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West African music is arguably the most famous version of African music. The diverse sounds and energies that make up the music and a little of language backing has led to an own original Afrobeat genre of music that has the whole respecting it.
Waulk Records pick of the best West African songs featured on this channel, with music from Juldeh Camara (The Gambia), The Polyversal Souls (Germany/Ghana) ...
- Overview
- History
African music, the musical sounds and practices of all indigenous peoples of Africa, including the Berber in the Sahara and the San (Bushmen) and Khoikhoin (Hottentot) in Southern Africa. The music of European settler communities and that of Arab North Africa are not included in the present discussion. For the music of Islamic Africa, see Islamic a...
It is widely acknowledged that African music has undergone frequent and decisive changes throughout the centuries. What is termed traditional music today is probably very different from African music in former times. Nor has African music in the past been rigidly linked to specific ethnic groups. The individual musician, his style and creativity, have always played an important role.
The material sources for the study of African music history include archaeological and other objects, pictorial sources (rock paintings, petroglyphs, book illustrations, drawings, paintings), oral historical sources, written sources (travelers’ accounts, field notes, inscriptions in Arabic and in African and European languages), musical notations, sound recordings, photographs and motion pictures, and videotape.
In ancient times the musical cultures of sub-Saharan Africa extended into North Africa. Between circa 8000 and 3000 bc, climatic changes in the Sahara, with a marked wet trend, extended the flora and fauna of the savanna into the southern Sahara and its central highlands. During this period, human occupation of the Sahara greatly increased, and, along rivers and small lakes, Neolithic, or New Stone Age, cultures with a so-called aquatic lifestyle extended from the western Sahara into the Nile River valley. The aquatic cultures began to break up gradually between 5000 and 3000 bc, once the peak of the wet period had passed. The wet climate became more and more restricted to shrunken lakes and rivers and, to a greater extent, to the region of the upper Nile. Today remnants survive perhaps in the Lake Chad area and in the Nile swamps.
The cultures of the “Green Sahara” left behind a vast gallery of iconographic documents in the form of rock paintings, among which are some of the earliest internal sources on African music. One is a vivid dance scene discovered in 1956 by the French ethnologist Henri Lhote in the Tassili-n-Ajjer plateau of Algeria. Attributed on stylistic grounds to the Saharan period of the Neolithic hunters (c. 6000–4000 bc), this painting is probably one of the oldest extant testimonies to music and dance in Africa. The body adornment and movement style are reminiscent of dance styles still found in many African societies.
Some of the earliest sources on African music are archaeological. Although musical instruments made of vegetable materials have not survived in the deposits of sub-Saharan climatic zones, archaeological source material on Nigerian music has been supplied by the representations of musical instruments on stone or terra-cotta from Ife, Yorubaland. These representations show considerable agreement with traditional accounts of their origins. From the 10th to the 14th century ad, ig̀bìn drums (a set of footed cylindrical drums) seem to have been used. The dùndún pressure drum, now associated with Yoruba culture and known in a broad belt across the savanna region, may have been introduced around the 15th century, since it appears in plaques made during that period in the kingdom of Benin. The Yoruba dùndún drums are now used as “talking drums” in accompaniment to oriki (praise name) poetry (see Oral traditions). The double iron clapperless bell seems to have preceded the talking drum. Pellet bells and tubular bells with clappers were known by the 15th century.
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Tracklist: 0:00 Jarabi | 10:06 Mamamuso | 16:52 Kaira | 24:40 Gainaako | 34:02 Kanu | 44:24 Saya | 49:30 Bannaya********************Sona Jobarteh performed i...
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- University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar
Nov 21, 2023 · The term West African Music encompasses musical traditions from hundreds of distinct cultures and peoples in over a dozen different African nations along Africa's west coast.
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Nov 24, 2014 · Highlife, in its time, enshrined itself as the fundamental musical lingua franca of Anglophone (and parts of Francophone) West Africa and its rhythmic and melodic concepts are the DNA that has continued to animate a range of regional sounds that have emerged in the years since its heyday.
Mar 11, 2019 · One of the most well-known West African musical traditions is griot music. Griots are musicians and storytellers who play an important role in preserving history and tradition in West African communities. This tradition started in the 13th century in the West African Mande empire of Mali.
