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  • Singers use wide variety of vocal sounds
  • Singers often shift from an open, relaxed to a tighter and more constricted note in just one single performance
  • this kind of music is characterized by performance style called: Call and response
  • In this style, phrases used by the soloist are repeatedly answered by the chorus which result in an exciting overlap.
  • singers are often accompanied by percussion ostinatos ( repeated rhythmic patters)

Singing and playing instruments are so connected to life that the majority of the African people do not use the word 'music'

However, there are words such as 'song', 'dance', and 'poetry'.

Sources:

  • Our Textbook: Kamien, Roger. Music an Appreciation Brief 7th Edition.
  • http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/developement-music-south-africa-timeline-1600-2004

Slit Drum:

  • Is a hollowed out log with a long slit on top
  • Some are small enough to fit in a hand while others are over twenty feet long
  • The width of the slits allow 2 and sometimes 4 different tones when the slit is struck
  • It is used as both a “talking drum” for signaling and as a musical instrument.

Membranophones:

Chordophones:

Music is also used to celebrate events such as:

Mbira:

  • A membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibration stretched membrane
  • Essential to many religious and political ceremonies
  • Used for dancing and regulating the pace of work

  • Birth
  • Puberty
  • Marriage
  • Death

Music is a large part of every aspect of life

  • Chordophones are also known as strings
  • The most widely used chordophone is the musical bow who's string is plucked or struck with a stick
  • Some musical bows have a gourd resonator meanwhile others use the players mouth as a resonator

  • Mbira is also called sansa, kalimba or thumb piano
  • It is capable of producing elaborate melodies
  • It has from eight to over thirty tongues made of metal or bamboo attached to a sounding board or box
  • Tongues are plucked with the thumbs and fore-fingers
  • Vocalist usually use the mbira to accompany them

Yoruba

The primary rhythm pattern is a seven-stroke pattern known as the standard pattern.

Standard pattern is expressed in triple-pulse (12/8 or 6/8). Or double-pulse (4/4 or 2/2)

  • Yoruba music originates from the peoples of Nigeria, Togo, and Benin.
  • Today music from Yoruba heavlily influences carribean music

Much like our culture, it is used to accompany:

  • Plays
  • Dances
  • Religious ceremonies
  • Magic rites (Rituals done to connect to and explore the supernatural)
  • The Yoruba people primarily play a type of music called dundun, with the leader of the ensemble referred to as oniyalu.

African music shares many similarities, however regions have distinct cultural differences. Its important to recognize their individual integrity.

Luo

Elements of African Music

  • The people of Luo originate from Kenya

  • The most popular type of music is Benga

(Benga became very popular through most of Africa in the 70s and 80s)

African Instruments:

Benga music is often played with a lyre called a nyatiti. (today this is often substituted with a bass guitar)

  • it involves heavy melodic syncopation from the strings with the rhythmic section

Aerophones:

Rhythm and Percussion

Wolof/Sabar

While these are only a few cultures, its easy to see that not all African music is the same. Each is unique and diverse. With many other genres of music today gaining inspiration from their styles. The music of Africa has become a global influence.

History of Sub-Saharan Africa

Wolof music can be linked to the people of Senegal and takes from Serer tradition

Music is closely associated with dancing

  • Wolof/Sabar is often heavily associated with dance (this means a strong bass beat and consistant syncopation)
  • Another form of music preformed is called bak

Bak is a intricate and often rhythmic composition that to an outsider can be very puzzling

  • Aerophones are also known as winds
  • Most common aerophones are flutes, whistles and trumpets
  • Flutes are made of bamboo, cane or wood
  • Horns and trumpets are made of animal horns, elephant tusks, wood, bamboo and gourds.

  • rhytmic patternrs are played all at one and are ususally repeated over and over.
  • Instruments usually play their own rhythm
  • Dancers often chose to follow any of the rhythms played by different instruments.
  • percussion is used to create contrast of tone color and pitch.
  • hand claps, foot stomps, thight or chest slaps are a form of percussion instruments

Ompeh:

Music in Sub-Saharan Society

Jola

  • A great variety of instruments and ensembles are found in Africa
  • Ensembles have two to twenty or more players
  • Consists of instruments with indefinite pitch, definite pitch or both

While moving, a dancer will often sing or play rattles and other idiophones that are held or tied to the body

  • the Jola are from Gambia
  • their traditional stringed instruments gave rise to the Banjo of today

The Banjo while being an American born instrument, would not have been possible if not for the African slaves native to Gambia who kept its predecessors incorporated into life in the new world.

  • Recorded in Winneba in 1992-1993 by Roger Vetterin
  • Ompeh is performed by a receational amateur ensemble of singers and percussionist who specialize in Ompeh, a type of music of the Akan-Speaking people of Ghana

The Diversity of African Music

What is Sub-Saharan Africa?

Jola

  • The Saharan Desert is what divides North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of Africa that is fully or partially below the Saharan desert.

Drums cont.

Vocal Music

  • “Talking drums” are used to send messages over long distances
  • Drums are considered sacred or magical
  • Drums are sometimes house in special shrines and given food and offered sacrifices

Timeline of Sub-Saharan Music

Timeline Cont.

Texture

Music is tightly linked with language

  • 1860s: sang spirituals of the American South, this influenced south african groups to form similar choirs and have competitions
  • 1890s: African American spirituals were made popular in the 1890s by Orpheus McAdoo's Jubilee Singers.
  • 1897: Marabi-swing style developed into early mbaqanga, the most distinctive form of South African jazz
  • 1912: South African popular music began in 1912 with the first commercial recordings.
  • African music is characterized by their homophonic or polyphonic texture
  • Some voices may sing the same melody at different pitch levels, which produces a series of parallel chords
  • people also perform polyphonic music in which different melodic lines are somewhat independent
  • 1930s The beginnings of broadcast radio for black listeners. This resulted in the growth of an indigenous recording industry and helped popularize black South African music. The 1930s also saw the spread of Zulu a cappella singing from the Natal area to much of South Africa.
  • 1933: Eric Gallo's Brunswick Gramophone House sent several South African musicians to London to record for Singer Records. Gallo went on to begin producing music in South Africa.
  • 1939: The development of isicathamiya.
  • "Mbube", an adaptation of a traditional Zulu melody which has been recycled and reworked innumerable times since then, often known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

Drums:

  • Many languages are tone languages, meaning a single word can have multiple meanings depending on the relative pitch it is said or sung at

Idiophones:

  • There is no musical notation. Musical tradition is translated orally

Xylophone:

  • Drums are played in groups of two to four
  • Symbolize power and royalty
  • Drums are the property of the group rather than of the individual
  • The chief drummer is free to improvise
  • African drummers are some of the most sophisticated in the world
  • Drums come in many sizes, shapes and forms
  • Drums are made from logs gourd and clay

  • Most common instruments in Africa
  • Idiophones include bells, rattles, scrapers xylophones and log drums
  • They are played by being struck or shaken but can also be scraped, rubbed , plucked or stamped against the ground
  • Many like rattles, bells and stone clappers have indefinite pitch
  • Some like the xylophone and mbira (thumb piano) are tuned instruments
  • Xylophones are particularly important and are played solo in both small and large orchestras
  • They come in different sizes ranging from soprano to double bass
  • Xylophones have from ten to over twenty slats, sometimes with gourd resonators
  • Spider webs are often placed over small holes in the resonators to create a buzzing sound

Music in Sub-Saharan Africa

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