African music

 

Besides using the voice, a wide array of musical instruments is used. African musical instruments include a wide array of drums, slit gongs, rattles, double bells as well melodic instruments like string instruments (musical bows, different types of harps and harp-liker instruments like the Kora as well as fiddles), many types of xylophones and lamellaphones such as the mbira and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.

The wide array of drums used in African traditional music include tama talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and different types of drums are often called engoma or ngoma in Central and Southern Africa.

 

During colonial times, European instruments such as saxophones, trumpets, and guitars were adopted by many African musicians; their sounds were integrated into the traditional patterns and are widely used in African popular music. 

 

 

 

Relationship to dance

 

 

The treatment of "music" and "dance" as separate art forms is an European idea. In many African languages there is no concept corresponding exactly to these terms. For example, in many Bantu languages, there is one concept that might be translated as "song" and another that covers both the semantic fields of the European concepts of "music" and "dance". So there is one word for both music and dance (the exact meaning of the concepts may differ from culture to culture).

For example, in Kiswahili, the word "ngoma" may be translated as "drum", "dance", "dance event", "dance celebration" or "music", depending on the context. Each of these translations is incomplete.

Therefore, from an intracultural point of view, African music and African dance must be viewed in very close connection. The classification of the phenomena of this area of culture into "music" and "dance" is foreign to many African cultures.

 

There is a close connection between the polyrhythmic structure of African music and the polycentric structure of many African dances, in which different parts of the body are moved according to different rhythmical components. 

 

Traditional music

 

 

 A lot of traditional African music is or was performed by professional musicians. Some of it is courtly music or sacral music. Therefore, the term "folk" music is not always appropriate. Nevertheless, both the terms "folk music" and "traditional music" can be found in the literature.

African folk music and traditional music is mostly functional in nature. There are, for example, many different kinds of work songs, ceremonial or religious music and courtly music performed at royal courts, but none of these are performed outside of their intended social context.

Music is highly functional in African ethnic life, accompanying birth, marriage, hunting, and even political activities. Much music exists solely for entertainment, ranging from narrative songs to highly stylized musical theater.

Popular music

 

 

Genres of popular African Music include:


 

With two simple musical instruments like an acoustic guitar and bongo drums you will catch that unique and rare African sound that is African music.