Music of Africa
With Guest Lecturer Performer: Derrick Spiva
Music and Culture
• Sub-Saharan Africa maintains enormous linguistic,
cultural, and musical diversity, where oral traditions
are the means of passing culture rather than literary
traditions.
• Today we will approach the music of Africa from
an anthropological perspective, from which we
explore the relationship between music and the
kinds of culture that produce it.
Colonialism in Africa
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pis5f0
85P3M
Results of Colonialism
• Tribes divided into colonialist regions
and not by tribal or ethnic boundaries.
• Suppression of religion and its music.
• Ongoing ethnic conflicts that have
caused great harm both to human life
and to culture.
Key Concepts
• Despite the diversity, a few underlying
principles characterize the music of the
whole region.
• Interlocking is the practice of fitting
pitches into spaces between other
parts, alternating pitches or phrases of
one part with those of another to create
a whole part. An example is the whole
melody created by a mbira player’’s
two hands.
• Call and response is the alternation or
interlocking of leader and chorus, or of
a vocal and instrumental part. Hocket
is the interlocking pitches between two
or more sound sources to create a
single melody or part. An example is
Pygmy vocal music.
• Dense, overlapping textures and buzzy timbres
manifested in a preference for overlapping drum
and percussion rhythms. An example is Ewe
drumming. Wind and string instruments incorporate
percussive elements: strings are more often plucked
than bowed and wind instruments are often played
with a breathy sound quality. An example of a
percussive string sound is the kora.
• Cyclical and open-ended forms
involving one or more repeated
melodies/rhythmic patterns (ostinatos)
as the basic foundation of a
performance.
• Ostinato is a repeated melodic or
rhythmic pattern that forms the basic
foundation of a piece or musical
section
• Community participation. The
participation of non-specialists is
facilitated by long performances with
much repetition and by the close
association of music with dance.
• Importance of rhythmic complexity.
This can occur at many levels:
juxtaposition of duple and triple
patterns (hemiola), multiple layering
of different rhythmic patterns, and
interaction between core foundation
and varied/improvised elaboration
parts.
• Anlo-Ewe
Agahu
-Ewe people of Eastern Ghana,
Western/Southern Togo (Eweland)
Agahu is a social dance
-Created in the beginning of the 20th century
-Performed in Anyako, a fishing village in the Volta region
-Agahu (meaning air ship) originated in Benin from a piece
called Gumbe. Visiting Ewe fisherman from the Volta region of
Ghana took Agahu back to their homeland where it spread to
other towns and villages.
-
• The name originated from an event in
which the first performance of the
piece was also the first time people in
the area had seen an airplane. Due to
the practice of music and dance often
serving as a source of local oral
history, the event became the name of
the piece.
• Agahu is a social dance in which all can
participate. It’s often danced in a circle with
special clothing (like church clothing). There
may also be a form of identification kept with
each dancer. The ID card, or paper, would be
used during a certain portion of the dance meant
to reenact a period under British rule in which
officials repeatedly asked residents to “show
their papers.”
• A specific set of instruments
• The ensemble includes:
• atsimevu and agboba, which are both lead
drums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNMzw51Ny4g
• The sogo, kidi, and kaganu are supporting drums
• gankogui (bell) is the center and timekeeper of
the ensemble.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWMbPl7cJ4I
• axatse (shaker) and clapping are used depending
on the style of music being
played.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rki7tA7xiPc
The Shona
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXB
Qbn6wZeQ
Mbira
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LWU
flnFgcQ
The Pygmies, BaMbuti
• Semiautonomous hunting and gathering
existence.
• There is little specialization of social and
economic roles within age and gender.
There is no formalized hierarchical
system of leadership
Instruments of the BaMbuti
• Only what you can carry in a nomadic
lifestyle.
• Whistles, end-blown flutes, rhythm
sticks and rattles, molimo trumpets
• Voice is most important
Molimo and Elima
• Molimo - BaMbuti ceremony for the
forest; a straight valveless trumpet often
used in the ceremony. Vocal (Darkness
is good)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdazJ0X1nc
• Elima - Ceremony to celebrate puberty
for women.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fuq910hWo
The Mande
• West African Mande society is characterized by an
elaborate social hierarchy in which occupational
specialization is determined by heredity. The two
main social categories are sula (“ordinary people”:
farmers, merchants, etc.) and nyamalo (professional
craft specialists).
• The Jali “Wordsmith, professional musician/verbal
artist.
Instruments of the Mande
• balo - a xylophone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs0XNUJV-nI
• kora - a bridge harp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_wVitzscWk
Ala L’a Ke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LeKJmhKZlI
• Kora, balo, voice.
• donkilo - basic vocal melody
• sataro - declamatory singing style
• kumbengo - the basic instrumental
ostinato, foundation of the performance.
• birimintingo - instrumental interlude, when
the kumbengo is changed.
Urban popular musical traditions
• Urban popular music traditions have sprung up all
over Africa. Local input mixed with Western
elements (brass instruments, electric guitars, basic
harmony, etc.) and Latin American rhythms give
each style a unique sound.
West Africa
Highlife
• A form of brass band music originating in Ghana
that developed from the local Akan people
performing local music on brass instruments with
traditional percussion instruments. It further
developed into dance band music with a Cuban
rumba style. Key performer: E.T. Mensah.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaXBdcpGskQ
Summary
 Sub-Saharan Africa is a huge area with many
different societies, each with their own distinctive
music; however, there are some common general
musical characteristics and approaches that we can
identify that pertain to many African societies
 African music favors ostinatos (repeated rhythmic
and melodic cycles), polyphony (multiple melodic
parts performing at once), and interlocking parts.
 Musical performance is often a communal
participatory activity, and pieces often comprise a
collection of melodic or rhythmic formulas that are
subject to group variation and thus differ from one
performance to another.
 Many musical performances accompany religious
or civic rituals.
 Social structure and conditions influences music
and performance; for example, the nomadic
BaMbuti pygmies use fewer instruments and favor
vocal performance. Those instruments that they do
use tend to be smaller and lighter, fitting their
traveling lifestyle. On the other hand, the Buganda
kingdom, with a highly organized, centralized
government, developed elaborate court music
ensembles.
 Key instruments include lamellaphones (for
example, the mbira), strings (the kora), xylophones,
trumpets, flutes, musical bows, and drums.
Discussion
• Does anything like African ostinato
exist in Western musical performance,
and how would it work?
• Does American popular music use
drumming in the same manner as
African drumming, or how is it
different?