Introduction to African Music

Introduction to African Music

• African music is a significant part of daily life, deeply entwined with religious and political expression.
• Traditional African music serves various functions, a major role in ceremonies like births, deaths, marriages, and other significant events. It also plays a role in worship and spirit invocations.

Types of African Music

• Afrobeat: A fusion of West African and Black American music styles.
• Apala or Akpala: A Nigerian Yoruba musical genre played to wake worshippers after the Ramadan fast.
• Axe: A popular musical genre from Salvador, Bahia, and Brazil which combines Afro-Caribbean Marcha, Reggae, and Calypso styles.
• Jiti: A fast-paced, percussive Zimbabwean dance music, influenced by mbira-based guitar styles.
• Jive: A popular South African genre characterized by a lively, uninhibited variation of the jitterbug (swing dance).
• Juju: A popular Nigerian music style primarily using traditional Yoruba rhythms.
• Kwassa Kwassa: A dance style originating in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the late 1980s, popularized by Kanda Bongo Man.
• Marabi: A South African three-chord township music style from the 1930s-1960s that evolved into African jazz.
• Reggae: A Jamaican music sound dominated by bass guitar and drums.
• Salsa: A Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Colombian dance music incorporating various styles (son montuno, guaracha, cha-cha-cha, mambo, and bolero).
• Samba: The foundation rhythm for most Brazilian music.
• Soca: Trinidadian and Tobagonian pop music combining soul and calypso styles.
• Were: Muslim music used as a wake-up call for early breakfast and prayers during Ramadan celebrations.
• Zouk: A fast, carnival-like rhythmic music from Creole slang, meaning party.

Vocal Forms of African Music

• Maracatu: An African Brazilian genre combining strong rhythms of African percussion instruments with Portuguese melodies.

African American Music

• Blues: A late 19th-century musical form with deep roots in African-American communities, conveying feelings of misfortune, love loss, frustration, or loneliness. Notable musicians include Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker.
• Soul Music: A popular 1950s and 1960s music genre originating in the United States, combining elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Key figures include James Brown. Examples include "Ain't no Mountain High Enough," "All I Could Do Is Cry," "Soul to Soul," and "Ben."
• Spirituals: Songs primarily religious in nature, created by enslaved African Americans in the US. Examples include "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder," "Rock My Soul," "When the Saints Go Marching In," and "Peace Be Still."

Musical Instruments

• Balafon: A West African xylophone with bars made from wood or bamboo.
• Rattles: Instruments made of various materials like seashells, tin, basketry, animal hoofs, and coconuts.
• Agogo: A single or multiple bell instrument of Yoruba origin used in traditional Yoruba music and samba bateria ensembles.
• Atintintkon: Percussion instruments - slits gongs carved from wood to resemble ancestors - used for communication between villages.
• Slit Drums: Hollow percussion instruments, not true drums but idiophones.
• Djembe: A West African hand drum.
• Shekere: A West African gourd instrument with beads covering cowrie shells.
• Rasp/Scraper: Hand percussion instrument using notches on pieces of wood scraped with a stick.
• Talking Drum (Luna): Used to send messages around villages for important events, including births, deaths, or wars, and believed to communicate with the spirits.
• Mbira: A thumb piano or finger xylophone of African origin, where thumbs pluck the metal tines.
• Musical Bow: The ancestor of string instruments, played by plucking or striking its string with a stick, creating a delicate sound.
• Lute (Nkoni): A stringed instrument shaped like a modern guitar and played in a similar fashion.
• Kora: Africa's most sophisticated harp, with similarities to a lute.
• Zither: Stringed instrument with varying shapes and sizes, where strings run along its body.
• Zeze: A bowed African fiddle instrument.
• Anteben: A bamboo flute of Ghana.
• Fulani Flutes: Characteristic flutes of the Fulani people.
• Panpipes: A musical instrument with several pipes of varying lengths, played in a horizontal position.
• Kudu Horn: Instrument made from the horn of a kudu antelope.
• Reed Pipes (rhaita or ghaita): Most well-known reed pipe.
• Whistle: Wind instruments.
• Trumpets: Tubular wind instruments.

Styles of Music and Performance

• Call and Response: A performance style where musical phrases are exchanged between different musicians, with the second phrase acting as a response or commentary on the first. Important pieces playing in this style include "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters and "School Day" by Chuck Berry.