This project will talk about the role that music plays in African culture and how the African people perceive music differently to those in the Western world. Some of the theoretical aspects of the music will be described, as well as some instruments, to get a picture of what African music is.
The family of musical styles called “African music” excludes, in this project, the north of the continent, which belongs to the Oriental family of modal music, and also the southern portion of the continent, where varieties of Western music are cultivated.
I will concentrate on describing the traditions in music of the Dagomba and Ewe tribes in Ghana and they will serve as examples for African music in general.
Traditional African music is not Western music and cannot, therefore, be studied as such. What we hear and what a person brought up in an African society hear, listening to the same piece of music, cannot be compared as we are brought up on such different musical grounds. The complex rhythmical patterns played in, for example, a Dagomba ensemble can be inapprehensible for a Westerner and might just sound like an unorganised pattern of beats, but for a native Dagomba, who is brought up with this music, it is of course as apprehensible as a Bash Sonata is for us.
In classical Western music, the melody and the harmony forms the base of the music, whilst in music of Africa the rhythm is, beyond doubt, the vital part. ... Jones writes, “Rhythm is to the African what harmony is to Europeans, and it is in the complex interweaving of contrasting rhythmic patterns that he finds his greatest aesthetic satisfaction” (Jones, African Rhythm, p. ... The role of the master drummer includes many aspects. He is the leader of the drum ensemble, performs rhythmic patterns that stand out in timbre, complexity and voice and also fulfils a complex social role, which will be more closely explained later. ...
The instruments of the Ewe ensemble can sometimes each represent a role in a family. In their society as in many others, the father is the head of the family, the one in charge, so this role is assigned to the master drum. ...
Theory of the rhythms
In Western music, there is usually only “one” rhythm in a piece of music and the steady beat is clearly definable. In African music there is always at least two rhythms going on and often it is impossible to tell what “the” rhythm of a piece is. ... It is also hard to understand how the players orient themselves when listening to or playing the music.
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