African Music

1. African Music 7th Grade Music Technology Eastwood Middle School

2. Africa-the continent • Africa is the ancient stage where humankind is believed to have evolved millions of years ago. Second only to Asia in size, much of Africa is rocky plateau covered by grasslands, with huge interior lakes feeding rivers such as the Nile, the world's longest. The first great civilization in Africa arose 6,000 years ago on the banks of the lower Nile.

3. Family Life • Family life is very important to most West Africans. The family supports each other and provides focus for community activities. • People who live in rural communities tend to get up at sunrise, and don’t return home until it gets dark. After the family eats together, they sit and talk or play instruments and sing.

4. Community music • For important occasions such as religious festivals, funerals, or harvests, there is always plenty of music and dancing. • People are proud of their own individual music, and can be insulted if you say it sounds like something from a neighboring village. • Even when people move to the cities, they still get together with people from their village to sing and dance to remind them of where they came from.

5. Rhythm and Drums • In Western music, one of the main elements is harmony; to Africa, the most important element is rhythm. • Most African languages are such that words or phrases can almost be imitated by the drums tones. • The sound of the drum carries a long way, so villages can “talk” to each other even when far apart. • It is reported that when Napolean was defeated at Waterloo, the people of West Africa knew before the English and French living there because it had been drummed down the coast from North Africa. • The connection between words and music also helps to remember and describe patterns on the drums.

6. African Music • Much African music is traditional, and therefore handed down from father to son. • At concerts, the audience joins in by clapping, singing, or playing an instrument rather than just sitting and listening. • African music uses many different rhythms at the same time-this is called polyrhythmic music. • The heart of African singing is call and response music-a group of singers sings a line which is repeated or answered by a soloist. • Male singers often use their high voice or falsetto.

7. African Music continued • African instruments are often made from plants and animal products. • The use of percussion instruments is extensive. • The most famous percussion instrument may be the “talking drum”. The pitch can be changed by tightening or loosening the cords around the body of the drum which makes it sound like the human voice. • Instruments such as the lyre, lute, zither, and harp are used as well as whistles, reed pipes, trumpets and horns.

8. African Music • West Africa has many different “pop” music styles and most of them are influenced by traditional music. • Most traditional music played in public are played by MEN. There are folk stories that say if a woman plays certain instruments she will be unable to have children! These views are changing among younger people.

9. Pitched Instruments • Most instruments of African Music have a definite pitch. • Instruments are carefully tuned so they can talk to other instruments. • There are two instruments that look similar to Western instruments: the kora and the xylophone.

10. Kora • Played by group of male musicians called jali by the Manding people; these are typically the historians and story tellers as well • Made of a gourd cut in half with an animal skin stretched tightly across it. At the top of the gourd is a heavy stick. Strings are attached to the top of the stick and stretched down to fit into slots on either side of a bridge supported by the skin • Used to accompany praise songs about great Manding heroes or kings

11. Xylophone • Also played by the Manding people, particularly in the Gambia • These xylophones are smaller and flatter than those used in Ghana and Burkina, and usually have 19 bars. • Xylophones were first introduced from Africa to Europeans by slaves in the 1500s

12. African American Music • African slaves brought many of their musical styles with them when they were brought to America. • African American musical styles became an integral part of American popular music through blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and then rock and roll, soul and hip hop; all of these styles were consumed by Americans of all races, but were created in African American styles before eventually becoming common in performance and consumption across racial lines. • Country music derives from both African and European, as well as Native American and Hawaiian, traditions and yet has long been perceived as a form of white music.

13. A Few Famous African Musicians • Senegal vocalist Youssou N'Dour became a teenage sensation with the band Etoile De Dakar, whose Xalis (1979) established mbalax (Cuban music performed with western instruments and augmented with African polyrhythms) as a major form of dance music. • Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary. • Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Badara Akon Thiam AKA Akon is a Senegalese-American singer, whose 2004 debut album, Trouble, spawned the hit singles "Locked Up" and "Lonely." He is the son of jazz percussionist Mor Thiam, and Akon spent his childhood in the U.S. and Senegal (Dakar).

14. Some Famous African-American Musicians • William Grant Still (May 11,1895 - December 3,1978) was an African-American classical composer who wrote more than 150 compositions. He was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony of his own (his first symphony) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television. He is often referred to as "the dean" of African-American composers. • Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901– July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer. • Bessie Smith (July 9, 1892 or April 15, 1894 — September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. The most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, Smith is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists. • Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley (September 15, 1928 – August 8, 1975), was a jazz alto saxophonist of the small combo era of the 1950s and 1960s. Originally from Tampa, Florida, he moved to New York in the mid 1950s. You can now buy saxophones that are “Cannonballs”.