African Music Culture

          Africa is a large continent that has been around for a very long time. This exotic continent contains a huge variety of musical tradition and instruments. It has a long history of outside influences on its music from the past and present-day and it has influenced other types of music.

          Africa’s traditional music has many ways of showing itself. For example, there are many songs for everyday activities such as working, birth, hunting, marriage, and political events. They also use it for spiritual use such as warding off bad spirits and respecting good spirits. It is usually performed with a group of people and usually involves dancing. Some of it is performed by professional musicians in royal courtyards. 

          African’s use many types of instruments such as many varieties of drums, slit gongs, rattles, double bells, string instruments, musical bows, harps (such as kora and fidlles). Many types of xylophone and lamellphone and different types of wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets are also used. Other instruments used for special music in different regions of Africa include tama talking drums, bougarabou and djembe (Western region). Water drums in bother Western and Central Africa regions. Different types of ngoma drums appear in the central and Southern African regions.

          Many African forms of music were influenced by Arab music, music of India, Indonesia, Polynesia, Western Europe and North America. They also influenced many genres of music and were the main creators of jazz and blues. It migrated to North America and other countries by means of slave trading and slave capturing. It is thought that African music is the root of all the contemporary genres such as heavy metal, pop, rock, and many others. Africa has played a huge role of musical evolution in the world as a whole.

          We wouldn’t have nearly as much variety of music today if it wasn’t for the musical history of Africa. Their instruments and their traditional music are all very unique and still are performed everyday now. I am happy that I now know one of the most major building blocks in the history of music which is African music.

-Chris