Live music in Africa

1 Apr 2018 - 17:24

People haven’t been listening to recorded music for too long. For tens of thousands of years before recording devices were invented in the latter part of the 1800s, human beings had to participate in live performances as audience members and performers, or both, to get their fix of alternate realities.

Nigerian Afrobeat musician Dele Sosimi is well known for his spirited live performances.

Today we have TVs, PC games, VR goggles and home theatres to help us escape. But before the technological revolution, there weren’t other ways our ancestors could get to experience music, dance or theatre, so a performance was a special occasion often suffused with ritual. Live performances were moments of ecstasy where human imagination was presented in a concentrated form to tell stories, teach lessons or just for pure fun.

This hasn’t changed much today. We still go out to live performances in order to experience human creativity and ingenuity in a much more focussed and meaningful way. We attend live events to connect with music intimately; we lose ourselves in it and we get to witness the artists lose themselves in their own creative worlds. The live performance is an incredibly special occurrence – it’s when we get to feel accentuated emotions that are usually absent from the mundane tasks of everyday existence.

If you’re an artist you would know that a 60-minute performance can sometimes feel like three minutes – months and even years of rehearsals go by in the blink of an eye. This is what happens to humans when we’re involved in heightened brain activities that are difficult to describe with words.

In the month of April, Music In Africa tries to capture the power of live music. We share with you information about the most talked-about concerts and festivals on the continent, our opportunity articles provide details about what artists need to do to be considered to play such events, and our educational and overview articles help musicians improve themselves as professionals in a competitive industry.

Visit this page daily to find updates on the live music scene in Africa.

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