June 2017 theme: Traditional music in Africa

3 Jun 2017 - 17:23

Traditional music is at the heart of African culture and identity. It bears such a varied quantity of hues and forms in terms of sound, expression and its associated dances and attires that it’s almost impossible to create an easy-to-follow graphic taxonomy for it: just as Africa is made up of many nations, ethnicities and their respective cultures, so are the sounds that are inherent to its people.

With the technological age well afoot, African musicians have begun listening to each other more and more, mixing and matching traditional genres that until not long ago were separated by thousands of kilometres and language barriers. That is why we sometimes hear musicians playing for example Afrobeat combined with rumba and kwaito, which are all genres stemming from traditional motifs. In contemporary terms, modern African music is the amalgamation of traditional sounds amid the age of technology and Western influences.

But the age of technology is a double-edged sword. Whereas it helps musicians with inspiration and information, it also takes the musician away from the musical palaver, as it were, through which the knowledge of traditional music is passed on from one generation to the next – from father to son, mother to daughter and so on.

At Music In Africa we cherish the mandate to help preserve traditional forms of African music. We put a great effort to commission and publish Overviews about an art that in many places is becoming increasingly diluted by the modernisation of the music industry. Music In Africa’s Overviews provide a great entry point for anyone interested in learning more about traditional music in Africa. These texts look at various ethnic groups, regions, ceremonies, dances and the instruments that are used to make each idiom possible.

Below are some links related to traditional music in Africa – with plenty more to come as the month of June progresses. So make sure you check in daily to access the information we have compiled for you.

Traditional music Overview Texts