Exploring African Music: Unity, Diversity, Diaspora (Paperback)

PART I: BACKGROUND, THEMES, AND VARIATIONS

CHAPTER ONE: The African Interweave of Song, Dance, and Rhythm

• Personality Portrait: Lisa Beckley-Roberts and the African Caribbean Dance Theatre in Tallahassee, FL
• Musical "Africanisms," musical "memes": The fundamentals and principles of African music
• About time: Pulse, polyrhythm, cross-rhythm, timelines
• "Africans have no word for rhythm. Indeed they have no word for music!"
• Drum culture, dance culture: Understanding the ngoma aesthetic
• Musicultural Portrait: The bira ensemble of Zimbabwe

CHAPTER TWO: Music and social life in Africa

• Personality Portrait: Oumou Sangare and the divas of Mali
• Ritual, life cycles, and performance
• Music and spirituality in African communities
• Music, teachers, and disciples
• Music, gender, and divisions of labor in Africa
• Musicultural Portrait: Pygmy social structure and sound structure

CHAPTER THREE: Drums and Beyond: A Panorama of African Musical Instruments

• Personality Portrait: Phillipo Barabara, a djembe drum-maker from Mali
• Carving wood, cutting skin, forging iron: The art and craft of African musical instruments
• "When I hear those drums, I just drop everything…!"
• Ideophones: Xylophones, gourds, rattles, bells
• Wind-blown instruments and ensembles
• Strings ancient and modern
• Human voices and harmonies
• Musicultural Portrait: Por Por ‘honk horn’ taxi and bus music of Ghana

CHAPTER FOUR: Song Craft, Composition, and Creativity

• Personality Portrait: Doudou Ndiaye Rose, percussion orchestra master of Senegal
• The role of the word-artisan in African music
• Poetics and song
• Praise & epic forms
• Community and virtuosity
• Musicultural Portrait: The Sunjiata epic tradition, ancient and modern

PART II: HISTORICAL AND STYLISTIC OVERVIEW OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT

CHAPTER FIVE: Historical Overview

• Personality Portrait: Kwabena Nketia, Ghanaian scholar
• Contextualizing African music in history and geography
• African language groups, music, and migrations
• Musicultural Portrait: San-Kung! ancestral harmonies and harmonics from South Africa

CHAPTER SIX: Stylistic Overview: Northern Africa

• Personality Portrait: Cheb Khaled of Algeria
• The Sudanic region
• Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt
• Musicultural Portrait: The nomadic Tuareg across national borders

CHAPTER SEVEN: Stylistic Overview of the African Continent: Western Africa

• Personality Portrait: Koo Nimo and the palmwine tradition
• The Senegambia region
• Ghana and Nigeria
• Musicultural Portrait: The Anlo-Ewe Ghanaian drum ensemble

CHAPTER EIGHT: Southern Africa

• Personality Portrait: Thomas Mapfumo of Zimbabwe
• Angola and Mozambique
• Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa
• Musicultural Portrait: String musics of Madagascar

CHAPTER NINE: Central Africa and Eastern Africa

• Personality Portrait: Damascus Kafumbe and the court music of the Bagandan kabaka
• The Congo region
• Ethiopia and Somalia
• Kenya and Tanzania
• Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi
• Zambia and Malawi
• Musicultural Portrait: The Somalian wedding music scene

PART III: MUSIC AND THE BLACK ATLANTIC

• Personality Portrait: Bessie Smith’s blues
• Music and the ravages of the slave trade
• Africa and the blues
• African music and faith in the New World
• Communal musical labor and spirituals
• Musicultural Portrait: Santeria and candomble in New Orleans, New York, Cuba, and Brazil

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The African Musical Diaspora in North America

• Personality Portrait: James Brown
• Ragtime, Dixieland, Big Band
• Bop, Cool, Crossover, Free Jazz
• R&B, Soul, Funk
• Rap & Hip Hop
• Musicultural Portrait: The Detroit sound, from Motown to Techno

CHAPTER TWELVE: The African Musical Diapora in Latin America and the Caribbean

• Personality Portrait: Bob Marley of Jamaica
• The African musical diaspora in South America: Peru and Ecuador
• The African musical diaspora in South America: Brazil
• The African musical diaspora in the Caribbean
• African musics of Haiti
• African musics of Jamaica
• African musics of Trinidad
• African musics of Cuba
• Musicultural Portrait: The Cuban / Puerto Rican / Miami / New York Salsa scene

PART IV: TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN THE GLOBAL AFRICAN SOUNDCAPE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ‘Music is the Weapon!’: African Music, Colonial Legacies and Resistance to Disproportionate Power

• Personality Portrait: Fela Anikulapo Kuti of Nigeria
• The role of music under colonial rule in the 20^th century
• African music and the role of dissent
• The reach of government and music policy
• Music and independence movements
• Music and the struggle for gender equality
• Musicultural Portrait: South African choir music and the struggle for freedom

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: African Music and the World Faiths

• Personality Portrait: Boniface Muganga and Kenya’s Muungano National Choir
• Musical continuity & diversity in the Islamic African diaspora
• The cross & the hymnal: Missionaries, musical theology & African responses
• Western-influenced sacred music composition
• Musicultural Portrait: Maulid celebrations in South African Sufi communities

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Global Reach of African Popular Music

• Personality Portrait: The guitar artistry of James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix
• Distinctions and definitions of "the popular" in African musics
• The media, recording studios and African popular music worldwide
• The role and history of the guitar in Africa
• African popular music and the immigrant experience in Europe
• Musicultural Portrait: The South African local-global studio connection,

from Wimowet to Graceland

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Musical Diaspora Returns to the Motherland

• Personality Portrait: Louis Armstrong in Ghana
• The spread of calypsos, ‘blackface,’ gospel, and jazz throughout Africa in the years prior to World War II
• The West African highlife brass band scene
• Soul and reggae in the latter half of the 20^th century
• The phenomenal rise of Congolese popular music
• Electric griots: Hip hop and rap take the microphone
• Musicultural Portrait: The kwaito electronica dance scene in South Africa

CONCLUSION: Unity and Diversity in African Music Cultures, Revisited

SUPPLEMENTAL STUDY MATERIALS: THE TANZANIAN MUSICAL MOSAIC IN THE 21^ST CENTURY

• Musical labor and competitive ngoma in western Tanzania

Zilizopendwa ("That which is loved"): Dance band music and popular nostalgia

Taarab: An Islamic ‘secular’ genre from the Swahili coastal region

Bongo Flava: Rap and hip hop in urban Mwanza and Dar Es Salaam

Saida Karoli and her popular musical enactment of ‘traditional modernity’

APPENDICES

A. Glossary

B. Bibliography

C. Discography

D. Filmography

E. Notes on the Audio Examples [if a CD is included]

F. Index