A Little Oor-Afrikaanse Musiek (A Little About African Music)

Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions.

North Africa is the seat of the Mediterranean culture that built Egypt and Carthage before being ruled successively by Greeks, Romans and Goths and then becoming the Maghreb of the Arab world. Like the musical genres of the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa, its music has close ties with Middle Eastern music.

East Africa and the offshore islands in the Indian Ocean have been slightly influenced by Arabic music and also by the music of India, Indonesia and Polynesia. However, the region's musical traditions are primarily close to that of the sub-Saharan Niger Congo-speaking peoples.

Southern, Central and West Africa are similarly in the broad sub-Saharan musical tradition, but draw their influences from Western Europe and North America.

The music and dance forms of the African diaspora, including African American music and many Caribbean and Latin American music genres like rumba and salsa, were founded to varying degrees on the music of African slaves, which has in turn influenced African popular music.

African popular music, is also vast and varied. Many genres of pop music like blues, jazz, salsa and rumba derive themselves from African musical traditions. These styles have all borrowed from African rhythms and sounds, brought over the Atlantic ocean by slaves. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, rhythm and blues.

Likewise, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music. African music is often determined by the region that it is practiced in.

As the rise of rock'n'roll music is often credited as having begun with 1940s blues music, and with so many genres having branched off from rock - the myriad subgenres of heavy metal, punk rock, pop music and many more - it can said that African music has been at the root of a very significant portion of all contemporary music.

Here is a lively and cheerful pop song by a South African band, Dr. Victor and the Rasta Rebels, "Kalimba" (which is the name of an African instrument with metal keys attached to the top to produce different notes. It is also known as the African thumb piano). Note the repeated melodic lines throughout the song:



Some of your parents may know this other catchy song by British singer Eddy Grant "Gimme Hope Jo'anna", which adopted the African musical style. It also has repeating melodies and actually camouflages a political situation back then in Africa; I'll leave you to listen and find out: