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 The Maghrib: 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 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: Tonal languages: 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 See d

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)