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Traditional African Music was used to for many reasons. It was used for entertainment purposes, as part of dances, for plays, religious ceremonies and magic rituals. It was also used for marking events such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death. For almost every occasion in life, there is a song that symbolizes it, and it is usually accompanied by a dance. African music is sort of like a language on its own, with each word having a different meaning depending on the pitch. Traditional Sub-Saharan music is polyrhythmic; it has two or more interlocking patterns that share a time cycle. Most of the time, a couple of rhythmic patterns are played at the same time, and continuously repeated over and over, each instrument then goes on in its own rhythmic way. Percussion is created mainly from drums, rattles, xylophones, and a lot of the times, from the human body. In African music, a method of call and response is used very often. This is when the performer makes up a vocal call with the group. The group replies with a simple response. The main performer will sometimes sing even before the group is done with their part, thereby creating an overlap of sounds. The singers vary in the type of sounds they make when they sing. They usually whisper, grunt, hum, shout, imitate animal noises, and sometimes will even yodel. With all these types of noises, it can be seen that traditional African music contains a variety of tone colors. In Africa, ensembles can be as small as two people, and can go up to and sometimes more than twenty players. They would usually consist of instruments of either indefinite pitch such as bells, rattles, and log drums; or definite pitch instruments such as flutes, trumpets, and xylophones. Sometimes they would be a combination of both. In Africa, the most common instruments are idiophones such as bells, rattles, and scrapers.
Approximate Word count = 1255
Approximate Pages = 5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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