What can we learn from a study of the musical cultures of Africa as musicians, composers and performers?
...de for Western consumption only? By having these rhythmical publications in ‘traditional Africa’, it would surely defy the whole purpose and practice of passing down through generations of musical cultures and traditional knowledge. Agawu argues that by attempting to discuss in detail the rhythmical traits of Africa, it hides questions of power. “Who speaks for the people? Who owns the original text? Who has the right to claim an ‘authentic’ translation, and how can that authenticity be measured?” The beauty of African music and its rhythm lies not in myriad textbooks of deep theoretical studies, but in the listening, appreciation and the interest of their different cultures. When performing the music, messages are played and heard through certain beats, some of which are the drum parts talking to God and others are conveying emotion and feeling to its audience. In the percussive ensemble section, the music is built up over a series of layers eventually producing the principle structure. Within these different layers lie important compositional devices such as crossrhythms and polyrhythms, the call and response technique and repetition. Crossrhythms are what provide Africa with its distinctive sound. It is the changing of the number of beats per bar and the further subdivision of these beats. Usually, the crotchet beats of the fundamental time signature alter from a quadruple feel to a triple feel and thus produce patterns such as fours against threes (4:3) and twos against threes (2:3). This is demonstrated in Fig.1 where the top stave holds the crotchets and the bottom stave is where the syncopation lies. By studying this example it is clear to see that by the end of the third bar the rhythmical cycle is able to start again. As far as African music is concerned, repetition is more fundamental than variation. With so many beats carrying on across ‘bar-lines’ (as they are only there for guidance over the principle beat) and against the natural flow of the original meter, repetition aids us with the better understanding of the many rhythmical layers occurring. Call and response technique is what we would employ as being antiphonal, or having an antecedent phrase followed by a consequent. However, the call and response form in African music has a much deeper and symbolic meaning, acting as the basis of most structures. It evokes a multiple musical conversation, often lead by a solo melody or beat and then responded to by the rest of the ensemble in the same style but acting more in conclusion to the solo line. Different musical cultures naturally have different rhythmical patterns which are set for such compositional devices, but all of them have one thing in common: they are all used to relate to a certain ritual, tradition or ceremony. These three key functions are what most traditional Africans base their daily life around. Ritual is common to both social and individual life and carries a community’s welfare and ethics as a culture. “They pervade the whole culture and are expressed in social institutions, myths and above all, in rituals that deeply influence the beliefs, emotions and actions of a society” (Luzbetack in 1988). Myth is thought of in a narrative form and is celebrated within rituals to the community so that people may receive the chance to experience the spiritual forces more deeply. Song, dance and rhythm help communicate the meaning and importance of the ritual and it comes as a form of celebration to many different aspects of daily life such as weddings, death, coming of age, receiving food and general worship to God for example. In rituals, the music is participatory where everyone is involved either through playing instruments, hand-clapping, dancing or just observing and commenting. By looking more closely at a typical African wedding ritual, it is interesting to note the contrasts and comparisons to Western cultures among wedding ceremonies. A traditional African wedding still carries the same fundamental ideas such as the combination of love over two lives and families and the acknowledgment to God, however there are many more steps involved within the ceremony and more attention is paid to the ritual itself. Tradition acts as a major role in the ceremony, as does music and dance. Although there are many different wedding traditions all over Africa’s vast continent, they all have similar and common features. There are processions, songs, exchanges of gifts between the two families or tribes, adorning, decoration and embellishing of the bride, and the praying and hoping for fertility. For example, the Neur people of southern Sudan are able to complete the marriage only after the birth of their second child and have the option to end the marriage if only one child is produced. Naturally different cultures employ different traditions, which we can relate to with family customs, religion (whether the couple are religious or not) and other such beliefs. When illustrating splendour, elaborate beaded necklaces are sometimes made for the bride by the groom or even in places such as Ethiopia, the Karo people use tattoos on the bride’s stomach depicting various symbols to enhance her beauty. Sometimes the ritual of the wedding may last several days, and the main build up to the occasion lies in the weeks of preparation. In Kenya, a focal point of the ceremony is the night after which is called the “kupamba” where only women are allowed to attend and is generally a time to display the bride. Our society could learn from Africa’s ritualistic and spiritual cultures when it comes to our perception of God and how we act or behave in religious situations. In many ways we concentrate so much on the modernisation of our cultures that tradition and habitual convention can be easily forgotten about. The concept and movement of time has almost taken over the importance of religion in modern day’s society although there are signs which indicate some interest in exploring the inner soul of the human body. It has been notable that gradually people want to get more in touch with rediscovering the body, which is otherwise normally eclipsed in our lifestyles of today. This may be related to Africa by the way in which people look more within themselves to find peace and harmony and a sense of spirituality. By doing this we should learn how to use time for putting more thought to the fundamental elements of life. For example, when we receive communion as part of our Eucharistic ritual, worshipers should be able to experience a deeper feeling and aura of God in the way African people do during their ritual. In a sense, the priest who breaks the bread and provides wine as symbolising Christ’s own flesh and blood, can be compared to the African state of being ‘in possession’. Effectively, the priest is a personification of Christ and speaks through him, or perhaps the other way around by acting as a messenger to God on behalf of mankind. So there is this comparison and possible link between two very different societies of the world, each sharing similar beliefs and actions when it comes to expressing themselves through religion. With regards to expression, dance is greatly emphasised in Africa as a major mode of communication. By communication this means that symbolic gestures, masks and costumes, body painting and other visual tools are used to convey messages. We look upon dance as being more of an entertainment form of musical activity and not a key mode of communication. Instead Western musical cultures use the music as language for expression and employ dance as an accompaniment, reinforcing the music’s iconography. In theatrical arts such as ballet for example, the dancers’ role is to reinforce the music, which in turn accompanies the setting of the words/lyrics. So unlike Africa’s dance culture, Western cultures use music and dance as being part of the same building block of artistic expression and do not treat them as two different functions of communication. Although music and dance in Africa are carried out at the same time, there is still this underlying knowledge of the two factors having separate roles in their performance. African musicians do not solely rely on the music for communication if dance is involved in the performance too. In many ways, dance can actually take precedence over the music and we can perhaps see here a role reversal in what was being described previously in our Western musical and dance culture. With these many musical cultures that Africa has to offer, we are able to take a step back and question what we can actually musically learn or take away from these customs. As musicians, we are able to learn from Africa’s musical cultures about the importance of listening to music beyond what is being played. We should look through the inner and outer layers of sound and learn to feel the music with truth and integrity. Achieving this we can learn to communicate with each other with increasing honesty. African music uses its three main elements, language, pitch and rhythm in a very effective and different way to Western music. It uses language to distinguish tone and pitch, and as there are so many different languages throughout Africa, it is rich in these two components. Language in our music does not really have this function of distinguishing pitch and tone, but acts more as a poetic and lyrical form to the music. It serves more for expressing the meaning of music rather than becoming a part of it. Some languages in Europe are considered to convey certain moods, especially in songs or opera. Language has the ability to communicate extremes of moods through the tone and pitch in which it is delivered. The German language for example, expresses the delicacy of issues in its Lieder, but can equally express highly dramatic scenes through its change in tone and pitch. This way of adapting the language still does not allow it to become part of the music as we have seen it done in Africa. Their performance relies on explosive outbursts and extremes in sounds which are incorporated inside the music as a form of language. Language is never universal as it exists within contexts, however, in Africa, music is uniting and is used to express an otherwise repressed situation. In songs and operas the words can often stand alone in the form of poetry or scripts and the music enacts them out, however we have seen that in Africa the words and music combine and in a performance you cannot differentiate between the two. This is where we should learn to differentiate between the two fundamental aspects of hearing and listening to the music. It is arguable that within our Western musical cultures we are guilty of just hearing the music, meaning that it is just being acknowledged and not truly understood. If music is really listened to, it means that it is deciphered by our minds and sent out into messages of recognition, perception and understanding of its purpose. It is noted that in African cultures, the music is actually listened to so closely by its musicians and audiences that they are at one with the music. Very rarely do they just hear the notes and pitches being played: as we have learnt already, there are always underlying messages and different forms of expression being conveyed in African music. We can ...