Rhodes University: Hosted Journals
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West African women in music: an analysis of scholarship Women\u27s participation in music in west Africa: a reflection on filedwork, self and understanding
Get PDFIn June of 2006, as I packed to travel to Ghana to conduct two months of pre-dissertation exploratory research on women\u27s music, I also packed a host of ideas about women\u27s music in west Africa, having conducted extensive library research on the topic in the two years of graduate study I had completed just previous to my arrival in Ghana. I was hoping to find an interesting, fundable music tradition during my fieldwork that summer. I held the belief that women\u27s music existed in west Africa as a category whose boundaries I could clearly define. I thought maybe I\u27d find the rare female drummer who had broken free from the taboos of gender roles in society. I wished for a group that might demonstrate a sense of female solidarity, developed through the creation of sound and movement. I sought a music tradition where women expressed themselves musically
Mzeno "Political” (Webster)
No full textMzeno (the \u27great song\u27, -zena, to play slowly, in a relaxed manner)
Mzeno is considered the core movement of the timbila dance. It has a dramatic intensity, with two changes of tempo that makes it unique. When musicians sit around, they often reminisce about Mzeno movements of past years, their music and lyrics. Some mizeno, such as "Hinganyengisa” composed by Katini in 1942 and given below, are widely known among Chopi and recalled for many years. The cycle length is normally 16 beats, the tonality often primarily an alternation of the two chords, CEA and DFB (remembering that these are the Chopi notes, not the Western)
Diasporic jeliya as a collaborative trade in New York City
Get PDFIn Mali, Guinea, and Senegal, the term jeliya denotes the traditional art of praise singing as practiced by only male and female hereditary musicians (jeliw and jelimusow). The jeli or griot is a verbal artist whose profession or practice requires a specific set of oral skills. Instrumentalists accompany vocalists on hereditary instruments such as the balafon (xylophone) and kora (harp) and play a subordinate role to them. In New York City (hereafter referred to simply as New York), however, jeliya has become a collaborative trade with all participants - griot and non-griot - benefiting from their involvement. The practice of the jeli has evolved to include styles of presentation and performance that place a greater emphasis upon instrumental playing (foli) in order to make jeliya more accessible to non-griot musicians and audiences. Above all, like other west African hereditary migrant traders in New York, jeliw broker their art as a musical practice in order to reach new sources of patronage. For them, jeliya can be commodified in the form of CDs to be bought and sold or inspire various types of collaboration with non-griot musicians, while it retains its original meaning(s) and significance as a verbal art in traditional environments. As a collaborative trade, diasporic jeliya embodies varying degrees of innovation and hybridity, which emerge in several types of collaborative relationship and in various contexts
