1. Shedding Light on the Dark Continent
Introduction to African American
Music
September 10, 2013

2. Africa by the Numbers
• Population nearing 1 billion people
• 56 countries
• There are over 3,000 ethnic groups in Africa
– More than 370 in Nigeria alone
• Pre-colonialization Africa had nearly 10,000
states/autonomous groups
• Nearly 85% of the African population is
affiliated with Christianity or Islam

3. Today’s Objectives
• Attempt to wrap our minds around the vast
diversity of African culture and music
• Develop of framework for thinking about
African-derived music
• Consider the “imagined” Africa and its musical
legacy

4. European Colonizers
• Portugal
• England
• Germany
• Belgium
• Spain
• France
• The Netherlands

5. Slave Ports of Africa

6. The People and The State
• Colonies are constructs designed to maximize
access to resources for the colonizers. They
are not drawn based on the residence of
ethnic group boundaries.
• African nation states are similar to colonies in
that they are politically-driven imposed on
groups of people that strive to unite ethnic
groups under a new national identity

7. Music of Africa

8. A Word about Transcription

9. Olly Wilson’s Heterogenous Sound
Ideal

10. Rhythm
The tendency to approach the organization of
rhythm based on the principle of rhythmic and
implied metrical contrast-a tendency to create
musical events in which rhythmic clash or
disagreement of accents is the ideal, and cross-
rhythm and metrical ambiguity are the accepted,
expected norm. (It is this conceptual approach that
accounts for the quality of "swing" that Duke
Ellington celebrated, which is the result of the
"clash" or contrast that occurs on either a rhythmic
or metrical level.)

11. Percussive Timbre
The tendency to approach singing or the playing
of any instrument in a percussive manner -a
manner in which qualitative stress accents are
frequently used.

12. Call and Response
The tendency to create musical forms in which
antiphonal, responsorial, or call-and-response
musical structures abound. These responsorial
structures frequently exist simultaneously on a
number of different architectonic levels.

13. High Density
The tendency to create a high density of musical
events within a relatively short musical time
frame -a tendency to fill up all the musical
space.

14. Music + Movement
The tendency to incorporate physical body
motion as an integral part of the music making
process.

15. Imagined Africa
• Dress
• Religion
• Tattoos
• Language
• Musical appropriation
• Renaming

16. Ethnmusicological Analysis
• Brief bio of artist
– Age
– Ethnic group
– Country of origin
• Select a song (or songs) and think about how
that artist manifests his/her
ethnic/country/African identity