Talk:Music of Africa/Archive 1

Archive 1

External link

Ezeu ~ Sorry, I put the wrong page on the intitial external link I added. The new link offers free access to authentic African drumming festivals and ceremonies, which is highly relevant to main article.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.114.197.175 (talk • contribs) 23 July 2006

• I beleive that link should be at the djembe article instead, but alright, at least this link does not go to a webpage with the sole purpose of selling drums. --Ezeu 10:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Traditional vs. Folk Music

I have replaced the term "Folk music" with "Traditional music". Folk music is a misleading term here. Some forms of traditional African music can be called folk music, others can't. Many traditional forms of music have a cultural or religious function (you would not call church songs "folk music", the same holds for sacral African music) and many are performed by professionl musicians (and require a long education to learn). Musicians like griot cora players from Mali or Amadinda xylophone players from the royal court in Buganda can hardly be called "folk musicians". This music is courtly music, not folk. The term traditional music seems more appropriate, although it is not without problems itself (some froms of "traditional music" might be quite recent developments and the line between traditional and popular music is also not clear cut, for example, Apala music could be put on either side). Nannus 16:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Relationship to dance

The relationship of dance and music in Africa is, in my opinion, much deeper than I have expressed in the article. However, I have to find a good reference first to include the following observations in the article (they are personal observations from my own experience with African dance, so including this in the article would be original research). Maybe these observations have been made before and there is some literature about this. If so, please reference it in the article because in my view, these are absolutely central and essetial aspects of African music and dance: Basically, a rythmic pattern might be auditive (in the music one can here) or visual (in a dance one sees). From the point of view of the dancer, the same rythmical pattern might also be a proprioceptive pattern, i.e. a pattern that the dancer observes with the muscle and touch receptors in his body. The abstract pattern is always the same. You can transfer a piece of music to another musical instrument or you can "play" it with your own body. So music in Africa is not necessarily an auditive art. In fact, African dance can be viewd as a proprioceptive art where the dancer is the only person who can perceive the piece of art completely. The rythmical structure you feel in the body is then integrated with the auditive music into a "multimedia" experience of great esthetic beauty. So Africans have created an art form for the body-internal proprioceptive senses which have been neglected in other parts of the world as a target for art. If you know the dance, you can percieve the structures in somebody else's dance you see, but primarily, African dance is not a visual art but a proprioceptive art. The fact that many african languages don't distinguish between concepts of music and dance in the same way as european languages do might therefore be based on the following phenomena: an auditive pattern might be transfered to a proprioceptive pattern and vice versa (the abstract pattern of "music/dance" beeing the same in both ways of performing it) and both parts of the experience might be integrated into one multimedia "gesamtkunstwerk" in the dancer's/listener's mind. Nannus 19:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Timbre

I have added a section on timbre. I suspect that the preference in African music for "noisy" timbres is related to the Music/Language connection. A melody played on an instrument might "prompt" or suggest a language phrase for the speaker of a tonal African language. I suspect that the language recognition in the music is assisted by rich timbres that contain a large set of frequencies. We are able to recognize language even if some frequencies are damped out but the more different frequencies there are, the easier it is to recognize language. If the music contains a larger set of frequencies for our "language recognition apparatus" to pick from, it might be easier to hear language in it. So an instrument with a noisier, "whispering" timbre might "talk better" (maybe there are reports in this direction in the ethnomusicological literatur - I would be interested to know). This might be the historical reason for the preference of such timbres in African music. I don't know if this is a new idea. If there is some resarch in this direction, I would like to know about it (and see a reference in the article). If the idea is new, I suggest somebody should do some research about it. The hypothesis could be tested in the laboratory (would by an interesting topic for a PhD). Nannus 20:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

To anyone who cares to know

I'm pretty sure it twas on this page that i found some random crap at the top making fun of the article that i was going to delete but i forgot my password and couldn't.But when i came back on someone elses account to delete all of it someone already did.But i did find this,du bist ein arschloch,and got rid of it. Nikkola 23:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Garland

• Would The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music help with verification? Becky Brock Kiel (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Quote

• "Simha Arom...has been able to show that Banda-Linda pieces for horn ensemble are based not just on material shared among five instruments, but that the complete polyphonic ensemble of the instruments is controlled by a subtextual melody present in the minds of the performers--a melody that is, however, never realized...(1985: 501-707)"
  • Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1987). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (Musicologie générale et sémiologue, 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). ISBN 0691027145.

"Relationship to language" section

This section states that "African languages are tonal languages". Really? All African languages can be grouped into one family, and they are all tonal (even Tamazight)? I had no idea! 96.26.213.146 (talk) 20:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Middayexpress

Thank you, Middayexpress, for fixing that. However, this sentence is awkward: "These particular communities use vocal sounds and movements with their music as well." What culture does not use "vocal sounds" to make music or "use...movements with their music" (i.e., dancing)? I think that particular sentence might be referring to talking drums, but it does so in a very ambiguous way and implies that it is somehow unique for a culture to have dance and vocal music. There is no culture with all instrumental music and no dance. That is simply absurd. 96.26.213.146 (talk) 10:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed; the passage is a little awkward. It seems to be referring to singing and dancing ("vocal sounds and movements") while playing or listening to music, but I can't be sure since I didn't add it. Middayexpress (talk) 19:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Classical music

Couldn't a section on the influence of African music on classical music be created ? (Poulenc, Rapsodie nègre; de Boeck, Dahomeyan Rhapsody; Stravinsky, etc.? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.14.14.105 (talk) 23:46, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Disney

The fifth paragraph in Influences on North American Music starts off relevant but goes on a one sentence tangent thereafter which though very interesting and seemingly verified may perhaps be unnecessary and unfitting in the context of this work. I am unwilling to delete that portion though for fear that I may be either overreacting or unable to grasp its relevance. Electracion (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)