AFRI-INLEO INITIATIVE 26: THE EVOLUTION OF AFRICAN MUSIC STYLE 🎵
If there is actually something I really admire so much about African music, I must confess that it is the style of the music and the ability of the music to be able to express our cultural roots. Generally I am not talking about Nigeria music, but generally the African music. It is always embedded in our culture, our traditions and also storytelling also. Looking at the years back, I will say the African music have really evolved and have becomed an external influences all around the world.
Talking about the historical roots of the African music, I will say it first started from the communal activity we all know it to be then which is always carrying along our daily life and even spiritual practice. Music generally in Africa is different from other continent like Asia or Europe. It always have a way of transferring value to our generations and making use of instruments like drums, our flutes and many more.
The first African music was first majorly around our daily activities like the culture of farming, of hunting ans majorly about celebration. All these elements are actually fundamental that helps to go a long way in shaping the African music and helps to showcase the traditional practices the most especially as we all know it the more.
I will also like to talk about some external factors or influences that most of the time affect the African music. The first is the slave trade and most especially the diaspora. I will like to say that the tracing back of the Africa history is the fact that we were once engaging in slave trade which displaces a whole lot of Africans in the early stage. This facilitate the African musical traditions that we know it to be most especially the genres like the reggae and the samba.
The second one is the aspect of colonisation and the missionary influence. We were once colonised by the European people and so they not only colonised us with their rules but even with their music and that is one of the ways western musical instrument gained massive ground in the African settings. That is why we are having music like the hymns, choral music and also even the spiritual music in Africa. This helps to make sure that African rhythms are blended together with the structures.
Also even the technological Advancements and globalisation also. We now have tools that helps in the aspect of the recording and broadcasting. In fact this goes a long way to help we the African to be able to document every of the work that we will be doing in terms of music. We now have like YouTube, Spotify and even tiktok. All these things goes a long way to help shape the popularity of the Africa music and even our African musicians. These all go a long way to help you to shape us a lot.
Everything have been digitalised including the musical world also. We now even also have innovation in the production world also. In fact this is the aspect I really fancied a lot. There have been massive advances in the way we Africa produced music as compared to before. Everything I have said goes a long way to have a massive cultural and social impact on us as African beyond we can ever imagine of and I am so sure that in due season, it will continue to get better and better.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
The innovation behind the creation of the electric drum is what I fancied most among all the other technological improvements in African music.
This is a great post. African music has made such a huge contribution to music everywhere and continues to do so into the future. I play old style banjo which is an instrument that emerged in North America from the slave trade. It was only once I got the rhythm of songs that I could figure out how to play them. That rhythm concept in old style banjo is uniquely African. Bluegrass may be different, but I'm not sure.
Many of the old style banjo songs are about social injustice, hardship, and clinging to a higher power. I just got up from banjo practice and this post was here- haha!