African music

Each of these traditions deserves its own page, but until an editor with expertise in these traditions arrives to give them the coverage they deserve, they will be briefly discussed here with external sources given for further reading.

Equipentatonic tunings

Many cultures use an equipentatonic tuning:

• The Lobi, Dagarti and Senufo people of Burkina Faso, northern Ghana and southern Mali. Instruments: gyil (a type of marimba), hand drums and ideophones (bells and scrapers). Vocals tend to be in unison or octaves. Well-known musicians/groups are Neba Solo, Kakraba Lobi, and Farafina.

• Uganda also has equipentatonic music. Their marimba is called the amadinda. They also play harps.

Equiheptatonic tunings

Many cultures use an equiheptatonic tuning:

• The Mande peoples of West Africa (Guinea, Senegal, Gambia and Mali, also neighboring countries) play balafon, kora, djembe, dundun and other instruments. Vocals traditionally tend to be in unison or octaves. The balafon is traditionally tuned near 7edo. The kora is not tuned near 7edo, even though the balafon and the kora share the same repertoire and even play together sometimes. The kora is traditionally tuned to one of several kora tunings, which are mostly in 5-limit JI. In modern times, the balafon and kora are often tuned to 12edo, to be in tune with western instruments. Well-known pop musicians are Baba Maal, Salif Keita, and Oumou Sangare. Well-known kora players are Jali Musa Jawara and Toumani Diabate.

• The Shona people of Zimbabwe and neighboring countries play the re-tuneable mbira. Vocals tend to harmonize only in 4ths, 5ths and octaves. The mbira seems to have been traditionally tuned near 7edo. In modern times, it's often tuned to 12edo. Paul Berliner's book "The Soul of the Mbira" is a good resource for tuning information. Well-known Shona musicians that use the mbira include Thomas Mapfumo and Stella Chiweshe.

• The Chopi people of Mozambique play large marimba ensembles spanning 4 octaves. Their marimba, called the timbila, is tuned roughly equiheptatonic. The timbila tuning of the Mavila village creates an approximate soft-of-basic 2L5s scale. The Mavila temperament gets its name from this village.

Other tunings

• The Wagogo people of central Tanzania use a pentatonic scale 1/1 - 9/8 - 5/4 - 3/2 - 7/4 (harmonics 5 through 10, similar to 5afdo) in all their songs and all their instruments. Instruments include: kalimba, harp, fiddle, marimba, hand drum. Vocals tend to have parallel harmonies, singing at a distance of a penta-third. Hukwe Zawose is a well-known Wagogo musician.

• In eastern Uganda, the Gwere use for their six-string harp (called tongoli) a tetratonic scale in which all the intervals are nearly equal, which to Western ears sounds like a chain of minor thirds. Though not the same thing, this is quite close to both 4edo and kleismic[4].

• Some Thembu Xhosa women of South Africa have a low, rhythmic style of timbrally complex throat-singing, incorporating overtone singing within its technique, that is called umngqokolo. It is often accompanied by call-and-response vocals and complicated polyrhythms.

• In South Africa, the San use a tetratonic scale which could be approximated by 1L 3s (a MOS scale).

• Madagascar was colonized by Indonesians long ago, and the music is a mixture of African and Indonesian. Tarika Sammy is a well-known group.

• An essential family of musical cultures of Africa is the Arabic one, for which there is a separate page.

External links

• Baka Pygmies vocal polyphony

• Facebook thread in the MMTT group about wagogo music, includes pre-Hukwe-Zawose recordings

See also

• Rick Tagawa