Music Section 4

"Pata Pata"

"Pata Pata" has an unusual history. It shares some material with a Zulu song in the mbube style recorded in 1941 by the Dundee Wandering Minstrels. Makeba first recorded it with her group the Skylarks in South Africa in 1959, capitalizing on a new local dance style of the same name. When she recorded a new version in 1967 for the U.S. market, she added in a Xhosa phrase, simplified the lyrics, and added the English spoken lyrics (see Figure 4.2). The familiarity of the song for an American audience is due in part to the common lineage of European harmony that informed mbube (see Section II). This was Makeba's most well-known song

"Tekere" (Clap

"Tekere" (Clap) comes off of Keita's fifth Mango album and features Malian guitarist Ousmane Kouyate (note that his name indicates that he comes from a jeli/griot lineage). It is a feel-good song, with a chorus imploring everyone to clap their hands

World music as a generic category

"World music" ended up signifying for many people everything but what went into the jazz, classical, pop, rock, and R & B bins. This brought on criticisms that it was a marginalizing catch-all category, defined by what it was not. Some celebrated the entry of new and previously unheard voices into the international music industry, while others worried that a cultural gray out would result, flattening out local differences in favor of a bland generic globalized category

The presence of a standard clave rhythm as a fundamental feature of son

A fundamental feature of son, and much Cuban music, is the presence of a standard clave rhythm (Figure 4.1). The rhythm is usually played by two sticks although sometimes it may not be sounded at all, but is rather implied. The son and salsa clave pattern can start with either two strokes (Figure 4.1.a) or three strokes (Figure 4.1.b). The rumba clave pattern (Figure 4.1.c) is very similar to the son three two pattern, but with one stroke displaced

Aesthetics

Aesthetics refers to standards of beauty or taste, the basis for the kinds of decisions that musicians make in shaping their art. Even with such diversity of musical expression, one can identify a number of musical features that appear to be shared throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, and to a certain extent all of Africa (though there are bound to be exceptions). They point to an African aesthetic of music making, that is, a shared sensibility

J.H. Kwabena Nketia

African drumming began to be taught at American universities in the 1960s, thanks to the early efforts of musicologist J.H. Kwabena Nketia, who, as you may recall from Section I, is a prolific scholar and was the first director of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana beginning in 1962. Nketia was also the co-director of the Ghana Dance Ensemble in the 1960s. Nketia came to the U.S. on a fellowship in 1958-59 and studied with various scholars at Columbia University, Northwestern University, and UCLA, where he laid the seeds in the pioneering ethnomusicology program for bringing Ghanaian drumming into the curriculum

African nations in the "World music" category

African nations, some of them comparatively small and little known, have fared extremely well in the Grammy award process. In the largest music industry in the world (U.S.), Malians (including Toumani Diabate and Salif Keita) have captured more Grammy nominations in the World Music category (twenty-three total) than any other country, including major contenders from nations with ten or even seventy times its population (Brazil and India). Other well-represented countries include South Africa (Ladysmith Black Mambazo), Senegal (Youssou N'Dour), Benin (Angelique Kidjo), and Nigeria (Fela's son Femi Kuti)

Organization of African Unity (OAU)

After the flurry of African colonies gaining independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a move to establish some kind of unity among the formerly divided colonies. In 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established at a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the thirty-two African states that had gained independence. Their primary objectives were to: "promote the unity and solidarity of African states; coordinate and intensify their cooperation and efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa; safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Member States; rid the continent of colonisation and apartheid; promote international cooperation within the United Nations framework; and harmonise members' political, diplomatic, economic, educational, cultural, health, welfare, scientific, technical and defence policies."

Chachacha and AFrican influences

Around 1950 another music and dance genre called chachacha arose in a kind of ensemble called charanga, which featured piano, violins, wooden flute, timbales, and guiro (a scraper), with an added conga. Chachacha reached its height in the 1950s with the recordings of Orquesta Aragon, the most beloved of all charangas.

Reasons for admiration of Keita's music

Besides Keita's compelling voice, he is admired for the depth of his lyrics, which dig into issues affecting contemporary Malian life. His song "Sina" from his first Mango album (Soro, 1987) was a reconciliation with his father and marked a move from adopting the persona of a jeli praise singer to that of a hunter's musician, a pursuit that has no hereditary restrictions and is more in line with the belief system of his father. Keita, perhaps more so than most other African songwriters, has been able to reconcile the old and the new in Africa—tradition and modernity—with special insight

Edward W. Blyden turning upside down European perceptions of Africa

Blyden turned things upside down by valorizing traditional African culture in the face of European cultural arrogance and greed for colonial power and so laid the foundation for an African socialism formulated by some of the most important leaders of independence movements in the mid-twentieth century. As Irele notes, Blyden "considered as detrimental to the essentially communal spirit of African civilization what he regarded as Europe's elevation of the values of materialism and individualism into principles of human life and behavior; a view of the opposition between Africa and Europe that has become classic if not commonplace since Blyden's time."

Négritude

Blyden's—and later Nkrumah's—idea of an African personality has its analog in the Francophone world in the literary style and cultural theory called Négritude, whose most famous proponent was Léopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal: "Negritude is nothing more or less than what some English-speaking Africans have called the African personality." First coined by poet Aimé Cesaire from the former French colony Martinique in the late 1930s, the term Négritude was used by some Francophone African and Afro Caribbean writers to valorize what they saw as certain African qualities. Senghor would later summarize it as follows: Who would deny that Africans, too, have a certain way of conceiving life, and of living it? A certain way of speaking, singing, and dancing; of painting and sculpturing;... It [negritude] is...the sum of the cultural values of the black world."

Bossa Nova and influences

Bossa Nova is an offshoot of samba, with significant influences from jazz. Antonio Carlos Jobim (also known as Tom Jobim) was the most famous bossa nova composer, with many of his songs entering jazz and popular music repertories outside Brazil ("The Girl from Ipanema" is his most well-known song). The film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), which won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959 and an Oscar the following year, with music composed by Jobim and others, put bossa nova on the international map. Singer/guitarist João Gilberto (who played guitar on the Black Orpheus soundtrack) released his debut album Chega de Saudade in 1959, which is generally considered to be the first bossa nova album. American jazz musicians took notice of the new music: in 1962 saxophonist Stan Getz won a Grammy award for his LP Jazz Samba, which rose to number one on the Billboard pop chart. Getz released the album Getz/Gilberto in 1964 with Tom Jobim (piano), and João Gilberto (guitar and vocals) and his wife Astrud Gilberto (vocals). Getz/Gilberto won four Grammys and launched Astrud Gilberto to stardom with her rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema."

African influences in Brazil

Brazil also has retained some African-based sacred drumming traditions associated with the religion called Candomble. But it is known worldwide for its secular drumming tradition called samba. Samba drumming ensembles, part of the larger samba schools, can get extremely large, reaching several hundred, as they parade around during Carnival time and compete against each other. The percussion orchestra, called batería, is based on three different sizes of surdo (a long bass drum played with a mallet), with other percussion instruments on top of them, including tambourines (pandeiro), a double bell (agogo), and a small snare drum (caixa)

African influences in Brazil (Samba)

Brazil has the largest number of people of African descent outside of Africa, with three major cultural streams mixing: Portuguese, African, and Amerindian. The most well-known musical styles to come out of Brazil are samba, with origins in early twentieth- century samba schools that take part in Rio's Carnival, and bossa nova (New Way), launched in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s. Samba has its origins in black communities in Rio in the early twentieth century. The term is used for both a genre of song, which has gone through many changes since its beginnings, and the large percussion ensembles that play samba rhythms

African influence in Cuba

Cuba and Brazil in particular have nurtured drumming traditions brought over by enslaved Africans. In Cuba the vast majority of them (over one half million) arrived during the nineteenth century. Many factors were responsible for the continued strong African influence in Cuban music. The Spanish authorities allowed cabildos, mutual-aid societies, in part because they were organized according to African origin and acted against a unified front; The cabildos worked as an insulation against assimilation; Free as well as enslaved blacks were allowed to drum, dance, and sing, and celebrate at festivals; The slave trade into Cuba lasted into the 1860s, continually providing new infusions of African (especially Yoruba) culture; Four major "nations" (naciones) of African origin, each with their own musical styles, can be distinguished within Cuba, with two being especially influential: Lucumí, of Yoruba origin from Nigeria (Santería religion), and Kongo, of a wide variety of ethnic groups from Central Africa (Palo religion)

Kongo influences in Cuba

Cubans of Central African origin, called Kongo, practice a religion called Palo, which uses a drum that developed into the conga drum, which is the main instrument used in the secular (non-religious) drumming tradition called rumba. The rumba drumming ensemble uses three different sizes of congas (the lead quinto, support segundo, and bass tumbadora), a pair of long sticks that tap a pattern against the side of a drum (or a wooden slit tube), and a pair of short thick sticks (called claves) that plays another rhythmic pattern. The marriage of African and Spanish traditions on Cuban soil, in particular in bringing the conga into popular music and dance styles, has given Cuban music its distinct flavor

Diaspora as a concept for understanding shared aesthetics among broadly dispersed people with a common origin

Diaspora can be an effective concept for understanding shared aesthetics among broadly dispersed peoples who claim a common origin or homeland. For the African diaspora, the contrast of roots (sharing a common culture or homeland) and routes (developing new cultures as a result of contact with new environments) has been an important strategy for analysis. For example, Jamaican reggae, Brazilian samba, and Cuban son share certain African diasporic sensibilities, while also featuring their own unique characteristics

Connotation of the word diaspora

Diaspora has been an important concept employed to understand cultural differences and commonalities among broadly dispersed, yet somehow related peoples. The term has biblical origins, from the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew bible (Old Testament). The Greek word diaspeirein (to scatter, spread, disperse) was used for the Hebrew terms for the banishment and exile of Jews from the kingdoms of Israel (eighth century bce) and Judea (586 bce) and from Jerusalem (70 ce). The term originally had negative connotations, as it was a consequence of not following the laws of God. It has since taken on neutral or positive connotations. There can be many types of diasporas: victim (Jewish, African, Armenian), labor (indentured servants from India), imperial (British colonials), trade (Lebanese, Chinese), and deterritorialized (Roma, pejoratively known as gypsies)

Djembefola

Djembefola, a 1991 documentary of Keita's life as a drummer, funded in part by National Geographic, secured his stature as the leading jembe player of his time. Keita is a master of his instrument and a charismatic performer and teacher. All of this comes through brilliantly in the documentary, which traces his travels from Belgium back to Conakry, where he rejoins his old friends at the ballet and back to his home village, to which he had not returned for over two decades. The film is a classic, which brings out the humanity in the life of a master African drummer moving around in the modern world

Latin music boom with styles of chachacha, son, and mambo

During the 1950s, chachacha, son, and mambo were at the peak of a Latin music boom that flourished between the two poles of New York and Havana. These styles represented two different instrumental lineages: son and its conjunto based on guitars, brass, and conga; and chachacha and its charanga orchestra based on piano, violins, and flute

Ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner's work giving exposure to the mbira

Ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner's work in the 1970s also gave important exposure to the mbira. He produced two albums of master mbira musicians, Soul of Mbira (1973) and Shona Mbira Music (1977), which he recorded in Zimbabwe, and his book Soul of Mbira (1978) provides comprehensive coverage of the tradition, including an Appendix on how to build an mbira. Berliner taught at Northwestern University and Duke University, where he brought his teacher Cosmas Magaya to lecture and teach as an Artist in Residence. We encountered both Berliner's work and Magaya's playing in Section II

Second FESTAC differing from the first

FESTAC differed in part from the first festival in Dakar in that an important theme was contemporary African life. This can be seen in the choice of American musicians who participated, including Stevie Wonder and progressive jazz musicians Randy Weston and Sun Ra and his Arkestra. (By contrast, Ellington in 1966 had a career that stretched back to the 1920s.) In the assessment of Nigerian historian Toyin Falola, FESTAC showed that: "Black people wanted to...assert the possibility of development without rejecting tradition. . . . While FESTAC celebrated the past, it also looked forward by presenting the means to blend the cultures of the past with the cultures of the present."

FESTAC as a big African cultural event

FESTAC was Africa's biggest cultural event during the twentieth century, Falola noted, suggesting that: "Many look back on FESTAC as a turning point in the development of a global black consciousness....FESTAC was an opportunity to talk about identity, to bring together blacks from different countries to discuss issues of cultural awakening and awareness, and to urge them to work hard and carefully for their collective survival."

Political leaders and a "Pan-Africanist" vision

Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah drew extensively on the notion of an African personality in his Pan-Africanist vision, one that called for Africans across the continent to unite politically, and Tanzania's first president Julius Nyenyere saw the extended family as the foundation of his socialist vision for his nation

Musicians and UN boycott on South Africa

Graceland was controversial, however, because Paul Simon had violated a United Nations cultural boycott of South Africa intended to put pressure on the white minority government to end apartheid and share power with the black majority. A 1968 UN resolution, adopted by the General Assembly, decreed "All states and organizations [are] to suspend cultural, educational, sporting, and other exchanges with the racist regime and with other organizations or institutions in South Africa which practice apartheid." By 1980 the appeal had expanded to "writers, artists, musicians, and other personalities to boycott South Africa." Not everyone paid heed: in 1981 Americans entertaining in South Africa included Cher, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Sha Na Na, the Beach Boys, Ray Charles, and the O'Jays. Roberta Flack, however, declined a $2.5 million offer. Simon went to Johannesburg in 1985 to make initial recordings. Ladysmith Black Mambazo went to London and New York to record with Simon and appeared on Saturday Night Live with him in the fall of 1986. Guitarist Ray Phiri (with the band Stimela that played on Graceland) has voiced another opinion about the boycott, saying that "it denies the outside world an opportunity to learn our culture and how can they help us if they don't know our culture"? The music and arrangements are co-credited to Ladysmith Black Mambazo on "Homeless" and the introduction to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes." Two covers of South African songs on Graceland were also co-credited: "Gumboots" and "The Boy in the Bubble." Twenty-five years after the Graceland concert in Zimbabwe, Simon returned to South Africa for a documentary exploring the controversies involving him and the UN Boycott

Reasons against Salif Keita going into a musical career

He was born with two counts against him for going into a performing career. As a member of the Keita lineage, stemming back to the very founder of the Mali empire, Sunjata Keita, his social status dictated that he should not take up music as a career; that was the job and hereditary right of jelis (griots). Pursuing music as a career, and taking on a jeli persona to boot, brought shame upon his family. Furthermore, born an albino, a hereditary condition characterized by lack of melanin and sometimes poor eyesight, Keita was marked as an outcast. He overcame both obstacles to become not only Mali's most internationally known vocalist, but one of Africa's major stars in the 1980s and 1990s. Keita did not receive the support of his family when he left his village for Bamako to pursue a career in music

Features of Keita's music

His musical arrangements typically feature aural surprises and internal polyphonic conversations within his band that offer his own unique take on modern African music

Jamaican popular music

In 1960, "Oh Carolina," featuring an introduction based on an American R & B song and a burru drum used in Rastafarian ceremonies, ushered in a new sound. Within a few years the first Jamaican popular music style, called ska, emerged, featuring the steady offbeat strumming of a guitar or horn section. An early ska hit was "Simmer Down" (1963) performed by The Wailers, with lead singer Bob Marley. The first international Jamaican hit was "My Boy Lollipop" (1964), sung by teenager Millie Small and produced by Chris Blackwell, who would form Island Records, the label that would send Marley into international stardom. The beat slowed down over the course of the 1960s, and the next major style was called rock steady. Reggae grew out of rock steady in the late 1960s. Jimmy Cliff, an early reggae star, helped bring reggae into the global market through his lead role in the film The Harder They Come (1972), a fictional account of the rough and tumble Jamaican music industry. Meanwhile, Bob Marley, who became a Rastafarian, released his first album on Island Records in 1972 (Catch a Fire) and soon became one of the most important musical artists of his time. Reggae caught on in Africa in a big way, and Marley performed at Zimbabwe's independence celebrations in April 1980

Expense of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture

In 1977 Nigeria hosted the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known by its acronym FESTAC, in Lagos, as a successor to the 1966 festival in Dakar. Nigeria was in the midst of an oil boom at the time and spent lavishly. New venues were built, and the official cost was estimated at $213-$225 million, a huge amount for the time; other estimates had the cost much higher. Other statistics are equally staggering: 15,000 participants from seventy countries; 100,000 people attended the opening ceremonies; a newly constructed national theater that held a five-thousand-seat Theatre Hall with earphones for translation at each seat, a 1,500-seat Conference Hall, also with earphones at each seat, and two large Exhibition Halls; and a new FESTAC Village to accommodate 45,000 international visitors with meals served in twelve communal restaurant canteens for residents using meal-tickets

Jembe drumming in Mamady Keita's wake

In Mamady Keita's wake, one of his mentors, former Ballets Africains lead drummer Famoudou Konate, has become a fixture on the international jembe workshop circuit, which has opened up opportunities for many other jembe teachers. Many of those teachers are bringing their students to Mali, Guinea, and Senegal for study tours of several weeks or more

Salif Keita and Les Ambassadeurs

In his early twenties he joined the Rail Band, making a name for himself, and within a few years moved to Les Ambassadeurs—these were the two top bands in Mali in the early 1970s. His partnership with Guinean guitarist Manfila Kante in Les Ambassadeurs led to a series of recordings in the 1970s that were widely appreciated in Mali. In the late 1970s, the band moved to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire to further their international career

General Olusegun Obasanjo on the second FESTAC

In his opening address, Nigerian Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo, the patron of FESTAC (and the leader under whose watch Fela's compound was burned to the ground just after FESTAC ended), noted: "The Festival will help obliterate erroneous ideas regarding the cultural values of the Black and African race. The occasion will surely lead to the abandonment of the "museum approach" to our culture by which men of other cultures consider our culture only in terms of prehistoric objects to be occasionally dusted, displayed and studied instead as a living thing containing and portraying the ethos of our peoples."

Mambo and African influences

In the 1940s, mambo, a style that featured dramatic breaks played by the full band, developed from a meeting of Afro-Cuban music with jazz big bands. It peaked in the 1950s in New York as a major dance music

Salif Keita and Mango Records

In the early 1980s Keita moved to Paris to pursue a solo career. In the mid-1980s, he gained a contract with Mango Records, a subsidiary of Island Records, which was one of the biggest world music labels of its time due to the success of Bob Marley. Between 1987 and 1995 Keita released six albums on Mango, establishing him as one of the most important voices on the new world music scene

The beginning of the idea of an "African personality"

In the late 1800s the idea of an "African personality" began to take shape, first in the words of Edward W. Blyden, who was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islandsin 1832 and immigrated to Liberia in 1850. Blyden had a strong Western education and was a Presbyterian minister, Professor and President of Liberia College, Secretary of State of Liberia, newspaper editor, and author. He first used the phrase "African personality" at a speech in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1893. By this he meant a unique worldview based on communal life (the extended family), communion with nature, and communion with God. Having done extensive research into local culture, and writing in an atmosphere of extreme prejudice where Europeans viewed Africans as primitive, Blyden, in the words of one of Africa's leading literary theorists Abiola Irele, "proposed an image of a coherent system of institutions and customs, animated by moral and spiritual principles of the highest order."

Broader definition of world music

In the late 1950s, ethnomusicologists (musicologists who studied music outside the Western classical tradition as well as music in its cultural context) began to use the term "world music" to mean all of the musics of the world: "the total range of music;" "including all of Euro-American music, not only folk, popular and tribal music;" "all musical phenomena in all times and places regardless of cultural bias." And so, up until the 1980s, "world music" could signify either non-Western musics or all of the musics of the world

World music as a way to categorize songs that don't easily fit into a category

In the summer of 1987, the phrase took a dramatic turn when British independent music industry personnel held meetings to work out marketing strategies for recordings that did not fit into standard industry categories. Their aim, in the words of one of the participants, was to come up with a "unified generic name [that] would give retailers a place where they could confidently rack otherwise unstockable releases, and where customers might both search out items they'd heard on the radio... and browse through a wider catalogue....'World Music' seemed to include the most and omit the least... Nobody thought of defining it or pretending there was such a beast: it was just to be a box, like jazz, classical or rock." The press release generated by the independent record labels read in part: "WORLD MUSIC would be used by all labels present to offer a new and unifying category for shop racking, press releases, publicity handouts and 'file under...' suggestions. This means that you no longer have to worry about where to put those new Yemenite pop, Bulgarian choir, Zairean soukous or Gambian kora records. We shall be making October 'WORLD MUSIC' month, heralded by an NME [New Music Express] cassette, a dealer campaign and extensive promotion and advertising in the popular press."

Drums and dancing in African music

Individual drums and drum ensembles are prevalent throughout Africa (especially in West Africa), and they almost always are accompanied by dance. Singing is also often present during drum and dance events. Where drums are absent, hand clapping may be done instead to keep a beat for dancing. Dance has a much more essential role in life in Africa than in many other parts of the world. It is a fundamental tool for creating social cohesion. Dancing in public creates a strong sense of community, which is highly valued. One honors the host by dancing at an event, such as a marriage celebration

African instrumentalists and improvisation

Instrumentalists who have great freedom, as we heard with Shona mbira music or Mande kora music, rely on models, or basic frameworks, which require improvisation to flesh them out. Kora player Toumani Diabate, for example, is a master of improvisation, as we can hear from the way in which he keeps the bass line of "Konkoba" going, while creating new melodies and rhythms with his index fingers. The solo pygmy vocalist playing the whistle creates subtle variations to maintain interest, all the while holding the whistle part steady

Reggae music in Jamaica

Jamaica is world famous for reggae music, which developed in part from American rhythm and blues. Beginning in the late 1940s, migrant sugar cane cutters working in the southern U.S. brought back Rhythm and Blues (R & B) recordings, introducing R & B to Jamaica. In the 1950s dance halls were driving the need for more R & B recordings, and by the late 1950s, as rock and roll eclipsed R & B in the U.S., a market for locally produced recordings developed. Records played by deejays, rather than live bands, drove the Jamaican music industry, and so sound systems (large speakers with amplifiers that could fill up outdoor dance spaces) were the primary means of hearing music other than the radio. Operators of the sound systems were affiliated with a limited number of record labels, so that as soon as a recording was made, it could be debuted in public

Joseph Shabala and Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Joseph Shabala was born in 1941 near Ladysmith, a town in what is now called the KwaZulu-Natal province in the eastern region of South Africa, between Durban (in the south) and Johannesburg (in the north). He grew up playing guitar and singing Zulu wedding songs and moved to Durban in his early twenties. In 1965 he formed the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo ("black axe from Ladysmith"), and they began making the rounds of choral competitions with great success. In 1972 Shabala quit his day job to devote himself to music fulltime, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo made their first recordings soon after. After winning a major competition in Johannesburg in 1973, Shabala was advised by the organizers to leave that world for solo concerts; they were so popular that if they were to continue competing—and winning—there was no telling what jealous competitors might do! They became one of the most acclaimed groups within South Africa in the 1970s, and in 1986 they recorded on Paul Simon's Graceland album, touring with him, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela

Questioning of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade about certain parts about FESMAN 3

Just as Nigerians questioned the enormous outlay of funding for FESTAC, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade was questioned for his commissioning for FESMAN 3 an African Renaissance Monument sculpture that cost 27 million dollars and was constructed by North Koreans. FESMAN 3 would be Wade's swan song. The nation's youth had become disillusioned with the hope that he initially offered in 2000, and by 2010 they and other opposition forces prevented him from running for another term

Salif Keita and his international career

Keita has been nominated four times for a world music Grammy award, contributing significantly to Mali's dominance in that category. He has collaborated with guitarist Carlos Santana and saxophonist Wayne Shorter and appears on the soundtrack of the biographical film of Muhammed Ali, Ali. In 2004 Keita was named a United Nations Ambassador for Music and Sports, and in 2005 he founded the non-profit Salif Keita Global Foundation, "for the fair treatment and social integration of persons with albinism."

Salif Keita's style of music

Keita sings almost exclusively in his mother tongue Maninka, limiting, of course, his global market, but his music is marked by an extraordinary meeting of Maninka, Malian, African, American, and French pop sensibilities. He almost always records and performs with a Mande (Malian or Guinean) guitarist and a jembe player, in addition to the usual keyboard, bass, drum set, and horns

Benefits of Keita's relationship with Mango Records

Keita's relationship with Mango Records enabled him to record in the most well-equipped Parisian recording studios with a very tight, well-rehearsed band

Kouyate's guitar solo in "Tekere"

Kouyate's guitar solo bears some similarities to that of his countryman Djelimady Tounkara who we heard on Toumani Diabate's "Jarabi," drawing on American rock and Malian bala styles. Starting at 2:54 Kouyate plays some subtle melodic lines, staying within the confines of the two-measure (eightbeat) harmonic cycle. At 3:15 he plays a descending line with ngoni-like ornamentation here and there. At 3:23 he plays a bala-like pattern that changes just one or two notes every two beats to match the changing harmonies; he plays this pattern for three cycles and then moves on.

Makeba's musical career

Makeba soon gained a recording contract with the major label RCA Victor and released a series of highly acclaimed albums. While doing so she made her voice heard in other realms. Makeba testified at the United Nations about apartheid in 1963, and her records were banned in South Africa. That year, she became the first African to break into the Billboard Top Pop Album chart with her third album, The World of Miriam Makeba. In 1966 she won a Best Folk Recording Grammy award for her album with Harry Belafonte (An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba), and the following year her song "Pata Pata" hit #12 on the Billboard pop singles chart, making her the first African to break into the U.S. Top Forty. She was, in effect, the first world music star before the category had been invented. The following year, South African flugelhorn player and composer Hugh Masekela hit #1 on the U.S. pop singles charts with the instrumental "Grazing in the Grass." Since Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango hit #35 with "Soul Makossa" (later quoted by Michael Jackson in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'") in 1973, no African artist has entered into the U.S. Top Forty

Miriam Makeba towards the end of her life

Makeba spent the 1970s and early 1980s living in Guinea, at the invitation of President Sekou Toure, and continued touring the world. In 1987 she joined Paul Simon on his Graceland tour, performing in Zimbabwe (they did not perform in South Africa), which was filmed and released that year. She returned to South Africa in the early 1990s. Makeba's passing in 2008 was covered with obituaries in the world's major news outlets

Miriam Makeba's early life

Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932 to a Swazi mother, who was a nurse and traditional healer, and a Xhosa father. She sang in her high school chorus and joined a professional vocal ensemble, the Manhattan Brothers, in 1954, moving to the all-woman ensemble Skylarks around 1957. American jazz had a strong impact in South Africa, and Makeba's style combined the South African variety along with other locally based popular styles. She began appearing in films and had a breakthrough tour of the United States in 1959, sponsored in part by African-American vocalist and film star Harry Belafonte. Makeba appeared on national television on the Steve Allen show and at the Village Vanguard jazz club in New York. Makeba's South African passport was revoked at the New York consulate when she wanted to go back to attend her mother's funeral in 1960. She became an exile and remained in the United States

Diverse Tuning Systems

Mirroring the extraordinary diversity of languages across Africa (about two thousand) is the diversity of tuning systems. No single tuning standard exists (as it does for European instruments, for example), even for relatively small cultural regions. Tunings are often likened to language dialects, and so different tuning systems (or dialects) may coexist and even be embraced in a single ensemble. Nor is there a concept or standard of absolute pitch as there is for European instruments; the lowest pitch on a kora or xylophone, for example, may not be the same from one instrument to another

Pan-African Festivals

Music, and the arts in general, can be used as a unifying force, bringing together diverse peoples at the national, continental, and diasporic level. At the national level, state-supported performing ensembles bring together artists from different parts of a country and from different ethnic groups to create works and performances that combine traditions in novel ways in the interest of national unity. Examples include Les Ballets Africains (the national ballet of Guinea), which toured the world in the late 1950s and 1960s, and the Ghana Dance Ensemble. Four major international African arts festivals have been mounted since the 1960s, bringing thousands of artists of African heritage from across the globe to Dakar (1966, 2010), Algiers (1969), and Lagos (1977) to showcase the enormous breadth and commonalities of African culture. New African nations sent their national ensembles to represent their newly formed national identities. These festivals raise the issue of the bonds that link people not only within national borders, but also across the continent and across the diaspora

Off-beat phrasing in African music

Off-beat phrasing is a much more widespread phenomenon throughout Africa and its diaspora and could be considered to be a primary driving force in the music. One can probably find examples of off-beat phrasing embedded in most musical examples from Africa. For example, one way of hearing the solo pygmy vocal piece "Hindewhu solo" is with the whistle being consistently played on the off-beats (Figure 2.8.a). Another example is Youssou N'Dour's drummer accenting each of the off-beats in his solo (pulses 2, 3, and 4) on "N'Dobine."

Miriam Makeba's fame

One of Africa's most well-known and revered singers is South African Miriam Makeba, who is so beloved that her nickname is Mama Africa

UNESCO's project with world music

One of UNESCO's early projects was a "collaboration with experts and institutions concerned with music, to prepare a catalog of world music, listing music which is already available in recorded form and music which should be recorded to supplement existing materials." "World music" in this case appears to be UNESCO terminology for what were called traditional, folk, and classical musics, primarily of the non-Western world

Ghanaian drumming at U.S. colleges

Only two years after the Ghana Dance Ensem- ble was founded in 1962, former members began teaching in the U.S. Three brothers were particularly important. Kobla Ladzekpo taught drumming at Columbia University (1964-66), CUNY New Paltz (1967-70), California Institute of the Arts (early 1970s), and for thirty-eight years at UCLA (1976-2014). Alfred Ladzekpo taught at CalArts for forty-one years (1970-2011), and C. K. Ladzekpo has been teaching at the University of California at Berkeley since 1973. Abraham Adzenyah taught at Wesleyan University for forty-six years (1969- 2015). Gideon Foli Alorwoyie has been teaching at the University of North Texas since 1996 and has the distinction of being the first Ghanaian master drummer to become a tenured professor at an American university. Students of these Ghanaian masters have gone on to direct their own ensembles, such as David Locke at Tufts University. New generations of Ghanaian drummers are teaching at Ohio University (Pascal Yao Younge), SUNY Binghamton (Elikem Kwame Nyamuame), and other institutions.188 As a result, Ghanaian drumming ensembles are routinely offered for college credit at dozens of colleges and universities across the country. They are typically paired with dance classes as dance is an essential part of these traditions

Other African music traditions (in addition to Ghanaian drumming) taught at U.S. universities

Other African music traditions are taught at American universities, for example mbira at Duke University and the University of Rochester, Senegalese sabar at MIT, jembe at the University of Rochester, Ugandan music at Middlebury College and Wabash College, and Zimbabwean marimba at Williams College

The kalimba and other mbira groups in America

Outside of universities, Americans were introduced to a smaller version of the mbira, called kalimba, by the group Earth, Wind, and Fire, who used it on their debut album, Earth, Wind, and Fire, in 1971. Music stores began selling kalimbas for the curious musician. Since the 1990s, American mbira students have been sponsoring Zimbabwean mbira and marimba camps and festivals. Former students from the University of Washington started the Zimbabwean Music Festival (Zimfest) in 1993, which now attracts approximately seven hundred people from across North America. Other North American camps and festivals attract up to three hundred and fifty people each year. Zimbabwean Tendai Muparutsa, who directs a marimba ensemble at Williams College, devoted his PhD dissertation to studying the phenomenon of mbira music in North America. He estimates that there are over sixty marimba bands in the Pacific Northwest, including those formed in the annual workshops and camps, and in schools. He also estimates the presence of about thirty mbira groups in the U.S.

Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism can refer to a political movement and also a more general attitude toward cultural unity. As a movement, it can be dated to the First Pan-African Conference that took place in London in 1900, partly as a response to the Berlin Conferences of 1884-85 that partitioned Africa among a number of European powers. A series of Pan-African Congresses followed, all with the significant involvement of African American W.E.B. DuBois: 1919 (Paris), 1921 (London, Paris, Brussels), 1923 (London, Lisbon), 1927 (New York), and 1945 (Manchester, UK). Some of the delegates to the Manchester conference would later lead their countries to independence and assume the presidency: Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), and Hastings Banda (Malawi)

Audience participation in African music

Participation in one form or another is typically expected in musical events, if not required, to make a performance successful. This can take the form of hand clapping, dancing, singing, or otherwise vocally responding. An audience member might also hand cash to a performer (or shower them with it) during a particularly significant or inspired moment. Contrast this with a concert of European classical music, a student recital, or Euro-American church services where the audience (or congregation) is expected to respectfully remain quiet and seated. At such concerts the audience expresses their appreciation at the end by applause. There is no right or wrong here, but just different aesthetics and expectations about participating in musical acts. On the African side, participation by those present makes for a successful event. This concept of performance encourages feelings of community and allows for participants to help shape the event. Most, if not all African music concerts in the United States, for example, typically include the performers, at some point, asking the audience to sing along, clap, or dance. This is a clear example of the importance of participation in African music performance. Not all African music is open like this, however. Hunters' music from Mali, for example, is only for hunters who have proven themselves, and only hunters can dance to certain pieces. Secretive power societies, which often use drumming, may also restrict who can be present and participate. But these are exceptions to a more general rule

Rastafari

Rastafari is a Jamaican belief system dating to 1930 with the coronation of Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen) as emperor of Ethiopia. Ras is an honorific title denoting his royal lineage (as in "Prince"), and so Ras Tafari is a reference to Selassie as emperor of Ethiopia. Selassie was a member of the Solomonic Dynasty, descended from King Solomon of Israel and the Queen of Sheba. Rastafarians accept much of the bible, believing in God (called Jah), Jesus, and his manifestation as Haile Selassie I. The founder of the Rastafari faith in Jamaica was Leonard Howell. Although there is no single doctrine, Rastas use marijuana for spiritual purposes, practice a vegetarian diet, let their hair grow (into dreadlocks), reject materialism and other evils of modern-day society (called Babylon), and call for their repatriation to Ethiopia (Zion). About 1966, the year of Selassie's visit to Jamaica, Bob Marley converted to Rastafari, and his fame in the 1970s helped popularize the beliefs around the world, including the connection between marijuana and reggae

Polyrhythm in African music

Related to the idea of a dialogue is the practice of polyrhythm (two or more different rhythms played or sung simultaneously) and off-beat phrasing (accentuation of the pulses in between beats or of even-numbered beats). Polyrhythm could be accomplished by a single musician whose left and right hands are playing different rhythms (e.g., on a xylophone) or by an ensemble in which different musicians play different rhythms. Polyrhythm is sometimes called cross rhythm and typically involves a three-beat rhythm being played in the space of a two- or four-beat rhythm. Although it is used as a technique in much of Africa south of the Sahara, it is used judiciously, and is more commonly used in pieces in which the primary beats are ternary (i.e., comprised of three, rather than two or four pulses)

Salif Keita birthday and place

Salif Keita was born in 1949 and raised in the village of Djoliba along the Niger River about forty kilometers southwest of the capital city Bamako, in the heart of the original Mande homeland

Influences of salsa

Salsa has roots in the Cuban son, but it developed in the barrios (inner city neighborhoods) of New York City in the 1960s, with significant influences from the varied Latino communities, especially Puerto Rican, that interacted there. The term, used for both the music and dance form, was popularized by New York-based Fania Records, established in 1964. Important salsa artists included Puerto Ricans Willie Colon (trombone, composer, arranger), Héctor Lavoe (vocalist, played by Marc Anthony in the film El Cantante), and Ray Barretto (congas), Panamanian Rubén Blades (vocalist, composer), and the Queen of Salsa Cuban-American Celia Cruz (vocalist), who simply referred to salsa as Cuban music. As with son, all salsa is based on a clave pattern, which can be played or implied. Astute readers may recall from Section III that Cuban son (mistakenly called rumba) and salsa were important influences in Africa, especially in the Congo and Senegal

Santería and African influences

Santería has fused Yoruba orichas (deities) with Catholic saints, and its ceremonies use a family of three batá drums (laid horizontally on the lap, with a head on each side that is played with the hands) that are very similar to those used today in Nigeria. As in Nigeria, each Afro-Cuban oricha has rhythms associated with it

Léopold Senghor's ideas responding to colonialism

Senghor, in his poems and writings, responded to the racism of colonialism by valorizing precisely what European thinkers devalued: emotion and intuition. Senghor claimed rhythm and emotion as defining traits of African culture in contrast to the cold rational thought that he attributed to Europeans. Senghor had his African critics who felt that he was proposing a narrow vision for African cultural expression, even buying into European theories of racial hierarchy and romanticizing a mythological past that may not accurately reflect how Africans move in the modern world. But later critics came to understand Senghor's viewpoints as necessary for their time to instill pride in Africa's past, a past of which European colonialists had no understanding

Miriam Makeba and apartheid

She was an outspoken activist against the South African apartheid system and lived in exile for thirty years until 1990, when Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison as the apartheid era was coming to an end

Son

Son is a musical form that originated in eastern Cuba in the early twentieth century that represents a Spanish and African mix that would soon become the dominant musical genre in Cuba. Classic son consists of an opening song with fixed lyrics followed by a montuno section in which a vocalist improvises and is answered by a choral refrain. Originally accompanied by a guitar and/or tres (small guitar with three sets of double strings), by the 1920s son was being played in Havana by sextets: tres, guitar (or two guitars), string bass, claves, bongos (two small attached drums), and maracas (rattles). Soon a cornet (or trumpet) was added to make a septet, and by the early 1940s a larger ensemble, called conjunto, appeared which added a second (and later third) trumpet, piano, and conga drum. With the addition of timbales, a pair of metal drums mounted on a stand (with a cowbell attached to it) played with long thin sticks, the standard lineup for the later salsa rhythm section was established: conga, bongos, and timbales

African Union (AU)

The OAU was replaced by the African Union (AU) in 2002; by that time twenty-one more members had joined. In 2011, South Sudan became the fifty-fourth AU member

Acceptance of Zimbabwean music in the Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest has become so hospitable to Zimbabwean music that when international star Thomas Mapfumo felt governmental pressures, he moved to Oregon in the early 2000s. Several websites run by American mbira students provide informative overviews of Zimbabwean music in North America

FESMAN (Festival Mondiale des Arts Nègres)

The first of the major Africa arts festivals was called the First World Festival of Negro Arts and was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 under the sponsorship of Senegalese President Senghor. As Senegal is a Francophone country, the festival came to be known by its French acronym, FESMAN (Festival Mondiale des Arts Nègres). Many countries sent their national ensembles, including Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Léopoldville (DRC), Dahomey (Benin), Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Liberia, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, the United Arab Kingdom (Egypt), Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Zambia. Senghor had a vision of African arts that included nations from the African diaspora. Brazil, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago sent their national troupes. The U.S. was especially well represented, as Senghor was a fan of jazz. The renowned Duke Ellington Orchestra appeared, as did the Alvin Ailey Dance Ensemble and the Leonard De Paur Choir (performing spirituals). Poet Langston Hughes and choreographer Katherine Dunham attended. Senghor saw this festival as a vindication of his philosophy, with Africans and peoples of African descent converging on his capital city to present their own versions of Négritude. A colloquium that lasted for the whole first week of the three-week festival drew sixty academics, who presented talks on the theme "The Function and Significance of African Negro Art in the Life of the People and for the People." Guinea boycotted the festival, probably out of political differences and attitudes toward the former colonizer France and philosophical differences about Négritude

The jembe drum

The jembe drum (also spelled djembe), with origins among Mande peoples in Guinea and Mali, is the most widespread and well-known African drum outside Africa. Nowadays, one can find African jembe teachers (mostly from Guinea, Mali, and Senegal) all over the world. There are dozens of African jembe masters living in North America. In contrast to Ghanaian drummers, few jembe players have advanced degrees, and consequently jembe drumming has made few inroads into university ensembles

Spread of the jembe drum outside of Africa

The jembe first left Africa with the world tours of Les Ballets Africains in the 1950s, which became the national ballet of Guinea in 1960. Their tours of the U.S. in 1959 and 1960 made a strong impression, and they performed at a special session in 1967 in the Grand Assembly Hall of the United Nations, which was filmed. Lead drummer Ladji Camara moved to New York in the 1960s and laid the foundation for what would become a vibrant tradition in the U.S. several decades later

FESMAN 3 vs. earlier FESMANs

The last in the series of Pan-African festivals took place again in Dakar in 2010: the Third World Black Arts Festival, also known as FESMAN 3. Comparisons with 1966 are inevitable. The official number of FESMAN 1 performers or groups was fifty- six; that number for FESMAN 3 was 253. Roughly one-quarter of FESMAN 1 performances were by national ensembles; for FESMAN 3 one-quarter of the performances were in the category of urban culture or hip hop. The person coordinating the latter events was Senegalese hip hop pioneer Didier Awadi. National ensembles performing in 2010 were down to eighteen (7 percent of the total performances), suggesting that they had lost the kind of relevance that they had in the immediate post-colonial era. In FESMAN 3 African world music artists were the order of the day: South Africans Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Hugh Masekela, Beninois Angelique Kidjo, Senegalese Youssou N'Dour, Malians Salif Keita, Toumani Diabate, and Habib Koite, Nigerians Seun Kuti (Fela's son) and King Sunny Ade, and Cameroonian Manu Dibango

The mbira in North America

The mbira, an important part of Shona culture for many centuries in what is now Zimbabwe, gained a presence in North America through several means. From 1968-72 Zimbabwean Dumisani Maraire taught at the University of Washington at Seattle as an Artist in Residence, laying the foundation for a strong interest in both mbira and Zimbabwean marimba playing there. Ephat Mujuru came to the University of Washington to study and teach in 1982, continuing the tradition

Mamady Keita

The person largely responsible for the jembe boom in the 1990s is Mamady Keita, former lead drummer with Guinea's second national ballet, Ballet Djoliba. Keita, born in 1950 in a small village in northeastern Guinea, came up through Guinea's system of state-sponsored ensembles and joined his local drumming troupe as a young teen. He joined the new Ballet Djoliba about 1965 and soon took over as lead drummer and then as artistic director. He remained with the ballet until President Sekou Toure's death in 1984 and moved to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire for several years and then to Brussels in 1988. He began releasing jembe ensemble CDs in 1989 and to date has issued many performance and instructional CDs and DVDs, as well as a book about his life and music. He opened up his own drumming school in 1991, which over the next fifteen years would have branches in the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, Israel, and Portugal. Keita would bring students to Guinea for drumming study camps and regularly tour the world performing and teaching

World music

The term "world music" has been used in three related ways: traditional music of the non-Western world (outside of Europe and North America, although including Native American music); any music of the non-Western world, including more contemporary commercial varieties; and any and all of the music in the world. The term "world music" was initially used in print in the 1950s and 1960s to refer to recordings of non-Western music. The establishment of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1945 provided a catalyst for documenting traditional musics around the world. By the 1970s, UNESCO had sponsored five collections of recordings totaling over 125 albums from seventy countries. A distinction can be made between commercial albums, intended for the marketplace, typically with minimal accompanying notes, and ethnographic recordings, primarily intended for libraries, typically with extensive scholarly accompanying notes. Early generations of world music recordings were of the ethnographic variety

Graceland and Ladysmith Black Mambazo

The timing of Graceland was such that it helped inaugurate a world music boom and also propelled Ladysmith Black Mambazo into international fame. Released in 1986, just when the new CD technology was catching on and a year before world music as a marketing category was definitively established, Graceland established the formula of an American or British rock star bringing a non-Western artist or group to broader attention. Peter Gabriel did it with Youssou N'Dour, David Byrne did it with his record label Luaka Bop, which specialized in Brazilian music, and Ry Cooder did it with Malian Ali Farka Toure (their 1994 Talking Timbuktu album won a world music Grammy) and elderly Cuban vocalists (their 1997 Buena Vista Social Club album won a world music Grammy). Ladysmith Black Mambazo subsequently gained a major record label contract, guested on the PBS children's show Sesame Street singing the alphabet behind the muppets and also with Paul Simon, and did television commercials for LifeSavers mints

Cyclic Form in African music

The vast majority of pieces are based on rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic cycles that can be repeated as long as the performer wishes. Cycles are usually multiples of two or three beats long, with six, eight, nine, twelve, and sixteen beats being the most common. The duration of a piece of music is open-ended, drawing on improvisational skills to create variations for each repetition of the cycle. For theoretical purposes, beats can further be subdivided into ternary (three) or binary (two or four) pulses. Beats can often be seen marked off by the feet, arms, or hips in dance. African musicians are typically not concerned with talking about beats and pulses or with defining the beginning of a cycle, so performances may start in any number of places within the cycle (although certain entry points may be favored)

Contemporary music scenes in Africa

The weekly Public Radio International show Afropop Worldwide and its website is the most extensive and reliable venue for information about contemporary music scenes in Africa

Independent factors that effect the amount of African influence in any region of the New World

There are many interdependent factors that affect the nature and degree of African influence in any particular geographic region in the New World: 1. From where in Africa did the slaves come? 2. To what locations were the Africans of various origins taken? 3. What was the chronology of arrival of Africans in any one region (i.e., did the earliest layer come from one part of Africa and later layers from other parts)? 4. How did the mortality rate among Africans affect the need for more slaves, continually infusing African culture? 5. When did slavery and the slave trade end, cutting off further infusion of African culture? 6. What was the ratio of Europeans to Africans— this might have been determined by the kind of plantation and the kind of labor needed (e.g., were there very large communities of Africans with little contact with Europeans)? 7. Which European powers were present and were they Catholic or Protestant?

Filling in the sound spectrum in African music

There is a remarkable preference for adding objects to musical instruments that create rattling, jingling, or buzzing sounds. These devices have the effect of filling in the sound spectrum. On xylophones, the gourd resonators underneath the slats have holes cut in them over which are stretched thin membranes (nowadays cigarette paper or pieces of plastic bags) that cause a buzzing sound like a kazoo. Flexible metal plaques with rings that jingle are placed on jembe drums. Dagbamba bass drums (gungon) have a leather cord stretched across the skin that buzzes like a snare drum, and dancers for pieces like Baamaaya wear ankle jingles. Sometimes drummers or xylophone players wear jingles around their wrists. Mbiras have bottle caps attached to the soundboard so that they rattle when the instrument is played. Gourd rattles, either with seeds inside (Shona hosho) or beads netted around the outside (Ewe axatse), are often essential parts of ensembles, adding a broad percussive swash of the sound spectrum. African musicians consider these added sounds to be a fundamental aspect of their sound ideal. Contrast this with a Western classical orchestra in which each instrumentalist strives to eliminate any buzzing or other non-pitched sounds, which are considered unwanted noise. Again, these are different aesthetic preferences, with no right or wrong. The term noise usually has negative associations, but in some contexts it can be turned around to have positive associations, as in "Bring the Noise," a song by the rap group Public Enemy or Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, a Broadway musical featuring tap dancer Savion Glover

Call and response in African music

There is a widespread preference for musical dialogue, conversation, or response (sometimes referred to as call and response). This can be achieved by a solo performer (as in a conversation between the two hands of a xylophonist, or between the singing and blowing into a whistle on the off-beats by a Central African vocalist) or in a group performance, wherein a leader might receive regular responses from a single person or group. Several kinds of conversation might take place simultaneously, as among different drums playing short patterns that interlock with each other in an ensemble or in the vocal polyphony of forest peoples. Many genres require responders, people who support the soloist with responding melodies or spoken interjections. Responding parts can be in a subordinate relationship in support of the soloist or can be on a more equal footing. In Fela's "Zombie," for example, Fela is clearly the leader, and the chorus is responding to him, although in the section that starts "Attention!" there appears to be a three-way conversation among Fela, the chorus, and the horn section, each with equal footing

Art festivals and African unity

Three arts festivals in the early years of this post-colonial period (held in 1966, 1969, and 1977) reflected the optimism and pride of this new era, showcasing the cultural wealth of the continent. In the early 1960s, the new nations were hard at work in constructing national unity and their own identities, part of which involved forming national performing arts ensembles. These ensembles helped to bring some sort of unity to nations that were often formed from arbitrary boundaries, encompassing diverse ethnic and linguistic groups that sometimes had little in common. It was largely these kinds of ensembles that were sent to the arts festivals

First Pan-African Cultural Festival

Three years later Algeria hosted the First Pan-African Cultural Festival in its capital Algiers, this time using the term "Pan-African" rather than Negro. A daily Symposium on African Culture was the occasion for many speakers to denounce Senghor's idea of Négritude. One speaker from Sudan rejected the "negativism of racial philosophies which only 'serve the interests of the colonialists who have worked for two centuries to characterize people of different continents according to racial criteria.'" Another from Benin, proposed that Négritude rehashes the past and "impedes progress by perpetuating the myth of Negro irrationality and neglecting to provide practical solutions to Africa's most pressing problems." Medals were awarded for the best performances, and the contrast between Senegal, with its highly literate president Senghor, and Guinea, with its great patron of music president Toure, could not have been more stark. Senegal placed first in drama, a highly literate field, and Guinea was the overall winner, with a gold medal for its national ballet and four silver medals: drama, traditional instrumental music, modern instrumental music, and choral and solo singing. This appeared to sustain one of the critiques of Négritude—that it was an elite literary style removed from the experiences of the masses. Drumming and dancing, traditional and modern music, and choral and solo singing were all art forms that could be appreciated by the general population without requiring literacy in a European language

Improvisation in African music

Virtually all African music involves some kind of improvisation, if only at the minimal level of deciding during the course of a performance how long it should last. The key point about improvisation is that significant creative decisions are made while the performance is in progress. The notion of a fixed piece of music, with a definitive beginning and end and instructions on exactly what notes to play throughout, as in Western classical music, is virtually unknown. Even if the notes are fixed, with little leeway for the performer, as we saw in Section II with amadinda music, performers can still decide on the tempo and how long to play the piece. The norm in African music is for most performers to create variations, within certain well defined boundaries, to make the music live and breathe. Some instruments have less freedom. For instance, the gankogui (double bell) in an Ewe drum ensemble sets the timeline to which all of the other drums relate, and it should hold its pattern steady. But the other members in the ensemble have the freedom to create variations in the course of a performance. The lead atsimevu drummer has the greatest freedom, deciding how to interact with singers, dancers, and the other participants, as well as shaping the whole performance

The slave trade as spreading African culture

When Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the late fifteenth century, the course of the Americas changed dramatically. A flood of Europeans came in, bringing Africans in great numbers to be used as slaves. Much of Central and South America was colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese, hence the term Latin America. The Caribbean islands were colonized by the French, British, Spanish, and Dutch, and different islands show different kinds of European influences. The North American continent received French, British, and Spanish influences in varying degrees, but it eventually became a British colony and absorbed much cultural influence from the British Isles. All of the Americas have absorbed a great deal of African influence as a result of the Atlantic slave trade, and it is instructive to compare how African influence took root in different cultural and geographical contexts throughout the Americas. The most reliable research indicates that approximately 12.5 million Africans embarked onto slave ships and about 10.7 million Africans disembarked in the Americas as slaves from the 1500s to the 1800s (many slaves did not survive the journey)

World music as a category in the Grammy awards

Within five years of the debut of the new marketing category, the U.S. Grammy Foundation established a World Music Grammy category (beginning in 1992). By 2004, the category was big and confusing enough that a second category was inaugurated, distinguishing "traditional" from "contemporary." In a major Grammy restructuring, the two categories were shrunk back to one in 2012