Given the vastness of the African continent, its music is diverse, with regions and nations having many distinct musical traditions. African music includes the genres amapiano, jj, fuji, afrobeat, highlife, Congolese rumba, soukous, ndombolo, makossa, kizomba, Taarab, and others.[1] African music also uses a large variety of instruments from all across the continent. The music and dance of the African diaspora, formed to varying degrees on African musical traditions, include American music like Dixieland jazz, blues, jazz, and many Caribbean genres, such as calypso (see kaiso) and soca. Latin American music genres such as cumbia, salsa music, son cubano, rumba, conga, bomba, samba and zouk were founded on the music of enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music.[1][2]

Like the music of Asia, India and the Middle East, it is a highly rhythmic music. The complex rhythmic patterns often involving one rhythm played against another to create a polyrhythm. The most common polyrhythm plays three beats on top of two, like a triplet played against straight notes. Sub-Saharan African music traditions frequently rely on percussion instruments of many varieties, including xylophones, djembes, drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira or "thumb piano."[2][3]


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Another distinguishing form of African music is its call-and-response style: one voice or instrument plays a short melodic phrase, and that phrase is echoed by another voice or instrument. The call-and-response nature extends to the rhythm, where one drum will play a rhythmic pattern, echoed by another drum playing the same pattern. African music is also highly improvised. A core rhythmic pattern is typically played, with drummers then improvising new patterns over the static original patterns.

Traditional music in most of the continent is passed down through oral tradition. There are subtle differences in pitch and intonation that do not easily translate to Western notation. African music most closely adheres to Western tetratonic (four-note), pentatonic (five-note), hexatonic (six-note), and heptatonic (seven-note) scales. Harmonization of the melody is accomplished by singing in parallel thirds, fourths, or fifths (see Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony).

Music is important to religion in Africa, where rituals and religious ceremonies use music to pass down stories from generation to generation as well as to sing and dance to.[4] Additionally, music is important to the culture as a whole, not only as a form of religious and self-expression, but also as a form of media to communicate about important demographic issues, politics, and morals.[5] Music in Africa is embedded into every aspect of life and at every social transitions.[6]

Many other cultures have studied African music though time, hence the mass influence that it has had on others. For instance, in December 2002, the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology held multiple conferences in an attempt to study the music of Ghana. The ethnomusicologists taking part in the study looked to learn aspects of history through music, along with its traditions. Additionally, some ethnomusicologists, such as John Collins, looked to study more specific aspects of music from Ghana, such as the presence of Christianity in popular music.[7]

African Music has a deep relationship with the community. African music is made for both public enjoyment and public participation; which makes African music fall under the category of Community Music, where active community and public participation in music making is encouraged. It is this importance of community that establishes Christopher Small's idea of Social Happiness and musicking,[8] which is wildly important in this culture.[9][10][11]

North Africa is the seat of ancient Egypt and Carthage, civilizations with strong ties to the ancient Near East and which influenced the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Eventually, Egypt fell under Persian rule followed by Greek and Roman rule, while Carthage was later ruled by Romans and Vandals. North Africa was later conquered by the Arabs, who established the region as the Maghreb of the Ar Africa (sky-blue and dark green region on map),[12] its music has close ties with Middle Eastern music and utilizes similar melodic modes (maqamat).[13] North African music has a considerable range, from the music of ancient Egypt to the Berber and the Tuareg music of the desert nomads. The region's art music has for centuries followed the outline of Arabic and Andalusian classical music: its popular contemporary genres include the Algerian Ra.

With these may be grouped the music of Sudan and of the Horn of Africa, including the music of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Somali music is typically pentatonic, using five pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale.[12] The music of the Ethiopian highlands uses a fundamental modal system called qenet, of which there are four main modes: tezeta, bati, ambassel, and anchihoy.[14] Three additional modes are variations on the above: tezeta minor, bati major, and bati minor.[15] Some songs take the name of their qenet, such as tizita, a song of reminiscence.[14]

African traditional music is frequently functional in nature. Performances may be long and often involve the participation of the audience.[18] There are, for example, specialized work songs, songs accompanying childbirth, marriage, hunting and political activities, music to ward off evil spirits and to pay respects to good spirits, the dead and the ancestors. None of this is performed outside its intended social context and much of it is associated with a particular dance. Some of it, performed by professional musicians, is sacral music or ceremonial and courtly music performed at royal courts.

Southern, Central and West Africa are similarly in the broad Sub-Saharan musical tradition. They also have several ancillary influences, from the Muslim regions of Africa, and in modern times, the Americas and Western Europe.

Afrobeat, juju, fuji, highlife, makossa, and kizomba are performed in West Africa. West African music has regional variations, with Muslim regions incorporating elements of Islamic music and non-Muslim regions more influenced by indigenous traditions, according to the historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik.[19] According to Diouf, traditional Muslim West African Music incorporates elements of the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, an Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century), including lyrics praising God, melody, note changes, "words that seem to quiver and shake" in the vocal chords, dramatic changes in musical scales, and nasal intonation. According to Kubik, the vocal style of Muslim West African singers "using melisma, wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of West Africa that had been in contact with the Arabic-Islamic world of the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries." In terms of instrumentation, Kubik notes that stringed instruments (including ancestors of the banjo) were traditionally favored by Muslim West Africans, while drumming was traditionally favored by non-Muslim West Africans.[19]

Besides vocalisation, which uses various techniques such as complex hard melisma and yodel, a wide array of musical instruments are also used. African musical instruments include a wide range of drums, slit gongs, rattles and double bells, different types of harps, and harp-like instruments such as the kora and the ngoni, as well as fiddles, many kinds of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets. Additionally, string instruments are also used, with the lute-like oud and Ngoni serving as musical accompaniment in some areas.

There are five groups of Sub-Saharan African musical instruments: membranophones, chordophones, aerophones, idiophones, and percussion. Membranophones are the drums, including kettles, clay pots, and barrels. Chordophones are stringed instruments like harps and fiddles. Aerophones are another name for wind instruments. These can include flutes and trumpets, similar to the instruments one hears in American music. In Northern Nigeria, Niger Republic and Northern Cameroon, Algaita-a double reed instrument is very common for festive events and seasons.[20]

Idiophones are rattles and shakers, while percussion can be sounds like foot-stomping and hand-clapping.[21] Many of the wooden instruments have shapes or pictures carved out into them to represent ancestry. Some are decorated with feathers or beads.[21]

Drums used in African traditional music include talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and the different types of ngoma drums (or engoma) in Central and Southern Africa. Other percussion instruments include many rattles and shakers, such as the kosika (kashaka), rain stick, bells and wood sticks. Also, Africa has many other types of drums, and many flutes and stringed and wind instruments.

The playing of polyrhythms is one of the most universal characteristics of Sub-Saharan music, in contrast to polyphony in Western music. Several uniquely designed instruments have evolved there over time to facilitate the playing of simultaneous contrasting rhythms. The mbira, kalimba, Kora, ngoni and dousn'gouni are examples of these instruments which organize notes not in the usual single linear order from bass to treble, but in two separated rank arrays which allows additional ease in playing cross rhythms. The continuing influence of this principle can be seen in the 20th century American instruments the gravi-kora and gravikord which are new modern examples.

Many languages spoken in Africa are tonal languages, leading to a close connection between music and language in some local cultures. These particular communities use vocal sounds and movements with their music as well. In singing, the tonal pattern or the text puts some constraints on the melodic patterns. On the other hand, in instrumental music a native speaker of a language can often perceive a text or texts in the music. This effect also forms the basis of drum languages (talking drums).[22] 152ee80cbc

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