Example 1
artist: Ali Farka Toure
country: Mali
song title: Ai Bine (circa 6 minutes)
CD title: The River
comments: a musician in the
griot/jali lineage. What is African
about this Example ? Note of the
leisurely time sense, lack of harmonic or bass line progression, and the
treatment of pitched instruments (guitar, bass) as single-note percussion
instruments. Relaxed polyrhythmic feel.
Example 2
artist: Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck
country: Senegal
recording date: c. 1984-5
song title: Muudo Hormo (c. 6 min)
CD title: Djam Leelii
comments: the guitars are obviously
a European or American influence; what is African? Note the nasal quality of the singing, the balaphone (a kind of
xylophone, technically in the family of idiophones), the tuning of the
balaphone is slightly different from standard Western tuning; there is a slow
three against four polyrhythm.
Example 3
artist: Salif Keita
country: Mali, France
date: c. 1995
song title: Tekere (c. 6 min)
CD title: Folon . . . The Past
comments: another musician in the
griot/jali lineage. Call &
response? Downward melodic contour?
Example 4
artist: Ladysmith Black Mambazo
country: South Africa
song title: Uzube Nami Baba
date:??? mid-1980s?
comment: Note the "Halleluja,
Amen" at the end; Christian
influence.
Example 5
artist: Thomas Mapfumo
country: Zimbabwe
comments: guitar playing echoes
mbira style. Political lyrics
denouncing corruption, advocating for black rule of Zimbabwe, which at the time
was white-ruled Rhodesia.
READ THIS EXCELLENT
INTERVIEW WITH MUSICOLOGIST THOMAS TURINO
Examples 6 & 7
Artist: King Sunny Ade & His
African Beats
Country: Nigeria
CD: Aura
Comments: Stevie Wonder harmonica
solo on #6; traditional percussion & some reggae influence. The genre is
known as Juju.
Example 8
Artist: Paul Simon
Country: USA, recorded USA, SA
CD: Graceland, c. 1986
Examples 9-11
Artist: Angelique Kidjo, b.
Benin. Languages: English, Fon
CD: Oremi, c. 1998, recorded in the
USA & South Africa
Title, track 9: Voodoo Child
Example 12
Composer: Steve Reich,
American.
Genre: Art music
Title: Nagoya Marimbas
Comment: African conceptual
influence (musical interest based on relations of shifting patterns)
A
few questions to focus your listening:
Be
able to name three traditional characteristics that continue in contemporary
popular music in Africa.
Briefly
identify or describe an example of musical ideas from different cultures being
combined in the 20th-century.
Briefly identify an example of cross-cultural borrowing that is pre-20th-century. (1-3 sentences)