Early Population

10 USAD Music Resource Guide • 2017–2018

White Nile), the second largest fresh water lake in the world in terms of surface area. Other countries touching the region include DRC, Kenya, and Tanza-nia.

Early PopulationAlthough very little is known about music making

in Africa (and the rest of the world for that matter) before the time of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (about 5,500 years ago), a brief review of how and when African populations came to be differentiat-ed by language and means of subsistence will help to establish the context for various kinds of musical activity.6

Africa is home to the modern human species Homo sapiens sapiens, which emerged about 200,000 years ago in eastern and southern Africa.7 About 90,000 years ago they had moved throughout most of the continent, with the first in a series of migra-tions out of Africa occurring about 72,000 years ago. Bow and arrow technology developed about 40,000 years ago, perhaps the impetus behind mu-sical bows. Modern humans dispersed throughout the world by about 12,000 years ago. Physiologi-cal differences distinguishing populations around the world are a result of our species adapting to the varied climates and environmental conditions. Hunting, fishing, and gathering in small camps were the means of subsistence until about 10,000–12,000 years ago, when agriculture enabled humans to stay put and build larger and larger communities.

Hunting and gathering as a means of subsistence still exists to a limited extent in the Central African rainforest among forest peoples known locally as BaAka, BaBenzele, and BaMbuti, and more generi-cally to outsiders as pygmies, a term which can be considered pejorative.8 Research among indige-nous inhabitants of the Kalahari known as Khoisan (those who predate Bantu migrations) suggests that this means of subsistence entailed an egalitarian community where all food was shared and there was little social hierarchy.

Between about 16,000 and 11,500 bce drier cli-mates, with rainforests shrinking and deserts ex-panding, forced migrations to more fertile parts of the continent, giving birth to the four major lan-guage families indigenous to Africa. The northeast reach of the Nile in Nubia (northern Sudan, south-ern Egypt) was the probable home to Afro-Asiatic

languages. Further south, along the Middle Nile, Ni-lo-Saharan languages developed. Still further south, the Great Lakes region was the probable home to Khoisan languages. And the West African savanna, across the stretch of the Niger River, is the probable home to Niger-Congo languages.

By about 7,000 bce Nilo-Saharans were cultivat-ing grain, making pottery, and domesticating cattle, practices that began to spread west and south. Over the next several thousand years, people began to gather in larger settlements in fertile flood plain ar-eas such as the Nile River Valley (Egypt and Nubia) and northern reaches of the Niger River (Mali).

By about 3,000 bce, Upper and Lower Egypt (both north of the first cataract at Aswan) were unified by the first king (pharaoh) of ancient Egypt, leading to a series of thirty (or thirty-one) dynas-ties that would last three thousand years. Ancient Egyptian time is measured in dynasties, which are in turn grouped into periods, including the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period (3rd–11th Dy-nasty, c. 2686–2055 bce), the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period (11th–17th Dynasty, c. 2055–1550 bce), the New Kingdom and Third In-termediate Period (18th–25th Dynasty, c. 1550–664 bce), and the Late Period (26th–30th Dynasty, c. 664–332 bce), which included Nubian and Persian kings.9

Egyptian wall reliefs and drawings of musical ac-tivities show harps and end-blown flutes (mid-sec-ond millennium bce), two different types of lutes (c. 1550–1295 bce), and drummers (c. 1186–1070 bce). Surviving musical instruments, such as a harp and trumpets (c. 1550–1295 bce), and a drum and sis-trum/rattle (c. 712–332 bce) provide a rare window

Ancient Egyptian wall reliefs and drawings show various types of musical instruments.

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11USAD Music Resource Guide • 2017–2018

into musical culture there.10 Nubia (home of the kingdom of Kush) was an-

cient Egypt’s southern neighbor, from the first cata-ract (in southern Egypt) to the sixth cataract (in Su-dan), with its capital Meroe at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. Not only have some key means of subsistence disseminated from northeast Africa, but so may have some musical instrument types (perhaps via Kush), such as lutes that are played in the western Sahel region.

One of the most well-known Nubian musicians in modern times is Hamza El Din (1929–2006). Born in southern Egypt near the border with Sudan, El Din was a composer and ‘ud (oud) player who per-formed at the famous Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and began making series of recordings on American labels that laid the foundation for the later world music boom in the 1980s. El Din collaborated with the rock band the Grateful Dead beginning in the late 1970s and the Kronos String Quartet, who re-

corded an arrangement of one of his ‘ud pieces, in 1992. El Din moved to the San Francisco Bay area and taught and performed extensively in the U.S.11

For some global perspective, the earliest urban civilizations in the world included: Mesopotamia (c. 3500 bce), located between the Tigris and Euphra-tes Rivers in present-day Iraq; Ancient Egypt (c. 3100 bce) in the Nile River valley; the Indus Valley (c. 2500 bce), located by the Indus River in north-western India; and Northern China (c. 1800 bce Shang Dynasty), located in the Yellow River valley.12 Some of the earliest documentation of music-mak-ing outside Africa includes drawings and an actual artifact of a lyre dating from the mid-third millenni-um bce in Mesopotamia.13

The formation of ethnic groups and craft special-ists within Africa may have been caused in part by increasing dry and wet fluctuations in the environ-ment. In West Africa environmental changes even-tually funneled diverse groups of people toward the Niger and Senegal River valleys by around 4,500 years ago. Archaeological finds suggest the emer-gence by the first millennium bce of specialized groups of craftspeople, such as ironworkers, leath-erworkers, and musicians, which are an important feature of many West African societies nowadays.

Iron-workingAfter agriculture and domesticating animals,

metal working brought major changes in Africa.14 Copper mining dates back to at least 4,000 bce in Si-nai, the part of ancient Egypt that links Africa with Asia. Copper and tin, the first metals worked, were eventually smelted together to make bronze, a hard-er metal used in ancient Egypt that was more effec-tive for tools and weapons. Gold, which was softer than copper and tin, was a rare metal. Its qualities of being easier to shape (for ornaments) and retaining its luster, along with its scarcity, made it a valuable commodity for trade. Gold mined in Nubia was an important source of wealth for ancient Egypt.

Iron is much stronger than bronze and can be sharpened to a finer edge, so those who knew how to make it gained strong advantages, both for sub-sistence, such as cutting down trees and clearing land, and for warfare. The earliest known sites of iron-smelting, a complex process requiring large amounts of charcoal for heat, are in Anatolia (Tur-key) dating from about 1,500 bce. It was a closely

One of the most well-known Nubian musicians in modern times is Hamza El Din (1929–2006).

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guarded secret, but eventually spread to Egypt by 670 bce. Iron-smelting appears to have been inde-pendently discovered in the regions of Lake Victo-ria Nyanza (where Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania meet) and Lake Chad (where Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon meet) around 1,000 bce. From Lake Chad it spread westward by 500 bce to the Jos Pla-teau (northeast of Abuja, Nigeria), where the famous Nok culture terracotta (baked clay) human and an-imal figures were being made, and the Middle Niger inland delta (between Mopti and Segou, Mali) by 400 bce. From Lake Victoria it eventually spread to southern Africa by 400 ce. In the Middle Niger in-land delta the town of Jenne-Jenno arose, which by the end of the first millennium ce supported tens of thousands of people, showing evidence of oc-cupationally specialized groups living separately from each other. In the absence of written records, archaeological research on communities such as

Jenne-Jeno provides some of the best indications of when groups of people began differentiating them-selves in a number of ways, including ethnicity.

Dating the origins of iron-smelting gives cru-cial information for speculating about music histo-ry. Certain kinds of drums and xylophones, which require iron tools to shape, would not predate the introduction of iron. And it is no coincidence, there-fore, that some oral traditions associate these in-struments with blacksmiths, precisely the only craftspeople who had the ability to make the instru-ments. And so, while beating on logs to make musi-cal sounds could be a very old practice, drumming on skins stretched over hollowed-out wooden shells and playing xylophones of differently tuned wooden slats probably have a more tangible point of origin, not earlier than three thousand years ago.

The hundreds of masking traditions that stretch across West Africa, from Guinea by the At-lantic coast across the forest regions, as far north as the Dogon in the Middle Niger region across to Cam-eroon and into Central Africa may tell stories about the diffusion of iron-working, some musical instru-ments, and the spiritual power of blacksmiths.15 Masks are typically used in associations and cults for initiations, funerals, agricultural ceremonies for a successful harvest, and protecting against sorcery or the dangers of the wilderness. Among Mande peoples of the western savanna, it is blacksmiths who carve the masks and head the secret societies that use them. Masks are typically used in perfor-mance, dancing on bodies animated by drums or xylophones.

Several basic masking forms are used: head-dresses; helmet masks; face masks; and masquer-ade constructions such as full-body costumes. The helmets (and less frequently headdresses) typically form horizontal masks in the shape of wild animals. Used by over seventy-five ethnic groups (some of whom have two or more distinct varieties of masks) across such a vast expanse of West and Central Af-rica, they point to a broad cultural diffusion and great individual creativity behind their diversity of unique forms.

Other than Saharan cave and rock drawings, which can be ambiguous in their interpretations, and examples from ancient Egypt, little concrete documentation of music making exists for the rest

A helmet mask used by the West African Sande Society. Masks are used by over seventy-five ethnic groups across a vast expanse of West and Central

Africa.Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

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of Africa before the writings of Arabic-speaking travelers around the eleventh century ce. Conse-quently, African music history before then relies on archaeological and linguistic evidence regarding the movement of people and the formation of dis-tinct communities.

When Arabic-speaking Muslims arrived in West Africa in the ninth century ce, they found the Sonin-ke empire of Ghana (also known as Wagadu) ruling over much of the western Sahel and savanna from its capital in southeastern Mauritania near the present Malian border. Ancient Ghana, the earliest empire in West Africa, was renowned for its wealth, which came from gold mines it controlled in the south. Ghana declined by the thirteenth century ce, and the political center of western Africa shifted further south into the savanna to a new empire known as Mali. The story of ancient Mali concerns one of the major music cultures of Africa, which still exists.

Language FamiliesRecent estimates put the number of distinct Afri-

can languages at over two thousand.16 This number should be taken with caution, however, as the differ-ences between languages, language varieties, and dialects are not easily determined. This linguis-tic diversity is mirrored by a diversity of unique-ly marked musical instruments, tuning systems, playing styles, repertories, and hence music cul-tures. Tunings may be likened to language dialects (“tongues”), and so different tuning systems (or dialects) may coexist and typically be embraced in a single ensemble. This diversity, as well as a wide-spread embrace of difference, has been one of the main driving engines of nation-building in post-co-lonial Africa.

Languages indigenous to Africa are categorized into four large families: Niger-Congo (the largest, covering West, Central, and South), Nilo-Saharan (parts of the Sahara and East), Afro-Asiatic (North), and Khoisan (southern desert). Austronesian lan-guages are spoken on the island of Madagascar.

The Niger-Congo family is the most widespread and has the largest number of speakers. Some exam-ples of the major Niger-Congo branches and specif-ic languages within them should give a sense of the vast complexity of Africa’s language map. Language and ethnicity often go hand in hand (e.g., Wolof speakers claim Wolof ethnicity). And so ethnicity

and musical culture are linked together. Linguistic diversity, therefore, provides a clear window into ethnic and musical diversity. Mande languages in-clude Bamana (Mali), Maninka (Mali, Guinea), Dan (Côte d’Ivoire), and Vai (Liberia). Atlantic languages include Wolof (Senegal) and Fulbe (Sahel region). Gur (or Voltaic) languages include Lobi (northern Ghana) and Gurunsi (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo). Kwa languages include Akan, Ga, and Ewe (Ghana). Benue-Congo languages are especially widespread, including Yoruba (Nigeria), which is part of the Vol-ta-Niger branch, and—the most widespread fam-ily—Bantu, encompassing most of the languages spoken in East (Kikuyu, Luganda), Central (Chokwe, Luba), and Southern (Shona, Zulu, Xhosa) Africa.

Linguistic research has yielded significant in-sights about the movement of people within the continent. The most far-reaching movement was the Bantu expansion, in which Bantu-language speak-ers began waves of migrations from their probable homeland around present-day Cameroon, eastward and then south, through the Central African rainfor-ests, into South Africa. This took place from approxi-mately 1,000 bce to 300 ce. This dispersion explains similarities in language between such distant areas as Cameroon and South Africa. It also explains simi-lar traditions of drumming associated with wooden masks found where many of the migrations led.

Political HistoryMusic in Africa is intimately wrapped up in the

political history of Africa: how people organized themselves into chiefdoms, kingdoms, empires, and states, the subsequent European colonization of Af-rica, and the emergence of post-colonial nations in the 1950s and 60s. Political entities helped to solid-ify music cultures, as they became uniquely identi-fied as belonging to one or another ethnic group or nation.

Impact on Music Larger ethnic groups associated with powerful

kingdoms and empires may have a more unified mu-sical system, consisting of a common repertory of pieces associated with life cycle events, agricultural fertility, recreation, and epic histories. Such political status can lend prestige to a music culture. One of the tasks of newly independent nations was build-ing national identities using the diverse music cul-

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tures within their borders. Previously independent musical styles mixed together in new ways.

African Kingdoms and StatesIn the later first millennium ce, kingdoms, states,

and empires began to emerge outside of the north-east. Memories of these times are preserved in many living musical traditions.

Ancient Ghana and MaliAncient Ghana (also called Wagadu), which has

no direct relation with the modern nation of Gha-na, arose in the vicinity of southeastern Mauritania and western Mali as a powerful kingdom in the first millennium ce and declined by the early thirteenth century. It was succeeded in the region by ancient Mali, also known as Manden, Manding, or Mande, which became the largest and wealthiest empire in all of Africa. In the early thirteenth century a leg-endary warrior/prince named Sunjata (also spelled Sundiata) won a decisive battle that established the rise of the kingdom. Sunjata had a personal oral historian/musician attached to him, named Balla Faseke Kouyate, who became the most well-known figure in a lineage that extends to present-day Mali. Called a “jeli” in the Maninka language, a term that refers to hereditary, professional oral historian mu-sicians, nowadays he would be called by the more general term “griot.” That story, so important to un-derstanding music making in much of western Af-rica, will be told in Section II of this resource guide.

Asante, Buganda, ZimbabweOther important kingdoms that had particularly

strong musical traditions emerged throughout Afri-ca over the past thousand years. The modern nation of Ghana is well known for its diversity and sophisti-cated drum ensembles. Some of them stem from the Akan kingdom of Asante, founded by Osei Tutu at Kumasi in the 1670s.17 His title of Asantehene (king of Asante) has been passed down to the present day, along with elaborate drumming associated with the royal court. Controlling the trade from local gold-fields, Asante grew to cover most of modern Ghana.

The kingdom of Buganda, located on the north-west shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, probably dates from the early eighteenth century, with oral tradi-tions attributing its ultimate origins back the four-teenth century. The king of Buganda, known as the kabaka, kept a royal music ensemble, including

xylophones, drums, fiddles, and flutes. Musicians at the Bugandan royal court were renowned for their virtuosity, especially on the xylophones called amadinda and akadinda.

The Shona people, stemming from Great Zimba-bwe and now the predominant group in the modern nation of Zimbabwe, have developed a sophisticated music culture around the metal-keyed mbira.

Historical Sources: Early Travel Reports

Beginning with Arabic-speaking travelers to Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a wealth of documenta-tion of musical activity.18 One of the earliest reports is from Ibn Battuta’s visit to the seat of ancient Mali in 1352–53, where he described elaborate music activity. Most travelers were not well versed in mu-sic, and so they mainly left descriptions of musical events and rudimentary descriptions of musical instruments and dancing. European travelers, be-ginning with the Portuguese, and then the Dutch, French, and British, left fuller accounts, including detailed drawings of musical events and musical

The Shona people have developed a sophisticated music culture around the metal-

keyed mbira.Photo by Alex Weeks.

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instruments. Music-making was striking enough to foreign eyes and ears that travelers often took note of it. These accounts have been crucial in construct-ing a deep history of music in Africa.

By the 1440s the Portuguese had gained the ship-building and sailing expertise to be the first Europe-ans to reach Africa south of the Sahara. From initial points of contact at the Senegal River (which es-tablishes the border with Mauritania), they moved further south along the Atlantic coast in search of trade opportunities. They built Elmina fort on the Gold Coast (Ghana) to protect their trading interests in 1471, reached the Congo River by the 1480s, the Cape of Good Hope near the southern tip in 1488, and rounded the southern tip moving up the eastern coast in 1498, reaching Zanzibar (off of Tanzania) and Mombasa and Malindi (Kenya) that year. And so began a centuries-long increasing presence of Euro-peans on the continent.

While European travelers provided important documentation for understanding music history in Africa, their trading practices were especially traumatic. Initially trading material goods, human

trafficking, known as the transatlantic slave trade soon began. In all, approximately 12.5 million Afri-cans were taken to the New World as slaves between the sixteenth-nineteenth centuries, with almost 2 million of them not surviving the journey.19

One result, beside the tragic human suffering involved, was the transplanting of African culture into new environments, where generations of de-scendants created new musical forms, including samba (Brazil), rumba, son, and mambo (Cuba), reg-gae (Jamaica), calypso (Trinidad and Tobago), and blues and jazz (U.S.), among many others.

The Colonial Era After several centuries of trade and contact most-

ly limited to the coastlines, European powers made their move in the 1880s to formally colonize Africa in what became known as the European Scramble for Africa. At notorious conferences in Berlin in 1884 and 1885, European powers negotiated with each other for rights to establish colonies in Africa, effec-tively formalizing a process that was already under-way. The major powers were France, which would establish colonies in North and West Africa, and a small part of the Congo, and Great Britain, which would colonize coastal regions of West Africa, and most of East and South Africa. Belgium, under King Leopold II, would establish one of the most brutal presences in Africa, taking over much of the Central African Congo. Portugal laid claim to much smaller portions (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique), as did Germany (Togo, Cameroon, Tanganyika), al-though their presence would soon diminish.

One result of colonization was increased com-munication among like colonies, at least in terms of language. French and English became predominant languages throughout large parts of Africa. Portu-guese had a more limited distribution.

IndependenceBeginning in 1957, sub-Saharan colonies began

gaining their independence, with Ghana leading the way, the first among the British colonies. The fol-lowing year, Guinea became the second nation to gain independence (and the first among the French colonies). By 1963, most of the British and French colonies had gained independence. The Portuguese colonies had a more protracted and violent path to independence. Only Ethiopia, which successfully

Elmina fort, 1704. The Portuguese built Elmina fort on the Gold Coast (Ghana) to protect their

trading interests in 1471.

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Figure 1.1

Climate Map of AfricaShillington 2012: 5

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FIGURE 1.1. Climate Map of Africa (Shillington 2012: 5)

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Figure 1.2

Map of African CountriesShillington 2012: 434

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FIGURE 1.2: Map of African Countries Shillington 2012: 434

African Nations Grouped by Region and Language* West Africa Francophone countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo Anglophone countries: The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone Lusophone (Portuguese speaking) countries: Guinea-Bissau Hispanophone (Spanish): Cape Verde

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resisted Italian incursions, and Liberia, which was governed by repatriated freed slaves from the U.S., had not been colonized by European powers.

Political independence had at least one major impact on the music cultures in Africa: most na-tions formed government-supported national music groups in an effort to unify the country and estab-lish a unique national identity. They typically drew from all corners of their national boundaries, bring-ing musicians and dancers to the capital city to cre-ate new modes of presenting traditional music in a concert hall format. Guinea was a leader in this re-gard.

Almost immediately upon gaining independence in 1958, Guinean president Sekou Toure, created three kinds of music groups: ballets (drumming and dancing), ensembles (featuring traditional in-struments), and orchestras (guitar and brass-based popular dance music). The National Ballet of Guinea had already been in existence, originally founded by Guinean Fodeba Keita in Paris about 1949, tak-ing on the name Les Ballets Africains for their ma-jor debut there in 1952. Before becoming national-ized, they toured the world in the 1950s, including the U.S. in 1959; they were (and still are) the most well-known African drum and dance troupe. When Guinea gained independence, President Toure called them to Guinea and gave them national ballet status.

Musicians found new sources of patronage in the regional and national ensembles and some used them as stepping stones for international solo ca-reers.

African Nations Grouped by Region and Language*

West AfricA

Francophone countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivo-ire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo

Anglophone countries: The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone

Lusophone (Portuguese speaking) countries: Guinea-Bissau

Hispanophone (Spanish): Cape Verde

eAst AfricA

Anglophone countries: Burundi, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda

Francophone counties: Comoros, Djibouti, Madagascar

Lusophone countries: Mozambique

Other: Ethiopia

centrAl AfricA

Francophone countries: Cameroon, Central African Re-public, Chad, Congo—Republic of the (French Congo), Congo—Democratic Republic of the (Belgian Congo), Gabon

Anglophone countries: Zambia

Lusophone countries: Angola, São Tomé, and Príncipe

Hispanophone: Equatorial Guinea

southern AfricA

Anglophone countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Republic of South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe

north AfricA

Francophone and Arabophone countries: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia

Anglophone and Arabophone: Sudan

Arabophone countries: Egypt

*Note that there is no definitive boundary between the different regions and so some countries could fit into multiple categories.

Les Ballets Africains performs in Bonn in 1962. They were (and still are) the most well-known

African drum and dance troupe.Photo Credit: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F014155-06 / Wegmann, Ludwig

/ CC-BY-SA 3.0

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Religious HistoryAfrica has a rich history of indigenous religions

based on worship of and communication with an-cestors and deities, often using music as the vehicle to establish such communication. Overlaid on these practices is Islam, which entered North Africa in the seventh century and moved southward into the Sahara, Sahel, and northern savanna regions as well as the east African coast. Christianity entered via the Atlantic seaboard beginning in the fifteenth century. Each of these religions has left profound markings on African culture.

Impact on Music Religious practice can have both negative and

positive consequences for music making. Indige-nous religions typically use musical instruments as part of their various ceremonies and therefore pro-vide important opportunities for musicians to prac-tice and pass down their craft. The coming of Islam and Christianity has led to efforts to eradicate cer-tain kinds of local musical practice (especially that of competing local religious practice) and has also stimulated new modes of musical expression.

Traditional ReligionsAlthough African religions are localized with

their own individual practices, they have much in common with each other.20 They have their own cre-ation stories, or cosmologies, which explain how a group of people and their belief systems came into being. Their structures are often similar: they are headed by an omnipotent Creator Divinity, often male and living in the sky, who is associated with one particular group of people (rather than the universal God of the monotheistic Abrahamic reli-gions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Between the supreme creator and the living are any number of spiritual beings who are intermediaries. These in-termediaries may be living (priests, diviners, spirit mediums) or not (spirits, ancestors). Communica-tion between the living and the nonliving deities is at the heart of African religions. This may be initi-ated by the spirits or by the living (via intermedi-aries).

One form of communication is possession (either voluntary or involuntary), a seizing of a person by a deity, spirit, or ancestor. In voluntary cases, either

an ordinary person seeking help or a spirit medium uses music and dance to invite the spirit in.

Spirit PossessionSpirit possession, common to many African re-

ligions, is one way in which believers communicate with ancestors and deities, seeking advice, healing, or protection. Most religions use music, typically drumming and singing, and dance, to bring down a deity or ancestor.

For instance, the religious views of the Shona of Zimbabwe entail honoring their ancestors and their moral values.21 If misfortune arises, a person might seek a spirit medium to communicate with their an-cestors and address the issue. It is through the mu-sic of an mbira ensemble that an ancestral spirit is summoned and possesses a spirit medium during an all-night bira ceremony. Once possessed, the spirit medium can channel the ancestral spirit and be consulted for how to address the misfortune.

Vodun, “mysterious forces or powers that govern the world and the lives of those who reside within it,” 22 is a religious belief system originally associat-ed with related ethnic groups in the vicinity of Benin (Fon) and Togo and Ghana (Ewe). It was transported to Haiti during the slave trade, where it incorporat-ed other African spirits and came to be known as Vodou. Vodun practices, both in Africa and in Hai-ti, involve spirit possession brought on by singing, drumming, and dancing.23

A description of Yoruba religious practice may help clarify the relationship between the medium or priest and the deity or ancestor:

Through dance, spiritual forces material-ize in the phenomenal world. The god is said to mount the devotee and, for a time, that devotee becomes the god. . . Whatever the priest does from the moment she en-ters the trance state is thought to repre-sent the deity’s own actions.24

Yoruba PantheonThe term Yoruba refers to a conglomerate of relat-

ed ethnic groups primarily located in southwestern Nigeria, as well as the language that they speak.25 The Yoruba pantheon consists of divine spirits (called orisha, orisa, or oricha) and an all-encom-

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passing Supreme Creator called Olodumare (also known as Olorun). The orishas are associated with specific traits or material properties, such as Eshu (trickster), Ogun (iron), Yemoja (mother of water), and Shango (lightning). Human beings may seek possession by their personal orishas in ceremonies that involve singing, drumming, and dancing.

Ife is the ancestral homeland of Yoruba religion where Oduduwa, the founding ancestor, arrived on earth to rule. Succeeding rulers, known as Oni of Ife, claim descent from Oduduwa. Renowned Ife artworks, including wood carvings, terracotta sculptures, and bronze casts, date from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries ce.26 Yoruba religion, practiced in southwestern Nigeria, and variants in the New World (Candomble in Brazil, Santería in Cuba), is among the most well researched.27

Two major kinds of activities are associated with Yoruba religion: spirit possession and divination (interpreting signs from an orisha for advice). The divination system associated with the deity Ifa (also known as Orunmila), the deity of divination, was recognized by the United Nations Educational, Sci-entific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity to be safe-guarded.28

IslamIslam is the predominant religion in North Africa,

the African Sahel and northern savanna, and along the east coast.29 Those who accept Islam are called Muslims (also spelled as Moslem). Muhammad (also spelled as Mohammed), the Prophet of Islam, was born in Mecca around 570 ce and died in 632. The Muslim holy book, the Quran (Koran), contains the

Pilgrims at the Great Mosque of Mecca. A pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) is one of five religious duties of Muslims.

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revelations that Muhammad received from Allah (God). Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last in a line of prophets beginning with Abraham (Ibra-him). Within a century of Muhammad’s death, North Africa was under Muslim control, and within four centuries North Africa was predominantly Muslim and had adopted the Arabic language.

Muslims have five major religious duties, called the pillars of Islam: the profession of the faith; prayer five times daily; almsgiving; fasting between sunup and sundown during the holy month of Ramadan; and a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). Devout Muslims in Africa, as in the rest of the Muslim world, observe these pillars. Sufism is a belief and practice with-in Islam that is especially sympathetic to the use of music and dance to experience the spiritual and mystical dimensions of Islam. Sufi orders may be found throughout the Muslim world, including the so-called whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order in Turkey. Sufism is especially prevalent in Senegal.

Muslims believe that recitation of the Quran and prayers should be done in the original language of the Quran, which is Arabic. This is a key point for understanding how Arab musical practices have in-fused Africa. Five times a day throughout the Muslim world the call to prayer is sounded from mosques, often via loudspeakers. The population cannot help but absorb Arab chanting styles into their own cul-tures. The same goes for recitation of the Quran, which non-Muslims would consider to be a very flor-id style of singing. Islam, however, does not condone singing and other kinds of music making, and so the term “recitation” is used instead.

Music in the Arab world is consistent in observ-ing certain conventions. It is monophonic, mean-ing that it consists of a single melodic line, even if several instruments are playing together or a cho-rus is singing. Everyone is playing or singing some close version of that melody. Arab music requires improvisation. Quranic recitation is not fixed and is expected to sound different every time. It is also highly intricate with much ornamentation. Indeed, the intricacies are not considered as ornaments, but rather as integral parts of musical expression.

As result, Arab music, and hence Muslim religious chanting is highly melismatic: many tones are sung to just a single syllable of text. This contrasts with much non-Muslim African singing, for example,

which is highly syllabic: just one tone is sung per syllable.

ChristianityChristianity entered Africa very early, in the first

century ce, with Alexandria (Egypt) as an import-ant center.30 After several centuries, an Egyptian Coptic Church emerged, using the Coptic language that descends from ancient Egypt. By the seventh century ce, missionaries had brought Christianity to Nubia and Aksum (Eritrea and northern Ethio-pia). In 1270 a Solomonic dynasty was established in Ethiopia, claiming descent from the union of bib-lical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba via rulers of ancient Aksum. Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethio-pia from 1930–74, was part of this same Solomonic

Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia from 1930–74, also known as Ras Tafari, became an important

symbol among Jamaicans who began to formulate a new set of religious practices after his accession. A

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lineage. Also known as Ras (an honorary title) Tafari (his personal first name), Selassie, or Ras Tafari be-came an important symbol among Jamaicans who began to formulate a new set of religious practices after his accession. They came to be known as Ras-tafarians; the most famous of these adherents was Bob Marley.

The major impact of Christianity on Africa result-ed from missionary activity with the arrival of Eu-ropeans in the fifteenth century.31 It was the music of the Protestant church that would prove transfor-mative. In 1517 in Germany, Martin Luther set into motion a Protestant Reformation. Lutheran church music would depart from the monophonic Roman Catholic tradition, flowering in J. S. Bach’s Lutheran chorales dating from the early eighteenth century, which set an enduring standard for the manipula-tion and mastery of four-part harmony.

It was largely lands colonized by the British that were impacted the most in several ways. In the face of Christian monotheism, some competing local practices, often steeped in musical tradition, were devalued. European styles of singing and the tonal system that goes along with them were introduced, taking on an aura of prestige, which also tended to devalue local practice. But Africans were not passive consumers of foreign musical styles. They reshaped them for their own purposes and created new mu-sical genres. The most well-known style that draws on church-based choral music comes from South Af-rica and is known as isicathamiya (or mbube). The most well-known exponent of this style is the group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who we will encounter in Section II of this guide.

Musical ConceptsMusic textbooks covering European classical or

American popular music typically divide the ele-ments of music into melody, harmony, and rhythm. Melody refers to a succession (one after another) of single tones (also called pitches or notes) to form a coherent statement or tune. Harmony refers to the simultaneous sounding (at the same time) of two or more tones to create chords. Rhythm refers to a se-quence of events, which could be strokes on a drum, chords on a guitar, words of a song, or the changing of the seasons, unfolding over time.

Other elements are also important. Timbre (pro-

nounced tambur or tombur) refers to the color or quality of a sound that lets us tell the difference between, for example, a clarinet, guitar, and saxo-phone playing the same melody. Improvisation is the process by which a performer creates music in the course of performance (as opposed to reading musical notation on a page or memorizing a piece of music). The performer is guided by musical models and abstract grammatical rules.

The system of music notation that developed in Europe and is used around the world will help us to freeze some of the sounds made by African musi-cians to analyze them more closely. That act of fixing sound into notation is called transcription. Most music making in Africa relies on oral transmission and improvisation (or, at the very least, significant input from the performer), and so music notation plays an insignificant role for musicians.

African Music TheoryLack of Local Technical Terminology

One feature of music making in Africa is that nei-ther musicians nor their listeners are interested in talking about music in abstract technical terms. And so musicians not already schooled in European music theory do not talk about their music in terms of scales, beats, beat subdivisions, rhythmic cycles, chords, or time signatures. There is very little ter-minology in African languages for these technical aspects of music making. Musicians do talk about music, especially in the realm of aesthetics (judg-ments about the quality or beauty of an art form), but mostly using everyday language.

However, African musicologists trained in Euro-pean music theory have made great contributions in the fields of African music history and theory since the 1920s; the first two music textbooks surveying the continent were published by scholars from Cam-eroon in 1969 (Francis Bebey) and Ghana in 1974 (J. H. Kwabena Nketia).32 Nketia, as one of the most distinguished musicologists in the world with over two hundred publications to his credit, has made an enormous contribution to African music research.33 He was the first director of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana beginning in 1962 and taught at several universities in the U.S. It is largely due to his pioneering efforts that African (more specifically, Ghanaian) drumming and dance

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Documents

Early Population