African music,

The music of the indigenous peoples of Africa. Sub-Saharan African music has as its
distinguishing feature a rhythmic complexity common to no other region. Polyrhythmic
counterpoint, wherein two or more locally independent attack patterns are superimposed, is
realized by handclaps, xylophones, rattles, and a variety of tuned and nontuned drums. The
remarkable aspect of African polyrhythm is the discernible coherence of the resultant rhythmic
pattern. Pitch polyphony exists in the form of parallel intervals (generally thirds, fourths, and
fifths), overlapping choral antiphony and solo-choral response, and occasional simultaneous
independent melodies. In addition to voice, many wind and string instruments perform melodic
functions. Common are bamboo flutes, ivory trumpets, and the one-string ground bow, which
uses a hole in the ground as a resonator. During colonial times, European instruments such as
saxophones, trumpets, and guitars were adopted by many African musicians; their sounds were
integrated into the traditional patterns. Scale systems vary between regions but are generally
diatonic. Music is highly functional in ethnic life, accompanying birth, marriage, hunting, and
even political activities. Much music exists solely for entertainment, ranging from narrative
songs to highly stylized musical theater. Similarities with other cultures, particularly Indian and
Middle Eastern, can be ascribed primarily to the Islamic invasion (7th11th cent.)

African music

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 arts: Music.

Man playing traditional mangolongondo instrument, Malawi.

Steve Evans

History
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.

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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. 60004000 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.


Rock painting of a dance performance, Tassili-n-Ajjer, Algeria, attributed to the Saharan period
of

Jean-Dominique Lajoux

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, igbn drums (a set of footed cylindrical drums) seem to have been used. The dndn
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 dndn 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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Other archaeological finds relating to music include iron bells excavated in the Katanga (Shaba)
region of Congo (Kinshasa) and at several sites in Zimbabwe. Benin bronze plaques represent a
further, almost inexhaustible source for music history, since musical instrumentssuch as horns,
bells, drums, and even bow lutesare often depicted on them in ceremonial contexts.

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Among the most important written sources (though superficial analytically) are accounts from
the 14th-century Arab travelers Ibn Baah and Ibn Khaldn and from the European navigators
and explorers Vasco da Gama, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Joo dos Santos, Franois Froger,
and Peter Kolbe. Early attempts at notating African music were made by T.E. Bowdich (1819)
for Ghana, Karl Mauch (1872) for Zimbabwe, and Brito Capelo and Roberto Ivens (1882) for
inner Angola.

Major and minor migrations of African peoples brought musical styles and instruments to new
areas. The single and double iron bells, which probably originated in Kwa-speaking West Africa,
spread to western Central Africa with Iron Age Bantu-speaking peoples and from there to
Zimbabwe and the Zambezi River valley. Earlier migrating groups moving eastward from
eastern Nigeria and central Cameroon to the East African lakes did not know the iron bells or the
time-line patterns associated with them. Consequently, both traits were absent in East African
music until the recent introduction of the time-line patterns of Congolese electric guitar-based
music. With the intensifying ivory and slave trades during the 19th century, the zeze (or sese)
flatbar zither, a stringed instrument long known along the East African coast, spread into the
interior to Zambia, the eastern half of Congo (Kinshasa), and Malai.

Beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, lamellaphones with iron keys, a prominent feature of
ancient Zimbabwe and neighbouring kingdoms and chieftainships, spread from the Zambezi
valley northward to the kingdoms of Kazembe and Lunda and to the Katangan and Angolan
cultures. In the course of migration, some models became smaller, because they were used as
travel instruments; others were modified and gave rise to the numerous types present in western
Central Africa during the first half of the 20th century. (For a further description of the
lamellaphone, see Idiophones.)

A small box-resonated lamellaphone, called the likembe in Congo, traveled in the other direction,
from the west to the east, northeast, and southeast. It was invented in the lower Congo region
probably not earlier than the mid-19th century, and thereafter it spread upriver with Lingala-
speaking porters and colonial servants to the northern Bantu borderland. The Zande, Ngbandi,
and Gbaya, who speak Adamawa-Ubangi languages, adopted the likembe.

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Stylistic traits of likembe music linking it to its region of origin were only gradually modified in
the new areas to suit local styles. At the beginning of the 20th century the likembe distribution
area extended farther to the northeast into Uganda, where the Nilotic Alur, Acholi, and Lango
adopted it. It was later introduced to southern Uganda by northern Ugandan workers; there the
Bantu-speaking Soga and Gwere adopted it and began to construct models entirely from metal,
even with a metal resonator. The likembe also spread southward from the lower Congo,
penetrating Angola from the Kasai region of Congo and being adopted as recently as the 1950s
by the Khoisan-speaking !Kung of Kwando Kubango province in southeastern Angola.

As a result of migrations and the exchange of musical fashions both within Africa and with
foreign cultures, specific traits of African music often show a puzzling distribution. Extremely
distant areas in Africa may have similar, even identical, traits, while adjacent areas may have
quite different styles. The multipart singing style in triads within an equiheptatonic tone system
of the Baule of Cte dIvoire is so close, if not identical, to the part singing style of Ngangela,
Chokwe, and Luvale peoples in eastern Angola that the similarity is immediately recognized by
informants from both cultures. Why this is so is a riddle. The two areas are separated by several
countries with different approaches to multipart singing. Another historical riddle is the presence
of practically identical xylophone playing styles and instruments among Makonde and Makua-
speaking peoples of northern Mozambique and among certain peoples of Cte dIvoire and
Liberia, notably the Baule and the Kru. The jomolo of the Baule and the log xylophones of
northern Mozambiquefor example, the dimbila of the Makonde or the mangwilo of the
Shirimaare virtually identical instruments.

Diffusionist theories of various kinds have been offered to resolve such riddles. The English
ethnomusicologist A.M. Jones proposed that Indonesian settlers in certain areas of East, Central,
and West Africa during the early centuries ad could have introduced xylophones and certain
tonal-harmonic systems (equipentatonic, equiheptatonic, and pelog scales) into Africa.
Ethnohistorians, on the other hand, have tended to accentuate the importance of coastal
navigation (implying the traveling of hired or forced African labour on European ships) as an
agent of cultural contact between such areas as Mozambique, Angola and Congo, and the West
African coast.

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Existing historical sources on African music and dance are more abundant than might be
expected. Sometimes historical data can be obtained indirectly from contemporary observation
outside Africa, especially in Latin America. It was a rule rather than an exception that people
brought as slaves from Africa to the New World often came from the hinterland of the African
coastal areas. Between the European slave traders established on the coast and the hinterland
areas were buffer zones inhabited by African merchant tribes, such as the Ovimbundu of
Angola, who are still remembered by eastern Angolan peoples as vimbali, or collaborators of the
Portuguese. In the 18th and 19th centuries the inland areas of Angola were not directly accessible
to Europeans. But the music and dance of these areas became accessible indirectly, as European
observers saw African captives playing musical instruments in New World countries. In Brazil
the music of the Candombl religion, for example, can be directly linked to 18th- and 19th-
century forms of orisha worship among the Yoruba. In a similar manner, Umbanda religious
ceremonies are an extension of traditional healing sessions still practiced in Angola, and vodun
religious music among the Fon of Benin has extensions in the voodoo of Haiti and elsewhere in
the Caribbean. African instruments have also been modified and sometimes further developed in
the New World; examples are the Central African friction drum and the lamellaphone (in the
Cuban marimbula).

African music as it is known today was also shaped by changes in the ecology of the continent,
which drove people into other lands, thus producing changes in their art. With the drying of the
Sahara, for example, populations tended to shift southward. When settled populations accepted
the intruders, they often adopted musical styles from them. Thus, the choral singing style of the
Masai had a fundamental influence on vocal music of the Gogo of central Tanzania, as is audible
in their nindo and msunyunho chants.

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It is only relatively recently that scholarly attention has focused on the various urban popular
styles, reflecting a blend of local and foreign ingredients, that have emerged during the last 50
years or so. The best known of these are West African highlife, Congolese dance music,
tarabu of East Africa, and South African styles. With the widespread adoption of Christianity in
Africa since the 19th century, many new varieties of African church music have risen and
continue to evolve. For example, with altered words, hymnsas well as secular songsare quite
often adapted as protest songs in order to rally opposition to political oppression.

Gerhard KubikDonald Keith Robotham

Musical instruments
Outsiders have often overlooked the enormous variety of musical instruments in Africa in the
mistaken belief that Africans play only drums. Yet even Hanno the Carthaginian, who recorded a
brief visit to the west coast of Africa in the 5th century bce during a naval expedition, noted wind
instruments as well as percussion. Of an island within the gulf of Hesperon Keras, he wrote:

By day we saw nothing but woods, but by night we saw many fires burning, and heard the sound
of flutes and cymbals, and the beating of drums, and an immense shouting. Fear therefore seized
on us, and the soothsayers bid us quit the island.
Ensembles fitting this description may be found over a wide area of West Africa today, serving
as accompaniment to dancing and merrymaking or as an essential ingredient of ceremonial or
cultic activities.

Besides the percussion and wind instruments noted by Hanno, there are also stringed instruments
of many kinds, ranging from the simple mouth bow to more complex varieties of zithers, harps,
lutes, and lyres. While the aggregate of instrumental resources distributed over the continent is
vast, each society tends to specialize in a limited assortment, and there is a wide variety from
region to region. In some areas interesting new hybrid varieties emerged in the 20th century in
response to outside influence, notably the endingidi spike fiddle of Uganda, malipenga gourd
kazoos of Tanzania and Malawi, and chordophones such as the ramkie and segankuru of South
Africa.

Musical instruments in African societies serve a variety of roles. Some instruments may be
confined to religious or cultic rituals or to social occasions. Among some peoples there may also
be restrictions as to the age, sex, or social status of the player. Among the Xhosa, for example,
only girls play the imported jews harp, a modern replacement for the traditional mouth bow,
which was formerly their prerogative.

Besides recreational applications, or as accompaniment for dancing, instruments may serve many
other roles. In Lesotho it is claimed that cattle graze more contentedly when entertained by the
sound of the lesiba mouth bow. Among the Shona in Zimbabwe, a local form of lamellaphone
known as likembe dza vadzimu serves in rituals of ancestor worship, while in the kingdom of
Buganda the royal drums formerly held higher status than the king. In West and central Africa,
pressure drums may serve for the transmission of messages or, together with trumpets, for the
declamation of praises, by mimicking the tonal and rhythmic patterns of speech. All sub-Saharan
languages (except Swahili) are tone languages, in the sense that the meaning of words depends
on the tone or pitch in which they are said. Consequently, instrumental musicor even natural
sounds such as birdsongoften imitates or suggests meaningful phrases of the spoken language.
Sometimes this is intentional and sometimes it is merely fortuitous, but in either case it escapes
the notice of uninformed outsiders.

Certain instruments are used solely for song accompaniment. Here the interplay between voice
and instrument is often intricate and delicately balanced. Zulu solo songs, in earlier times, were
often self-accompanied on the ugubhu gourd bow. In such bow songs, while the instrumental
melody was influenced by the tone requirements of the songs lyrics, the tuning of the bow
determined the vocal scale to which the singer conformed. Today when Zulus use the modern
Western guitar, precisely the same antiphonal relationship and mutual interdependence between
voice and instrument is maintained.

The following is a brief sampling of the principal instruments found in sub-Saharan Africa.

Idiophones
In this class the substance of the instrument itself, owing to its solidity and elasticity, yields
sound without requiring strings or stretched membranes. Some are sounded by striking, others by
shaking, scraping, plucking, or friction. Idiophones are numerous and widely distributed
throughout the continent. On musical grounds they may be divided into instruments used mainly
for rhythm and several varieties tuned and used melodically.

Rhythmic idiophones
Among the vast array of nonmelodic, rhythmic idiophones, the most common and widespread
are probably rattles, sounded by shaking. One type, the sistrum, which has small metal disks
loosely suspended on rods, is important in the Coptic and Ethiopian churches (it is known in
Ethiopia as tsenatsil) and is also used in Guinea. More widespread are hollow rattles, consisting
of a gourd enveloped in a net of shells or beads or of a container such as a calabash with seeds or
pebbles inside. Besides handheld varieties, there are many other kinds of rattles, often strung on
cords, which may be attached to the limbs or other parts of the body and shaken while dancing or
playing another instrument, or which may be fastened onto another instrument, such as the
lamellaphone, to serve as a supplementary jingling device. In Zimbabwe, bottle tops, instead of
the traditional snail shells, serve this purpose on the likembe dza vadzimu of the Shona.

Struck and concussion-sounded idiophones are found everywhere. These include stone clappers
and multiple rock gongs (in Nigeria); wooden clappers and percussion beams; and implements
such as hoe blades, weapons, and shields (in fact, all kinds of domestic items serve as temporary
idiophones when required). Further examples are metal or wooden bells, either with internal
pellets or clappers or externally struck; inverted half calabashes; bottles; and clay pots, partially
water-filled, which in West Africa are struck with fanlike beaters. Stamping sticks are also used
in West and central Africa, as are stamping tubes made from bamboo or from long, open-ended
gourds. In Ghana and Nigeria the latter are used for accompanying certain womens songs.
Scraped and friction idiophones are quite widely distributed, the most common form being a
notched stick or piece of bamboo that is scraped by another stick.

Slit drums
Falling between rhythmic and melodic instruments, the largest and most distinctive member of
the African struck-idiophone family is the slit drum, made from a hollowed log. By careful
thinning of the flanks at certain places, the instrument may be tuned so as to yield as many as
four distinct pitches. Besides their use for transmitting messages, West and central African slit
drums are often played in combination with membrane drums and other instruments.

Xylophones
Two markedly different species of xylophone are distinguishable in Africa: one has free,
unattached keys, and the other has fixed keys. With free-key xylophones, found in parts of West
and East Africa, loose slabs may be laid across the players outstretched legs or supported on
logs or straw bundles, sometimes above a resonating pit. In Uganda and Congo (Kinshasa), from
two to six players may perform together on the same instrument.
Fixed-key xylophones are more elaborate. Mounted below each key, there is usually an
individually tuned calabash resonator, often with a mirliton (a vibrating membrane) attached to
add a buzzing quality to the sound. A mid-14th-century account mentions a calabash-resonated
xylophone in the West African kingdom of Mali, and similar instruments were reported on the
east coast in the 16th century. Xylophone ensembles are common in some areas, notably among
the Chopi of Mozambique, where timbila orchestras of up to 40 xylophones, of six different
sizes, have been reported.

View of the underside of a balafon from Guinea, showing the gourd

Wesleyan University Virtual Instrument Museum (www.wesleyan.edu/music/vim)

Lamellaphones
These thumb pianos are plucked idiophones unique to Africa and widely distributed
throughout the continent. In construction they consist basically of a set of tuned metal or bamboo
tongues of varying length fitted to a board, box, or calabash resonator, their free ends being
twanged by the players thumbs and fingers. Supplementary rattling or buzzing devices are often
added, and board-mounted varieties are often played inside a half calabash or bowl to enhance
the resonance. They serve mainly for song accompaniment. Some common names for regional
varieties of the instrument are likembe, mbira, and timbrh.

Membranophones
All African drums except the slit drum fall within this class, sharing the basic feature of having a
stretched animal skin as their sounding medium. The mirliton, or small singing membrane, is
often added to the bodies of drums and xylophone resonators as a supplementary buzzing device.
It is an essential component of the malipenga gourd kazoos used in Tanzania and Malawi to
simulate military band music.

Africa has a wide variety of drums, which may serve in a number of different roles, some of
them not primarily musical. Their manufacture is often steeped in ritual and symbolism, and their
use may be restricted to specific contexts. In many societies, only men may play them; in others,
certain drums are used only by women (as among the Venda, Sotho, and Tswana of southern
Africa). Playing techniques differ widely: some drums are beaten with the bare hands, others
with straight or curved sticks. Friction drums are also occasionally found, such as the ingungu
used in Zulu girls nubility rites. Except in the extreme south, drums of contrasting pitch and
timbre are frequently played in ensembles, with or without other instruments, to accompany
dancing. Though the role of drums is usually rhythmic, the entenga drum chime in Uganda,
comprising a set of tuned drums, plays vocally derived melodies.

The body of a drum may be either bowl-shaped, tubular, or shallow-framed. Bowl-shaped drums
include those made from gourds and pots as well as the small and large kettledrums found in and
around Uganda. Tubular and frame drums may have either one skin or two, which are either
pegged, pinned, glued, or laced onto the body. Tubular drums come in many sizes and shapes,
such as cylindrical, conical, barrel-shaped, goblet-shaped, footed, and hourglass-shaped. The
atumpan talking drums of the Asante are barrel-shaped with a narrow, cylindrical, open foot at
the base. East African hourglass drums are single-skinned. In West Africa double-skinned
hourglass drums are held under one arm, their pitch rapidly and continually changed by as much
as an octave by squeezing the lacing that joins the two heads. In some areas wax may be applied
to the centre of the drum skin, and a mirliton, shells, or jingles may be attached to the body to
modify the tone.


The atumpan, talking drums of the Asante people of West Africa.

Wesleyan University Virtual Instrument Museum (www.wesleyan.edu/music/vim)

Chordophones
This class, comprising instruments that produce sound from strings stretched between fixed
points, is well represented in Africa. There is an abundance of specimens in the form of zithers,
lutes, and harps.

Musical bows
These consist of a string stretched between the two ends of a flexible stave. There are three
types: bows with a separate resonator; bows with attached resonators; and mouth bows, which
use the players mouth for resonance. Though it is conjectural whether all varieties evolved from
the shooting bow, the San of the Kalahari often convert their hunting bows to musical use.
Sometimes it is held against the mouth, yielding a range of mouth-resonated harmonics, as with
the jews harp, or it is pressed against a hollow container. Apart from adapted shooting bows,
more specialized types of musical bows are widespread. Most are sounded by plucking or
striking the string, but the Xhosa umrubhe is bowed with a friction stick, the xizambi of the
Tsonga has serrations along the stave that are scraped with a rattle stick, and the Sotho lesiba
(like the gora of the Khoekhoe) is sounded by exhaling and inhaling across a piece of quill
connecting the string to the stave. Bows with more than one string are rare, but the tingle apho of
the Kara people in southern Ethiopia has three.

Besides mouth-resonated bows, the gourd bow, which has an attached gourd resonator, is
commonly used in southern, central, and East Africa for self-accompanied solo singing. The
string is struck with a thin stick or grass stem. The Zulu ugubhu is a typical example. Harmonic
tones are selectively resonated by moving the mouth of the gourd closer to or farther from the
players chest. The fundamental pitch of the string can be altered by finger stopping; with other
types, like the Swazi makhweyane, a noose or brace divides the string so as to yield two different
open notes, and resonated harmonics are selected in the same way.

While all the above types of musical bow are simple forms of the zither, the so-called ground
bow or earth bow of equatorial Africa, which has one end planted in the ground, qualifies as a
ground harp.

Lutes
Characterized by strings that lie parallel to the neck, the lute is found in Africa in several
varieties. The multiple-necked bow lute, or pluriarc, of central and southwestern Africa is the
oldest. This has a separate flexible neck for each string and resembles a set of musical bows
fixed at one end to a sounding box. West African plucked lutes such as the konting, khalam, and
the nkoni (which was noted by Ibn Baah in 1353) may have originated in ancient Egypt. The
khalam is claimed to be the ancestor of the banjo. Another long-necked lute is the ramkie of
South Africa.

Fiddles
The bowed-lute family is represented by three types of one-string fiddle, as exemplified by the
rebeclike goje of Nigeria and the spike fiddles masenqo of Ethiopia and Eritrea and endingidi of
Ugandathe last being a 20th-century invention.

Harp lutes
The sophisticated kora of the Malinke people of West Africa is classified as a harp lute. Its
strings lie in two parallel ranks, rising on either side of a vertical bridge, which has a notch for
each string. The long neck passes through a large hemispherical gourd resonator covered with a
leather sounding table.


A Gambian kora.

Wesleyan University Virtual Instrument Museum (www.wesleyan.edu/music/vim)

Lyres
These have been termed yoke lutes, the strings running from a yoke supported by two side arms.
Their distribution in Africa is confined to the northeast. In Ethiopia and Eritrea two types occur:
the large beganna, with 8 to 10 strings and a box-shaped body (corresponding to the ancient
Greek kithara); and the smaller six-string krar, with a bowl-shaped body (resembling the Greek
lyra). The latter type, with four to eight strings and varying in size, is also used in South Sudan,
Uganda, and Kenya. The litungu is a typical specimen.

Harps
These are confined to a belt, north of the Equator, running from Uganda to Mauritania. All
African harps (like those of ancient Egypt) are classed as open harps, as they have a neck and a
resonator with a string holder but lack a supporting pillar to complete the triangle. In most cases
some form of buzzing device is incorporated. Examples are the ennanga (Uganda), ardin
(Mauritania), kinde (Lake Chad region), and ngombi (Gabon).


Ugandan musician playing the ennanga arched harp.

Gerhard Kubik

Aerophones
The archaic bull-roarer (a board attached by rope to a stick and whirled about in the air) survives
in various localities, notably in southern Africa among the San and neighbouring peoples. Of the
wind instruments proper, the three main divisionsflutes, reed pipes, and trumpetsare all well
represented, though the second of these is more restricted in distribution than the others.

Flutes
At the southernmost tip of the continent the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1497 encountered a
band of Khoekhoe people playing upon four or five flutes of reed. Ensembles of single-note
stopped flutes playing on the hocket principle, with each flute blowing its note in rotation, have
been reported from various regions, ranging from southern Africa through eastern Congo
(Kinshasa), Uganda, and South Sudan to southern Ethiopia. Panpipe ensembles are less common,
but notable examples have been witnessed in central Africa, and particularly among the
Nyungwe of Mozambique. There are many other types of open and stopped flutescylindrical
and conical; transverse and end-blown; made from bamboo, reed, roots, stems, wood, clay, bone,
and horn. Globular flutes made from small spherical gourds or from hard-shelled fruits such as
Oncoba spinosa are found in southern Africa, Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Guinea, and
elsewhere. End-blown notched flutes, with a U- or V-shaped embouchure, either with or without
finger holes, are widely distributed across the continent. The long Zulu umtshingo has an
obliquely cut embouchure; there are no finger holes, but a double range of overblown harmonics
is produced by alternately stopping and unstopping the lower end with a finger. Such instruments
and many others throughout the continent are played singly, but in many areas flutes are played
in pairs or in combination with other instruments.

Reed pipes
Transverse clarinets are used throughout the West African savanna region, from Guinea to
Cameroon. These are single-reed pipes made from hollow guinea corn or sorghum stems, the
reed being a flap partially cut from the stem near one end. Single and double clarinets are found
in southern Sudan and South Sudan among the Dinka people. Conical double-reed instruments of
the oboe or shawm type have spread around the northeastern and northwestern fringes of Africa
wherever Islam has taken root. Despite local variations, they are basically related to the Arab
zrn, having a disk (or pirouette) below the reed that supports the players lips.

Trumpets
Lip-vibrated aerophones made from a variety of materials are widespread in Africa. Apart from
musical uses, some serve for signaling. In West Africa, side-blown ivory or horn instruments
may transmit verbal praises of chiefs and rulers. Among the Hausa, the long metal kakaki and
wooden farai, both end-blown, fulfill this role in combination with drums. In East and central
Africa, the instruments are often made from gourds, wood, hide, horn, or a combination of these
materials. In the historic kingdom of Buganda (now part of Uganda), trumpet sets were part of
the royal regalia. Throughout Africa, more than one or two notes are seldom produced from a
single trumpet, but trumpet ensembles are common, playing in hocket fashion.

Music has traditionally played an important role in African culture. It is essential in representing
the strong African heritage and its importance can be seen in many aspects of the culture. Unlike
many cultures today, ancient African cultures encompassed music into their everyday lives.
Dance, story-telling and religious practices are all grounded on the music of the culture.(History
of African Music)

Music is especially vital in African dance, so much so that in many African cultures, there are no
two words in the language used to distinguish between the two. Essentially, when one uses the
term music in reference to African culture, it should include the idea of dance. And unlike many
western civilizations, in the African culture, music and dance means so much more than
something done just to have a good time. It has a much greater purpose. For many cultures, a
dance is commonly between two people. In the African culture, a dance is usually done by a
community or group and for a specific purpose.The idea of Utilitarianism suggests that the value
of a thing depends on its use, and not its beauty. In many ways, African music is a utilitarian
function used in vital aspects of life such as, a childs naming ceremony, initiation rights,
agricultural activities, national ceremonies, war times, religious ceremonies and ceremonies for
the dead. (Exploring Africa)

The 1500s saw the beginning of slave labor as Africans were brought to North and South
America and the Caribbean. Hundreds of different African dance styles, from various ethnic
groups, were merged together, along with styles of European dancing. Because of the importance
of dance in the daily life of Africans in their homeland, many Africans that were enslaved
continued to use dance as a way to keep their cultural traditions and connect with their home
country.Enslaved Africans that were taken to colonies in South America, the Caribbean, Spain
and Portugal were given much more freedom to carry on their dance traditions than those who
were brought to North America. Sadly, many of the North American slave owners prohibited
Africans from performing most of their traditional dances.The importance and spirit of dance
were not stopped by these restrictions, however. African slaves found ways to adapt their
dancing and continue their traditions in secret. Out of necessity this caused some changes in the
dances. For example, since slaves were prohibited from lifting their feet, they created moves that
included shuffling the feet and moving the hips and body. (History of African Dance)

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, such as: musical bows, different types of harps and harp-like
instruments such as the Kora as well as fiddles, many kinds of xylophones and lamellophones;
like the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.
Drums used in African traditional music include talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West
Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and the different types of ngoma drums (or
engoma) in Central and Southern Africa. Other percussion instruments include many rattles and
shakers, such as the kosika, rain stick, bells and wood sticks. Also, Africa has lots of other types
of drums, and lots of flutes, and lots of stringed and wind instruments. (African Music)
Bibliography

See A. M. Jones, Studies in African Music (2 vol., 1959); R. Brandel, The Music of Central
Africa (1961); F. Warren, The Music of Africa (1970); F. Bebey, African Music (1972); W.
Bender, Sweet Mother: Modern African Music (1991).