Music 10 Quarter 2

MUSIC OF AFRICA

 Singing, dancing, hand clapping, and the beating of drums are essential to many
African ceremonies, including those for birth, death, initiation, marriage, and funerals.
 Music and dance are also important to religious expression and political events.
 African music has been a collective result of the cultural and musical diversity of the
more than 50 countries of the continent.
 The organization of this continent is a colonial legacy from European rule of the
different nations up to the end of the 19th century, whose vastness has enabled it to
incorporate its music with language, environment, political developments,
immigration, and cultural diversity.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF AFRICA

- largely functional in nature

- used primarily in ceremonial rites, such as birth, death, marriage, succession, worship,
and spirit invocations
- others are work-related, social in nature, or view their music as entertainment
- has an interlocking structural format, due mainly to its overlapping and dense textural
characteristics as well as its rhythmic complexity
- its many sources of stylistic influence have produced varied characteristics and genres

TYPES OF AFRICAN MUSIC

Afrobeat

- term used to describe the fusion of West African with black American music

Apala (Akpala)

- musical genre from Nigeria in the Yoruba tribal style to wake up the worshippers after
fasting during the Muslim holy feast of Ramadan
- percussion instrumentation includes the rattle (sekere), thumb piano (agidigbo), bell
(agogo), and two or three talking drums

Axe

- a popular musical genre from Salvador, Bahia, and Brazil

- fuses the Afro-Caribbean styles of the marcha, reggae, and calypso
Jit

- a hard and fast percussive Zimbabwean dance music played on drums with guitar
accompaniment, influenced by mbira-based guitar styles

Jive

- a popular form of South African music featuring a lively and uninhibited variation of
the jitterbug (a form of swing dance)

Juju

- a popular music style from Nigeria that relies on the traditional Yoruba rhythms,
where the instruments in Juju are more Western in origin
- a drum kit, keyboard, pedal steel guitar, and accordion are used along with the
traditional dun-dun (talking drum or squeeze drum)

Kwassa Kwassa

- a dance style began in Zaire in the late 1980s, popularized by Kanda Bongo Man
- the hips move back and forth while the arms move following the hips

Marabi

- a South African three-chord township music of the 1930s-1960s which evolved into
African Jazz
- possessing a keyboard style combining American jazz, ragtime, and blues with
African roots
- characterized by simple chords in varying vamping patterns and repetitive harmony
over an extended period of time to allow the dancers more time on the dance floor

LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC INFLUENCED BY AFRICAN MUSIC

Reggae

- a Jamaican sound dominated by bass guitar and drums

- refers to a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento and
calypso music, as well as American jazz, rhythm, and blues.
- the most recognizable musical elements are its offbeat rhythm and staccato chords

Salsa

- Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Colombian dance music

- comprises various musical genres including the Cuban son montuno, guaracha,
chachacha, mambo and bolero

Samba
 - the basic underlying rhythm that typifies most Brazilian music
- a lively and rhythmical dance and music with three steps to every bar, making the
Samba feel like a timed dance
- a set of dances—rather than a single dance—that define the Samba dancing scene in
Brazil, thus, no one dance can be claimed with certainty as the “original” Samba style

Soca

- a modern Trinidadian and Tobago pop music combining “soul” and “calypso” music

Were

- Muslim music performed often as a wake-up call for early breakfast and prayers
during Ramadan celebrations
- relying on pre-arranged music, it fuses the African and European music styles with a
particular usage of the natural harmonic series.

Zouk

- fast, carnival-like rhythmic music

- from the Creole slang word for ‘party,’
- originating in the Caribbean Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and popularized in
the 1980s.
- has a pulsating beat supplied by the gwo ka and tambour bele drums, a tibwa rhythmic
pattern played on the rim of the snare drum and its hi-hat, rhythm guitar, a horn
section, and keyboard synthesizers

VOCAL FORMS OF AFRICAN MUSIC

Maracatu
- first surfaced in the African state of Pernambuco
- combining the strong rhythms of African percussion instruments with Portuguese
melodies
- the groups were called “nacoes” (nations)
= paraded with a drumming ensemble numbering up to 100
= accompanied by a singer, chorus, and a coterie of dancers

Musical instruments used in Maracatu

- uses mostly percussion instruments such as the:
1) alfaia - a large wooden drum that is rope-tuned complemented by the;
2) tarol - a shallow snare drum
3) and caixa-deguerra - a war-like snare
4) gongue – provides the clanging sound, a metal cowbell
5) agbe – shakers, a gourd shaker covered by beads
 6) miniero/ganza - a metal cylindrical shaker filled with metal shot or small dried seeds
called “Lagrima fre Nossa Senhora.”

Blues
- a musical form of the late 19th century
- has had deep roots in African-American communities
- these communities are located in the so-called “Deep South” of the United States
- the slaves and their descendants used to sing as they worked in the cotton and
vegetable fields
- the notes create an expressive and soulful sound
- feelings evoked are normally associated with slight degrees of misfortune, lost love,
frustration, or loneliness
- from ecstatic joy to deep sadness, it can communicate various emotions more
effectively than other musical forms

Noted performers of the Rhythm and Blues genre are:

- Ray Charles
- James Brown
- Cab Calloway
- Aretha Franklin
- John Lee Hooker
- B.B. King
- Bo Diddley
- Erykah Badu
- Eric Clapton
- Steve Winwood
 - Charlie Musselwhite
- Blues Traveler
- Jimmie Vaughan
- Jeff Baxter

Soul
- a popular music genre of the 1950’s and 1960’s
- originated in the United States
- combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, and often
jazz
- the catchy rhythms are accompanied by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves
(important features)
- other characteristics include:
= “call and response” between the soloist and the chorus
= an especially tense and powerful vocal sound

Important innovators in the 1950s contributed to the emergence of soul music:

- Clyde McPhatter
- Hank Ballard
- Etta James
- Ray Charles
- Little Richard (who inspired Otis Redding)
- James Brown - known as the “Godfather of Soul”
- Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson - often acknowledged as “soul forefathers”

Examples of soul music:

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
Ben
All I Could Do is Cry
Soul to Soul
Becha by Golly
Wow

Spiritual
- refers to a Negro spiritual, a song form by African migrants to America who became
enslaved by its white communities
- this became their outlet to vent their loneliness and anger, and is a result of the
interaction of music and religion from Africa with that of America
- texts are mainly religious, sometimes taken from psalms of Biblical passages
- the music utilizes deep bass voices
- the vocal inflections, Negro accents, and dramatic dynamic changes add to the
musical interest and effectiveness of the performance
Examples of spiritual music:
We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
Rock
My Soul
When the Saints Go Marching In
Peace Be Still

Call and Response

- a succession of two distinct musical phrases
- usually rendered by different musicians, where the second phrase acts as a direct
commentary on or response to the first
- much like the Q&A sequence in human communication, it also forms a strong
resemblance to the verse-chorus form in many vocal compositions

Examples of call and response song:

- Mannish Boy - one of the signature songs by Muddy Waters
- School Day - Ring, Ring Goes the Bell – by Chuck Berry

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OFAFRICA

Classification of Traditional African Instruments

A. Idiophones - percussion instruments that are either struck with a mallet or against one
another

1. Balafon
2. Rattles
3. Agogo
4. Atingting Kon
5. Slit drum
6. Djembe
7. Shekere
8. Rasp

B. Membranophones

1. Body percussion
2. Talking drum

C. Lamellaphone

1. Mbira

D. Chordophones
 1. Musical bow
2. Lute
3. Kora
4. Zither
5. Zeze

E. Aerophones

1. Flutes / panpipes
2. Horns
3. Reed pipes
4. Whistles
5. Trumpets

MUSIC OF LATIN AMERICA

- the product of three major influences
1. Indigenous
2. Spanish-Portuguese
3. African
- sometimes called Latin music, it includes the countries that have had a colonial
history from Spain and Portugal, divided into:

a. Andean region (a mountain system of western South America along the Pacific
coast from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego) – Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador,
Peru, and Venezuela
b. Central America – Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and
Panama
c. Carribean – Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, and
Puerto Rico
d. Brazil

INFLUENCES

1) Indigenous-Latin American Music

Popular Latin
1) Samba - a dance form of African origins around 1838 which evolved into an African-
Brazilian invention in the working class and slum districts of Rio de Janeiro
2) Son - a fusion of the popular music or canciones (songs) of Spain and the African
rumba rhythms of Bantu origin
3) Salsa - a social dance with marked influences from Cuba and Puerto Rico that started
in New York in the mid 1970’s
- contains elements from the swing dance and hustle