Introduction to African Music

Lecture 2, MUS1100, 2006

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).

Broad types of African Music

• Traditional vs non-traditional music?

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)