What is African music culture?
In Africa, music is a social activity in which almost everyone participates. Music highlights African values, with various traditions accompanied by a melody. Many events of importance are celebrated with music, whether it is a marriage, a birth, or a ceremonial rite of passage.
How important is African music to their culture?
Music is an integral part of the African culture, with various ceremonies being preceded by some sort of music. Music is used to communicate, pass literature, welcoming heroes among other ritual functions. There are diverse genres of music in Africa like hymns, dirge, that create mood and feel for the occasion.
What is African music known for?
It permeates African life and has a function, a role to play in society; songs are used for religious ceremonies and rituals, to teach and give guidance, to tell stories, to mark the stages of life and death and to provide political guidance or express discontent.
What makes African music is unique?
African music is also highly improvised. A core rhythmic pattern is typically played, with drummers then improvising new patterns over the static original patterns. Traditional music in most of the continent is passed down orally (or aurally) and is not written.
Why is African culture important?
Africa is a vast continent with diversity of cultures. Rather than see this as an impediment to development, the continent should take advantage of this rich cultural diversity in its quest for economic development and should change the attitudes of its people towards work, interpersonal trust, time, youth and women.
Why is music important to culture?
In all different languages, at its most basic level music can help us learn. Music also helps us communicate and it’s how we express ourselves. Communication is key in all cultures and by putting on a show and song it can help to express how people really feel. Communication can become easier with the power of music.
What are characteristics of African music?
Among the qualities of African music which may be considered characteristic, then, we may include the following: an emphasis on rhythmic and metric complexity expressed throughout the musical system; the use of extended syncopation, or off- beat phrasing of melodic accents, as a melodic device; the antiphonal call and …
What is the historical and cultural background of African music?
Early attempts at notating African music were made by T.E. The single and double iron bells, which probably originated in Kwa-speaking West Africa, spread to western Central Africa with Iron Age Bantu-speaking peoples and from there to Zimbabwe and the Zambezi River valley.