African Music and Culture

African Music:

African continent has two broad zones:

1. Maghrib north of the Sahara Desert. Has much in common with the Mediterranean and Western Asia.
2. sub-Saharan Africa: has unique culture area.
8 Overview Topics about African Music:
1.

Music-Making Events

Listen: Ghana Postal Workers song

Work music music to lift workers spirits and enable them to coordinate efforts. Also helps
workers maintain a positive attitude toward the job.

African music often happens in social situations where peoples primary goals are not artistic.
Instead, music is for ceremonies, work, or play.

Music helps contribute to these events by focusing attention, communicating information,

encouraging social solidarity, and transforming consciousness.

2. Expression in Many Media

Music is often associated with other expressive media, like drama, dance, poetry, costuming, and
sculpture.

3. Musical Style

In regards to the postal workers, the whistled tune can sound familiar, it has European
characteristics. The percussion exhibits widespread African stylistic features such as polyrhythm,
repetition, and improvisation.

4. History

Many other cultures have influenced Africans.

Christian hymns and Muslim candillation (changing religious texts) have exerted a profound
influence on musical style

West Asian civilization has influenced African musical instruments, such as plucked lutes, double
reeds, and goblet-shaped drums

5. Participation

postal workers join simple musical parts together to make sophisticated and satisfying music
this kind of design welcomes social engagement

6. Training

Instead of education, enculturation the process of learning ones culture gradually during
childhood

because of growing up this way, intuitively, they know how to participate effectively

there are other forces that shape musicality, but culture is the indispensable element in musical
training

7. Beliefs and Values

conceive of music as a necessary and normal part of life

its not art its just a part of life processes

8. Intercultural Misunderstanding

African musicians dont think of it as a concert they may think of it as a voice of an ancestor

people dont always stop and listen to the musical show its just a way of life
Four different African music-cultures

1. Agbekor: Music and Dance of the Ewe (eh-way)

People

Agbekor (ah-gbeh-kaw), means clear life

type of singing and drumming that originated as a war dance

LISTEN: Agbekor field recording

features a percussion ensemble and a chorus of singers

complex lead drumming part rides on a rich polyrhythmic texture using bells, rattles and
differently sized drums

Use call-and-response

VIDEO: Agbekor with drumming and dancing

The Ewe People (eh-way)

triumph over adversity is a theme with the Ewe people

Before they came to their present state in West Africa, they had lived as a minority and had to
escape more powerful people by drumming and moving to a new area along the coast of the Atlantic
Ocean

Inspiration for Agbekor: Agbekor were inspired by the hunters observations of monkeys in the
forest. According to elders, the monkeys changed into human form, played drums, and danced. Others
said monkeys kept their animal form as they played music and danced. The hunters have certain
customs they drum; it coincides to what the Ewe people believe; hunters were spiritually forceful
leaders and the forest had possible supernatural forces.

VIDEO: Agbekor and dance

War drumming: Agbekor was originally performed as war drumming.

Different definitions given for the music one person said it signifies enjoying life we make
ourselves happy in life. After the elders went through suffering and they settled, the dance was named.

Another definition is that during war it was called atamuga (ah-tam-gah), which means great oath.
Before battles warriors would gather with their war leaders and swear on a sacred sword oath to their
ancestors to obey their leaders commands and fight bravely.

Literally comes from two short words meaning life and clear clear life

Could mean that the battle is over, the danger is past, that lives are now in the clear.

Learning Agbekor while most music and dance is learned through enculturation, this requires
special training. Members of a group practice in a secluded area up to a year before they appear in
public. Instruction entails demonstration and emulation. Style of learning depends on gifted students
who can learn long rhythmic compositions merely by listening to them several times.

Drum language reference page 82 of your text, and try the rhythms one at a time against each
other.

Listen to the demonstration of agbekor, this time following the close listening guide in your text on
page 80.

2. Dagbamba drummers

Listen to Nag Biegu

live in Ghana

performers are called Lunsi, members of a clan of drummers. Singular: lunga.

Lunga/lunsi fulfill many roles verbal artist, genealogist, counselor to royalty, cultural expert, and
entertainer

Lunsi play two kinds of drums, gung-gong (goong-gawng) and lunga.

For both types: Shoulder strap holds the drum in position and performers hit them with a curved
stick

Gung-gong (goong-gawng) is cylindrical, carved, with a snare on each of its two heads

Lunga is made of cedarwood and is carved into an hourglass shape

For the lunga: By squeezing the leather cords strung between its two drumheads, a player can
change the tension of the drum skins, which changes the pitch of the drum tones

Also for the lunga: Expert drummers could make the drum sound like Dagbanli, the spoken
laungage of the Dagbamba

Lunsi talk and sing on their instruments

Nag Biegu (Nah-oh Bee-ah-oo) is one of the Praise Name Dances

Its title means ferocious wild bull, referring to an enemy leader that was defeated by a king of
Dagbon

As they dance to the drumming, people remember the bravery of the king

Music has the verse-chorus form using call-and-response techniques

Listen: Nag Biegu with close listening guide on page 88.

VIDEO: 10-minute modern drumming dance piece based on rhythms and song from the
Dagbamba women:

3. Shona Mbira Music

VIDEO: Mbira documentary

Shona live in high plateau country in central and southern Africa

Shona states faded under pressure from more militaristic African groups, and became a
decentralized, agricultural people

at turn of 20th century, English-speaking settlers took over the land and imposed their culture and
economy on local Africans

like neighboring South Africa, after they took over land many were impoverished

a war of liberation birthed the nation-state Zimbabwe in 1980

Music played a part in the struggle popular and traditional songs with hidden meanings helped
galvanize mass opinion

after decades of denigration by some Africans who had lost faith in traditional culture, the mbria
became a positive symbol of cultural identity

Shona Spirits four classes of spirits affect the world. 1. Spirits of chiefs. 2. Spirits of family
members. 3. Spirits of nonrelatives or animals. 4. Spirits of witches

the spirits are invisible but have sensory experience, feel emotions, and take action to help and
advise their descendants

mbira helps connect the living with their ancestors humans and spirits communicate by means
of possession trances. In possession, a spirit enters the body of a living person, taking the place of the
persons spirit. Once embodied an ancestral spirit can talk with his or her living relatives, telling them
things they have done wrong and how they can protect themselves and ensure good fortune

possessions happen at mapira, all-night, family-based, community rituals. Mbira music and
dancing are significant elements in these events.

VIDEO: Nhemamusasa (featuring mbira music) Consider the texture, melody, form, and mood of
this piece.

The mbira construction: 1. set of long, thin keys made of metal or plant material. 2. soundboard
with a bridge that holds the keys. 3. A resonator to shape and amplify the sound of the plucked
keys. 4. jingle that buzz rhythmically when the keys are plucked 5. left-side keys are for the left thumb,
right-side keys are for the right thumb and index finger

In performance 1. instrument faces the player. 2. Player repeatedly plucks the keys in
prescribed patterns, musicians establish cycles of harmony, melody, rhythm, and counterpoint. 3. each
key on the mbira emits a fundamental pitch and a cluster of overtones. 4. the resonator shapes,
reinforces, prolongs, and amplifies. 5. the buzzing bottle caps provide rhythm to the musics texture

4. The BaAka People Singing Makala

Listen: Makala

This type of music brings full circle to the communal, inclusive spirit of African music

Hear the singing, hand clapping, and drumming of the BaAka (bah-ka) people

central Africa

called Forest People because of physical size, called Pygmies

lived in ecological balance with their environment. Lived in dome-shaped huts of saplings and
leaves

they obtained a healthy diet through cooperative hunting and gathering, allowing them ample time
for expressive, emotionally satisfying activities such as all-night sings.

Men and women had roughly equal power and obligations, consensus decisions were negotiated
by argument

they now live within nation-states forged in violent anticolonial wars; multinational timber and
mining companies are at work in the forest

they are facing great changes

Listen again: Makala, using the close listening guide on page 102.

VIDEO: Documentary on Pygmies

Music-culture as an adaptive resource

1. Restoring Balance

active force of music-making contributes to the Forest Peoples enduring yet ever-changing way
of life

encode the practical, moral effect of song in their words for conflict and peace

2. Enacting values and creating self

improvised, open-ended polyphony embodies egalitarian cultural values such as cooperation,

negotiation, argument, and personal autonomy

3. Autonomy within Community

acquire music-making skills as they grow up

during times of crisis, group needs the musical participation of every member

VIDEO: If we have time, well take one class to watch War Dance, a documentary about music and war
in Uganda. Take notes; a review of War Dance can count for one of your concert reviews.