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Call to the hunt: the one-note xylophone of the DRC
Get PDFWith these enthusiastic words J. Maes accepted the news from Rev Fr. Roland about a curious musical instrument found in the Sanga territory: the mbila (Figure 1). The interest shown in this one-note instrument is easily explained, as in 1934 the Tervuren museum only possessed three examples of mbila, without any accompanying information. Maes\u27 request as chief conservator of the ethnographic section was met, and Roland sent four well documented examples of mbila
Hit songs and the dynamics of postcolonial Zimbabwe: a study in popular music trends, 1980-2009
Get PDFMy intention to analyze hit songs as an embodiment of collective experiences emanates from the special position they occupy in the musical repertoire of any given society. I deliberately avoid examining songs classified under the broad popular music rubric although they never enjoyed any wide appeal. As Charosh (1997: 480) argues, "One may question the practice of identifying songs that languished, unsung on their publishers\u27 shelves, as music representative of a public\u27s taste”. Among the songs a particular musician produces on a single album, only one or two, and sometimes none, qualify to acquire the prestigious status of a hit song. Hit songs are a tiny percentage of the huge body of songs recorded during any particular period in a given society. Whereas the vast number of songs that fail to reach hit status are usually forgotten, those few that acquire this celebrated status remain vibrant in the society\u27s collective memory
The Dance of Politics: Gender, Performance, and Democratization in Malawi. Lisa Gilman. 2009. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 252 pp.
Get PDFHip hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World. Eric Charry, ed. 2012. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 390 pp.
Get PDFPredicted mbira found
Get PDFThis article is written as a follow-up to my article "The original African mbira?” (1972). I can report that an instrument which I predicted to have existed in that article actually did/does exist! In the original article I compared the tuning layouts of two related present-day members of the mbira family, hera, also called matepe, (found in northern Zimbabwe and northeast Zimbabwe into Mozambique) and nyonganyonga (found in central Mozambique, from Mutare, Zimbabwe to Beira, Mozambique and also into southern Malawi)
Ethnic and regional identities in Nigerian popular music: a special focus on the Edo
Get PDFNigeria has a population of over 150 million people with a population density of 184.2 people per square kilometre (477 people per square mile and runs a federal system of government and a bi-camera legislature. For administrative purposes, the country is divided into 36 states and 774 local government areas. Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups. However, the three major ethnic groups as recognised by the federal government are: Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba (known in local linguistic parlance as Wa Zo Bia, terms which mean \u27come\u27 in the three languages). Since independence, these three major ethnic groups have dominated the political scene with many ethnic minorities feeling marginalized. Even among these \u27big three\u27, the issue of marginalization is still a problem which has led to various zoning formulae in governance. Also, these three major ethnic groups are not entirely homogenous. For example, the Yoruba who inhabit the south-west region consist of various sub-groups such as Ijesa, Ijebu, Eko, Ibolo, Okun and Igbomina amongst others. In the same vein, while Hausa people are generally believed to be the main inhabitants of northern Nigeria, the reality on the ground shows that there are many smaller groups who are generally subsumed under the name Hausa by outsiders. This phenomenon further complicates the internal structure of the nation state through over simplification of ethnic group categories. None of the major languages are official. English is the official language of business in Nigeria
Transcribing the Venda tshikona reedpipe dance
Get PDFStarting with the end result, the above transcription is the conclusion I came to after sitting with Laina Gumboreshumba for many hours, watching the videos she made during her recent doctoral research on the tshikona reedpipe dance of the Venda of Limpopo Province in the extreme north of South Africa. The transcription shown in Figure 2 is a skeleton version of the full pipe sound that contains all the information needed to grasp the structure of the sound and teach it or play it. There are always seven different pipes. A full tshikona group has far more than the seven pipes (nanga) shown, because all seven pipe numbers are doubled in every octave present in a group, so there may be up to four or more Pipe 1s, Pipe 2s, etc, of different sizes. All the Pipe 1s play the same pattern together, all the Pipe 2s etc. There are usually four octaves in all, with an incomplete octave of a few higher pitched pipes at the top (phalana). A popular size for a group according to group leaders (malogwane) is twenty eight pipes, which may include some pitch duplicates. A festive performance can number well over one hundred players. The music is heptatonic as you can see from the transcription, and hear for yourself from CD track 1 accompanying this issue of African Music. A chart showing the tuning is included as Figure 1 1 at the end of this article. This article does not address the pipe names; they are simply numbered Pipes 1 to 7, in the order of entry in Mr Netshivhale\u27s groups. The pipes are end-blown, closed tubes made of a special bamboo, or increasingly today of electrical or other tubing.3 (See Figure 3
"Cuban music is African music": negotiating Africa and the African diaspora on the world music stage
Get PDFDiscussing the Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab\u27s incorporation of Cuban music, guitarist and band member Latfi Benjeloune told me, "The music didn\u27t come home and influence African music. Cuban music is already African. These are African sensibilities that are being expressed...in some ways we felt like parents with this music...it came from us” (Interview, 25 October 2011). Here, Benjeloune justifies his musical mixing by positioning himself in relation to the black Atlantic and African and Afro-diasporic peoples. Making musical and cultural connections across the black Atlantic is not a new phenomenon. African and Afro-diasporic musicians have long shared and taken up each other\u27s musics, be it funk, jazz or rumba. The dynamics of musical mixing, however, have varied widely and have been affected by power relations, histories, cultural understandings and misunderstandings, as well as by access to technology, the workings of the music industry,and distribution networks