldier-tribute, melody Zamina mina (Zangaléwa) by Golden Sounds.[42][43]

Kalpop is a music genre that originated in the Klassikan royal communities under Klassik Nation[44] record label. Kalpop is a genre of Klassikan, African, lingual (multicultured), and popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1990s in Kenya and later spread to the United States and the United Kingdom. Kalpop music has found a home to a growing fan base and with a number of locally established as well as emerging Kalpop bands (there are over thirteen active local Kalpop bands in Nairobi alone) further cementing this genre by engaging in different as well as mutually organised Kalpop themed events.[45] DON SANTO,[46][47] Badman Killa, Blessed Paul,[48] Cash B, Jay Nuclear, Rekless, G-Youts (Washu B and Nicki Mulla), Sleek Whizz, Chizei, are among the many artists playing Kalpop music in Kenya.[45]

Music industry

For African artists, concerts were one of the few ways to earn in the industry. Piracy and changing consumer behavior are behind declining sales of records. Enforcement of

streaming and is limited by internet speeds in Africa.[49] Some African countries, including Kenya, Gambia and South Africa, have seen protest over perceived excessive airtime given to American music. In Zimbabwe 75% of airtime has to be given to local music. Protective actions have seen the growth of new genres like Urban Grooves emerge in Zimbabwe.[50] In 2016 Sony Music launched in Africa by opening an office in Nigeria. Traditionally services of western major international studios have not been available in Africa, the local demand for their music being met through piracy.[51]

SInce 2014, the festival Visa for Music has been held annually with growing success in Morocco, presenting musical artists with roots in Africa through showcases, music videos and marketing for professionals from the creative industries worldwide.[52]

See also

References

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  2. ^ a b "Definitions of Styles and Genres: Traditional and Contemporary African Music". CBMR. Columbia University. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
  3. ^ Estrella, Espie. "African music". Music Education. about.com. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  4. ^ Floyd, Samuel A. (1995). The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States. Oxford University Press. pp. 14–34.
  5. ^ Darkwa, Asante (1987). "Culture and communication: music, song and dance as medium of communications in África". Revista África. 10: 131–139.
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  11. ^ Anku, Willie. "Circles and Time: A Theory of Structural Organization of Rhythm in African Music" (PDF). Hugo Ribeiro.
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  14. ^ a b Shelemay, Kay Kaufman (2001). "Ethiopia". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. viii (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. p. 356.
  15. ^ Abatte Barihun, liner notes of the album Ras Deshen, 200.
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  17. ^ Ladzekpo, C. K. (1996). "Cultural Understanding of Polyrhythm". Foundation Course in African Music.
  18. ^ GCSE Music – Edexcel Areas of Study, Coordination Group Publications, UK, 2006, p. 36.
  19. ^ a b Curiel, Jonathan (15 August 2004). "Muslim Roots of the Blues". SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on 5 September 2005. Retrieved 24 August 2005.
  20. ^ [mayowa.co.uk "African Traditional musical instruments"]. Mayowa Blades. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  21. ^ a b "African musical instruments". Contemporary African Art.
  22. ^ GCSE Music – Edexcel Areas of Study, Coordination Group Publications, UK, 2006, p. 35, quoting examination board syllabus.
  23. ^ Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. The Music of Africa. New York: Norton and Company, 1974. Print.
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  28. ^ Browne, David (7 November 2019). "'The Lion Sleeps Tonight': The Ongoing Saga of Pop's Most Contentious Song". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 21 May 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
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  30. ^ "The Lion King Pride: The Characters". Lionking.org. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
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  32. ^ Conteh, Mankaprr; Makinde, Tami; Madzadza, Miya; Saraki, Seni; Wangeci, Tela (28 December 2022). "The 40 Best Afropop Songs of 2022". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 28 December 2022. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  33. ^ Braun, Ken (9 January 1994). "POP MUSIC; The Rise and Rise Of Irresistible Afropop". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 May 2015. Retrieved 7 April 2024.
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  39. ^ Anikulapo, Seun. "Femi And Seun Kuti Keep Their Father's Rebellious Beat". NPR.org. NPR. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
  40. ^ Roberts, John Storm (1986: cassette) Afro-Cuban Comes Home: The Birth and Growth of Congo Music, Original Music.
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  42. ^ Thapa, Shaurya (6 September 2022). "The African song that inspired Shakira's Waka Waka is back, thanks to Instagram Reels". Dailyo. Archived from the original on 5 February 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  43. ^ Flores, Griselda (30 November 2022). "Why Shakira Remains the Queen of World Cup Music". Billboard. Archived from the original on 3 January 2024. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
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  45. ^ a b Analyst, Upbeat (31 March 2021). "Why Kalpop Music Is A Revolutionary Genre". The Nairobi Upbeat. Retrieved 11 September 2021.
  46. ^ Reviewer, Upbeat (1 April 2021). "BIOGRAPHY AND CAREER OF DON SANTO". The Nairobi Upbeat. Retrieved 11 September 2021.
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  52. ^ "With 1505 musicians applying, Visa For Music 2023 receives a record number of submissions". HESPRESS English - Morocco News. 19 April 2023. Retrieved 17 May 2023.

Further reading

External links

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