Traditional music - the musical heritage of contemporary Africa - is music associated with traditional African institutions of the pre-colonial era. It is music which has survived the impact of the forces of Western forms of acculturation, and is, therefore, quite distinct in idiom and orientation from contemporary popular and art music.
In the old "tribal" era, this music was practised, as it still is, as purely local forms. Wherever such forms are now found outside their limited areas, it is often due to the presence of immigrant groups who continue to find the music and dances of their own areas the best form of entertainment and a means of building up new
relationships.
Thus in Tanzania, Nyamwezi bands may be found in many towns which offer opportunities for employment, just as dance clubs from the Ewe area may be found all over Ghana. Clubs consisting of immigrants from other African countries are found in some countries for the same reason. Many traditional Nigerian dance groups are found in Ghana just as Ghanaian groups are found in the capital of Liberia and Mali .
The new national context now provides greater scope for the performance of these local forms outside their former cultural boundaries to larger audiences at political rallies, national gatherings and national theatres, or to the entire nation through the medium of broadcasting and television. It provides new opportunities for interesting forms in small localities to be brought together and presented by African dance companies as new exponents of the art forms of Africa .
It also provides opportunities for individuals to get out of their "tribal" shells and learn to participate in the music and dancing of other African people. Hence one might look forward to the day when a hari ya moyo club in Dar-es-Salaam or an agbadza club in Accra would no longer be purely Nyamwezi or Ewe associations but associations of music lovers attracted to these particular forms.
In this connection there are new problems to be tackled in educational programmes, for such programmes need to emphasize the study of the African heritage of music as a first step in the musical upbringing of the post-colonial African. There are also problems to be tackled in the promotion of the arts within the community which call for a better knowledge and understanding of this music both in terms of its structural characteristics, its artistic values and creative possibilities, and its meaning in the contexts in which it has so far been practised.
From a purely musical point of view, the problem of meaning is a formidable one for anybody approaching this music for the first time, or for anyone accustomed to only a particular local musical expression in a given part of Africa, for available recordings of music from different parts of Africa show that this music is by no means uniform in the basic musical sounds that it employs, a fact which has led some scholars and collectors of music to question the wisdom of referring to "African Music" in the singular.
There is, for example, a wide diversity of singing styles which seem to create immediate difficulties of understanding and appreciation for those accustomed to only one African tradition. This diversity may, in part, be due to linguistic factors, for many African songs reflect the speech mannerisms of the various languages
groups, including common features of speech such as rhythm and intonation. An Akan song reflects the characteristic rhythm and rate of utterance used in normal Akan speech as well as the intonation contour and other details of Akan pronunciation. So does a traditional Yoruba song takes into account the peculiar three tone levels and glides in Yoruba speech.
Another complication arises from the ideals of voice production or norms of vocal qualities developed in different areas. While some, like the Akan, emphasize open voice quality, others like the Frafra emphasize tense vocal qualities. Some prefer high head voice or falsetto, while among some of the groups in Central Africa, such as the Batwa pygmies of Ruanda or the Bambuti of the Kivu province of the Congo, yodeling is quite a common technique.
Sometimes, there is an additional complication of culture contact. Vocal styles associated with Islamic traditions - with readings from the Koran, with music from Islamic cultures - acquired by African peoples who have embraced Islam or accepted its culture, may be transferred into indigenous singing styles. This is noticeable in the music of Northern Nigeria and some parts of Northern Ghana, and in the vocal styles prevalent in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, the Sudan and countries in Eastern Africa with predominant Islamic influence on their cultures. A further complication arises from the choices of scales or scale patterns. Some build their songs on varieties of pentatonic scales, while others construct their songs on hexatonic scales.
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