MUSIC OF AFRICA

- Music has always been an important part in the

daily life of the African, whether for work, religion,
ceremonies, or even communication. Singing,
dancing, hand clapping and the beating of drums
are essential to many African ceremonies- Music
and dance are also important to religious
expression and political events.
 Africa Before the 1800’s Africa
was called “the Dark Continent”,
because little was known about
it.
 TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF AFRICA
African traditional music is largely functional in nature,
used primarily in ceremonial rites, such as birth, death,
marriage, succession, worship, and spirit invocations,
initiation, marriage, and funerals.
Others are work related or social in nature, while many
traditional societies view their music as entertainment.
It has a basically 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.
 Some Types of African Music

1. Afrobeat- Afro beat is a term used to

describe the fusion of West African with black
American music.
2. Apala (Akpala) - Apala is a 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.
3. Axe- Axe is a popular musical genre from
Salvador, Bahia, and Brazil. It fuses the Afro
Caribbean styles of the marcha, reggae, and
calypso.

Black Caribbean Countries. Black Caribbeans account for a majority of the foreign-born black citizens in
the U.S. The main Black Caribbean countries include:
Haiti, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago.

Calypso- a type of folk song primarily from Trinidad though sung elsewhere in the southern and
eastern Caribbean islands
4. Jit - is a hard and fast percussive
Zimbabwean dance music played on drums
with guitar accompaniment, influenced by
mbira-based guitar styles.
5. Jive -Jive is a popular form of South African
music featuring a lively and uninhibited
variation of the jitterbug, a form of swing
dance.
 

Jive- general term used to describe swing dancing

6. Juju - Juju is 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).
7. Kwassa Kwassa- Kwassa Kwassa is a dance
style begun in Zaire in the late 1980’s,
popularized by Kanda Bongo Man.
- In this dance style, the hips move back and
forth while the arms move following the hips.
8. Marabi- Marabi is 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, it is
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.
PERFORMANCE TASKS:
1. Groupings- same group of the last Q1
presentation.
2. Create a rhythm with “ to the tune of” using
the different parts of the body that produces
sounds.
3. You can combined with any stringed and
percussion instruments.
4. With vocals is highly appreciated.