African Music

Alicia Villafuerte
HNRS 203
11/13/2012

African Music

Christopher Small, a New Zealand born writer and musicologist who argued that music is above all an active ritual involving those who play and listen to it and only secondarily a matter of “black dots.” Christopher Small’s African Music exemplifies the virtues of thinking big. It ranges over the vast story of how African music inAmerica became African-American music and finally the essential American music. Along the way, Small reveals a secret history of sound that was all around but never nailed down before. The apt music comparison to the book is not a single masterful album, but to an entire music library – or, perhaps, because Small prefers the act to the record of the act, a club with a splendorous show every night- thatcan visit for new insights and excitements, forever.
The discussion about the differences between Western and African music in the essay states that it does not mean that there are no professional musicians in traditional African culture, but the relation between performer and listener is of an entirely different kind, since both are intimately connected within a community. The detachment withwhich western listener contemplates an orchestral performance plays no part in their musical life and customs, and in most music there is opportunity for participation, singing choral parts, handclapping and dancing. Even when listening to a performance the listeners will react loudly and actively to the music without inhibitions, since, as J.H.K. Nketia says, “ Not only does motor response increaseenjoyment of the music, but it also provides opportunity for social interaction in a musical context.
Music plays an important role in religion in any culture. One has never existed without the other, especially in Africa. African music covers the music of the major religions of the continent: Christian, Islamic, and Animistic. The rhythms, tones, instruments and dances differ, but music flowsfrom the far depths of the heart – the passions, desires, and wounds of life. The sacred writing and oral traditions lay out the teachings and the history of each religion. But it is the music that gives us a view of the heart of the followers. African religious music is found everywhere, apart from more obvious examples such as cradle songs, work songs and the like, of a kind familiar form westernfolk songs, there are songs which form part of initiation rituals, as well as carrying gossip or news, praise or insult, warnings or exhortations to their listeners. Small suggests that the “songs of the elders” remind people of their past and of the values of a society, chronicle the history of the people and reassure them of the legitimacy of their chiefs and kings.
The highest achievement ofAfrican music is undoubtedly in the field of rhythm. Rhythm in African music has been a subject of much interest to people who study music. While it would be generally agreed that much has been accomplished in the common effort to explain, “exactly what is the Africa treatment of rhythm”, there is at present no consensus on how this should be done. Each individual has tried to interpret Africanrhythm form his or her background knowledge of western music.
African music, an extraction of the book Music, society, and Education states that the emphasis on rhythm does not, however, mean that African music is melodically deficient. African rhythm is ultimately founded on drumming. Drumming can be replaced by hand clapping or by the xylophone, what really matters is the act of beating; and onlyfrom this point can African rhythms be understood. Each single beating movement is again two-fold: the muscles are strained and released the hand is lifted and dropped. Only the second phase is stressed acoustically; but the first inaudible one has the motor accent, as it were, which consists in the straining of the muscles.
Some traits of African music is that melodic phrases tend to be...