African Music

The music you study for your GCSE is most likely to be from sub-Saharan Africa where music is an important part of traditional life.

African music is:
  • part of everyday activities - everyone joins in clapping, singing and dancing to the music
  • part of rites and ceremonies where it is performed by specialist master drummers and court musicians
  • not normally written down but passed on through oral tradition
The influence of black African music is widespread. It came over to America with the African slaves and combined with the folk music of the European settlers to produce new styles of music such as blues, gospel and jazz. These went on to form the basis of pop music today.

African Drums

  • They are usually made from wood, metal, earthenware or large gourds, which are hard-rinded fruit.
  • They come in different shapes - tubular drums, bowl-shaped drums and friction drums. Some have one head, others have two.
  • They come in different sizes. The bigger the drum - the lower the note. The more tension in the drum head - the higher the note produced.
  • They are played using hands or sticks or both.
  • They sometimes have rattling metal and jingles attached to the outside or seeds and beads placed inside the drum.
  • They are sometimes held under the armpit or with a sling.
DJEMBE

One of the best-known African drums is the West African djembe (pronounced zhem-bay). It is shaped like a large goblet and played with bare hands. The body is carved from a hollowed trunk and is covered in goat skin.
Talking drums imitate the rhythms and intonations of speech.

They are double-headed and belong to the family of hourglass-shaped pressure drums. They are played with a beater. The drums can be used to imitate speech patterns or as signals to make announcements or warnings. The pitchof the note is changed by squeezing or releasing the drum's strings with the arm.

Drum Ensembles

The music played by drum ensembles is very complex in rhythm and texture. The master drummer has the most elaborate part, leading the drum ensemble and playing solos. He leads the drummers by giving them musical cues in the form of rhythm patterns. He also gives cues to dancers to signal changes of tempo or steps.

In drum ensembles:
  • several different rhythms are played at the same time
  • the rhythm patterns interlock and overlap to form polyrhythmic patterns and exciting cross-rhythms

A cross-rhythm is the effect produced when two conflicting rhythms are heard together. Polyrhythm is when two or more rhythms with different pulses are heard together, eg where one drum is playing in triple time and another is playing in quadruple time, three against four.


TIMELINES

West African drumming often uses a timeline.

A timeline is a short repeated rhythm which is often played by a single or double bell, eg the gonkogui, a double bell with a high note and a low note (like an agogo bell in Samba). The function of the timeline is to hold the piece together.

String Instruments

String instruments include various types of lute, harp and zither. One of the most well-known instruments is the kora - a long-necked African harp with many strings. The kora is often used to accompany songs of worship. Many kora players play complicated melodies at great speed.

Two well-known melodic instruments are the balafon and the mbira (thumb piano). The balafon is a West African xylophone - it is a pitched percussion instrument with bars made from logs or bamboo. The thumb piano is so-named because the thumbs play a series of wooden or metal tongues.

Wind instruments

Wind instruments include three different types:
  • flutes (often made out of bamboo)
  • horns and trumpets
  • reed pipes
Other instruments include rattles, shakers, gongs and rasps.

African Singing

In Africa, songs are sung for every occasion, including:
  • childhood lullabies and play songs
  • birthdays, marriages and funerals
  • religious, political and tribal occasions

Songs include accompanied and unaccompanied solos, duets and choruses. Unaccompanied choruses are an example of a cappella singing. Songs are usually either strophic (split up into verses) or are in call-and-response form.

In call-and-response form the leader sings a line (the call) and is answered by a chorus (the response). The chorus usually stays the same while the soloist improvises. There is often overlapping between the leader and the chorus. The chorus part is usually homophonic (in block chords).


Listen to the call and response used in The Star and the Wiseman sung by Ladysmith Black Mambazo - an a cappella Zulu male voice choir from South Africa. Listen for the homophonic response parts.
African singing often includes glissandos (slides which are sometimes known as portamento) and slurs, whistles, yodels and swoops and types of sound such as a raspy or buzzy quality.

Melodies are usually organised within a scale of four, five, six, or seven notes. They tend to use small melodic intervals (lots of 2nds and 3rds) and often use recurring patterns and descending phrases.


Listen to the melodic lines used in Yiri recorded by Koko. Notice the descending phrases based on a four-note scale.