African Music
Besides using the voice, which has been developed to use various techniques such as complex hard melisma and yodel, a wide array of musical instruments are used. African musical instruments include a wide range of drums, slit gongs, rattles, double bells as well as melodic instruments like string instruments, (musical bows, different types of harps and harp-like instruments such as the Kora as well as fiddles), many types of xylophone and lamellophone like the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.
African languages are tonal languages leading to a close connection between music and language in many African cultures. In singing, the tonal pattern or the ...
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employs African bands, rhythms and melodies, especially Ladysmith Black Mambazo, as a musical backdrop for his own lyrics. In the early 1970's, Remi Kabaka, an Afro-rock avant-garde drummer, laid the initial drum patterns that created the Afro-rock sounds in bands such as Ginger Baker's Airforce, the Rolling Stones, and Steve Winwood's Traffic. He continued to work with Winwood, Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger throughout the decade.
African traditional music is frequently functional in nature. Performances may be long and often involve the participation of the audience. There are, for example, little different kinds of work songs, songs accompanying childbirth, marriage, hunting and political activities, music to ward off evil spirits and to pay respects to good spirits, the dead and the ancestors. None of this is performed outside its intended social context and much of it is associated with a particular dance. Some of it, performed by professional musicians, is sacral music or ...
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African Music. (2011, March 28). Retrieved May 8, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/African-Music/96968
"African Music." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 28 Mar. 2011. Web. 8 May. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/African-Music/96968>
"African Music." Essayworld.com. March 28, 2011. Accessed May 8, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/African-Music/96968.
"African Music." Essayworld.com. March 28, 2011. Accessed May 8, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/African-Music/96968.
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