Music in Africa

The African Hunter type could be the music with the San on the southwestern Africa and the African Pygmies dispersed throughout Africa. The African Hunter variety is characterized by the use of: "falsetto, yodeling, hocketing (a process in which the melodic line is distributed in between numerous voices), disjunct melody (wide skips within the melodic line), and dense texture represented by polyphony, numerous vocal timbres in hocket, and solo voices which sometimes emerge as leading melodic indicators" (Merriam, 1982, p. 138). The music in the Nguni peoples (Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa, etc.) is characteristically Black African. However, its variations include: "lack of the steady tempo, slow movement, the presence of spoken recitative, strong portamento (sliding from one note on the next), large but flaccid sound, and really dense texture" (139). In general, the music areas of Africa consist of similar stylistic features inside large central core, marked differences in variety from the north and northeast, and variant forms during the south (139).

The well-known denominator of African music is its central functionality each in terms of the community as well as the individual. Music is often a celebration of life and its several passages. When an African child is born, the event is accompanied by conventional songs, dances, and rituals. Even ahead of the birth in the child, as soon as the mother visits the witch doctor relating to the child's delivery.

In addition to musical instruments, vocal music is very well-liked in Black Africa, and includes secular songs and sacred songs. In sacred music the voice is used "as a medium of communication from the supernatural, with a god or gods, to enhance religious meditation or to advance peace and harmony among another person and his universe" (Kebede, 1982, p. 4). The use of chanting is also widespread. Secular songs normally deal with human experiences and may concern relationships among the sexes, society, family, or political classes.

The intimate union among music and African life has been described as a "total communion" (Bebey, 1975, p. 12). The totality of this union is demonstrated by the reality that in some African languages no word exists to define what music is. Music is an expression of African life: "The art of music is so inherent in man that it's superfluous to get a certain name for it" (p. 12).

"It can safely be said that there are no nonliterate societies in which distinctions of this order prevail. Art is really a part of life, not separated from it" (Merriam, 1982, p. 68).

Aerophones, musical instruments wherever sound is made by the vibration of air, include horns, flutes, panpipes, and ocarinas. Horns are most favorite in West Africa as well as the Congo basin. The materials utilized for these instruments ranges from ivory to metal. The Berta tribe of eastern Sudan uses end-blown trumpets produced of gourds. Ethiopians favor bamboo or metal, usually covered with leather. The Bantu tribes use animal horns as signals. Flutes, panpipes, and ocarinas are frequent throughout Black Africa.

The musical instruments of Africa is also classified into four typical categories: idiophones, membranophones, aerophones, and chordophones.

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