AFRO-LATIN AMERICAN

AND POPULAR MUSIC

 MUSIC OF AFRICA

• Music has always been an important part in the

daily life of the African.
• Singing, dancing, hand clapping and the beating
of drums are essential to many African
ceremonies, including those for birth, death,
initiation, marriage, and funerals.
• Music and dance are also important to religious
expression and political events
• However, because of its wide influences on global
music that has permeated contemporary
American, Latin American, and European styles,
there has been a growing interest in its own
cultural heritage and musical sources.
• Of particular subjects of researches are its
rhythmic structures and spiritual characteristics
that have led to the birth of jazz forms.
 TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF AFRICA
• African traditional music is largely functional in nature,
used primarily in ceremonial rites, such as birth, death,
marriage, succession, worship, and spirit invocations.
• Other are work related or social in nature, while many
traditional societies view their music a entertainment.
• It has a basically interlocking structural format, due
mainly to its overlapping and dense textural
characteristics as well as its rhythmic complexity. Its
many sources o stylistic influence have produced
varied characteristics and genres.
 Some Types of African Music
• Afrobeat - is a term used to describe the fusion f West African with black
American music.
• Apala (Akpala) - is a musical genre from Nigeria in the Yoruba tribal style
to wake up the worshippers after fasting during the Muslim holy feast of
Ramadan. Percussion instrumentation includes the rattle (sekere), thumb
piano (agidigbo), bell (agogo), and two or three talking drums.
• Axe - is a popular musical genre from Salvador, Bahia, and Brazil. It fuses
the AfroCaribbean styles of the marcha, reggae, and calypso.
• Jit - is a hard and fast percussive Zimbabwean dance music played on
drums with guitar accompaniment, influenced by mbira-based guitar
styles.
• Jive - is a popular form of South African music featuring a lively and
uninhibited variation of the jitterbug, a form of swing dance.
• Juju - is a popular music style from Nigeria that relies on the
traditional Yoruba rhythms, where the instruments in Juju are
more Western in origin. A drum kit, keyboard, pedal steel
guitar, and accordion are used along with the traditional dun-
dun (talking drum or squeeze drum).
• Kwassa Kwassa - is a dance style begun in Zaire n the late
1980’s, popularized by Kanda Bongo Man. In this dance style,
the hips move back and forth while the arms move following
he hips.
• Marabi - is a South African three-chord township music of
the 1930s-1960s which evolved into African Jazz. Possessing a
keyboard style combining American jazz, ragtime and blues
with African roots, it is characterized by simple chords in
varying vamping patterns and repetitive harmony over an
extended period of time to allow the dancers more time on
the dance floor.
LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC INFLUENCED
BY AFRICAN MUSIC
• Reggae - is a Jamaican sound dominated by bass guitar and drums. It
refers to a particular music style that was strongly influenced by
traditional mento and calypso music, as well as American jazz, and rhythm
and blues. The most recognizable musical elements of reggae are its
offbeat rhythm and staccato chords.
• Salsa music is Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Colombian dance music. It
comprises various musical genres including the Cuban son montuno,
guaracha,
chachacha, mambo and bolero.
• Samba - is the basic underlying rhythm that typifies most Brazilian music.
It is a lively and rhythmical dance and music with three steps to every bar,
making the Samba feel like a timed dance. There is a set of dances—rather
than a single dance—that define the Samba dancing scene in Brazil. Thus,
no one dance can be claimed with certainty as the “original” Samba style
• Soca - is a modern Trinidadian and Tobago pop music
combining “soul” and “calypso” music.
• Were - This is Muslim music performed often as a wake-up
call for early breakfast and prayers during Ramadan
celebrations. Relying on pre-arranged music, it fuses the
African and European music styles with particular usage of the
natural harmonic series.
• Zouk - is fast, carnival-like hythmic music, from the Creole
slang word for ‘party,’ originating in the Carribean Islands of
Guadaloupe and Martinique and popularized in the 1980’s. It
has a pulsating beat supplied by the gwo ka and
tambour bele drums, a tibwa rhythmic pattern played on the
rim of the snare drum and its hi-hat, rhythm guitar, a horn
section, and keyboard synthesizers.
 VOCAL FORMS OF AFRICAN MUSIC
• Maracatu first surfaced in the African state of Pernambuco,
combining the strong rhythms of African percussion instruments
with Portuguese melodies. The maracatu groups were
called“nacoes” (nations) who paraded with a drumming ensemble
numbering up to 100, accompanied by a singer, chorus, and a
coterie of dancers.
• The Maracatu uses mostly percussion instruments such as the
alfaia, tarol and caixa-deguerra, gongue, agbe, and miniero. The
alfaia is a large wooden drum that is rope-tuned, complemented by
the tarol which is a shallow snare drum and the caixa-de-guerra
which is a war-like snare. Providing the clanging sound is the
gongue, a metal cowbell. The shakers are represented by the agbe,
a gourd shaker covered by beads, and the miniero or ganza, a metal
cylindrical shaker filled with metal shot or small dried seeds called
“Lagrima fre Nossa Senhora.”
• Blues - The blues is a musical form of the late 19th
century that has had deep roots in African American
communities.
• These communities are located in the so-called
“Deep South” of the United States.
• The slaves and their descendants used to sing as they
worked in the cotton and vegetable fields.
• The notes of the blues create an expressive and
soulful sound.
• The feelings that are evoked are normally associated
with slight degrees of misfortune, lost love,
frustration, or loneliness. From ecstatic joy to deep
sadness, the blues can communicate various
emotions more effectively than other musical forms.
• Noted performers of the Rhythm and Blues
genre are Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab
Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee
Hooker; as well as B.B. King, Bo Diddley,
Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood,
Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Traveler, Jimmie
Vaughan, and Jeff Baxter. Examples of blues
music are the following: Early Mornin’, A
House is Not a Home and Billie’s Blues
• Soul - Soul music was a popular music genre of the 1950’s and 1960’s. It
originated in the United States. It combines elements of African-American
gospel music, rhythm and blues, and often jazz. The catchy rhythms are
accompanied by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves which are
among its important features. Other characteristics include “call and
response” between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense
and powerful vocal sound.
• Some important innovators whose recordings in the 1950s contributed to
the emergence of soul music included Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, and
Etta James. Ray Charles and Little Richard (who inspired Otis Redding) and
James Brown were equally influential. Brown was known as the
“Godfather of Soul,” while Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson are also often
acknowledged as “soul forefathers.” Examples of soul music are the
following:
• Ain’t No Mountain
High Enough, Ben, All I Could Do is
Cry, Soul to Soul, and Becha by Golly,
Wow.
• Spiritual
The term spiritual, normally associated with a deeply religious
person, refers here to a Negro spiritual, a song form by African
migrants to America who became enslaved by its white
communities. This musical form became their outlet to vent
their loneliness and anger, and is a result of the interaction of
music and religion from Africa with that of America. The texts
are mainly religious, sometimes taken from psalms of Biblical
passages, while the music utilizes deep bass voices. The vocal
inflections, Negro accents, and dramatic dynamic changes add
to the musical interest and effectiveness of the performance.
Examples of spiritual music are the following: We are Climbing
Jacob’s Ladder, Rock
My Soul, When the Saints Go Marching In, and Peace Be Still.
• Call and Response
The call and response method is a succession of two
distinct musical phrases usually rendered by different
musicians, where the second phrase acts as a direct
commentary on or response to the first. Much like
the question and answer sequence in human
communication, it also forms a strong resemblance
to the verse-chorus form in many vocal
compositions. Examples of call and response songs
are the following: Mannish
Boy, one of the signature songs by Muddy Waters;
and School Day - Ring, Ring Goes the
Bell by Chuck Berry.