1. Introduction to African Music
Lecture 2, MUS1100, 2006

2. 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
languages: 50 with more than 500,000 speakers

3. African regions: Sub-Saharan Africa The Maghrib: West africa
Southern africa
East Africa
Central Africa
The Maghrib:
Mediterranean coast North Africa
But we must be careful of generalising stereotypes

4. 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).

5. Broad types of African Music
Traditional vs non-traditional music?

6. Traditional vs non-traditional music
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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Vocal style features Call and response Typically: Tonal languages:
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

10. Ugandan Xylophone Players
From VSFVAMDA vol 1-item10:
(=JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Africa (MV video J98))
Mbaire: larger version of xylophone
Music to accompany marriages, celebrations, funerals
Singer/players form call and response pattern
Interlocking cyclic, polyrhythmic instrumental lines

11. 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
((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
See d

13. 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

14. 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?

15. Musical example Makata
“Makata” (Worlds of Music CD 1/16)
Description and analysis in on-line reading:
pp , in Titon, Worlds of Music,
(note this reading is also in second edition, held in Music-Multimedia, but different page numbers: pp )
Net Hunting song
Vocal ensemble: leaderless group (“acephalous choir”)
2 drums, clapping
Many vocal layers

19. 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)