ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF AFRICAN MUSIC AND DANCE
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: MUSIC AND DANCE
Setapa Dance, a traditional dance of the Bantu-speaking Twana people of Bostwana in southern Africa.♦♦♦
Music from Zimbabwe
The song, "Nhemamusasa" ("cutting branches to build a shelter"), is among the oldest of traditional mbira songs of Zimbabwe. The mbira is also part of religious ceremonies of Zimbabweans: the rattling of bottlecaps or other material attached to the instrument is believed to attract spirits.
The mbira is one of many instruments designed to play the repeating melodic patterns that underlie musics of Central and Southern Africa. For a given song, melodic pattern and rhythmic cycle are identical in length, and so reinforce each other. When several melodic and rhythmic patterns combine they create a rich and highly polyphonic and polyrhythmic texture. In the background is the unchanging rhythmic pattern of the shekere.
The first image below shows the instrument and its method of playing; each of the metal "tongues" creates a specific definite pitch when activated by thumb or forefinger. The second image shows the mbira housed in a hollowed calabash to increase its resonance.
Music of the Aka People
The Aka people of the Ituri Forest in Central Africa are known for their highly complex musical culture.
A more recent recording from 2004 is by Orchéstre Baka Gbiné performed by Baka musicians "from the Cameroon-Congo border, deep in the rainforest. Using guitars, percussion, voices and dance they play modern songs heavily influenced by both their traditional music and the Congolese music they hear on the radio."
Music from Mali
Two internationally renowned musicians of Mali teamed up for this concert. Mali is part of the Sahel, the area of Africa associated with string instruments, virtuosic soloists, and improvisation. Touré is widely recognized as having provided an intersection between traditional Malian music and Blues, an all-important African-American genre. The kora, pictured below, is a harp-like instrument of 16th-century Malian origin played in "Debe" by the renowned Toumani Diabate, improvising, while Touré backs him up with a repeating phrase on guitar.
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