bamboo fl utes are little diff erent from modern metal fl utes. In
the Americas fl utes were oft en fashioned of cedar and are still
used by Native American tribes to play haunting melodies.
Also used in some parts of the world were instruments made
of reeds and similar materials. Th ese instruments evolved into
modern-day clarinets, oboes, and other reed instruments.
Music in the ancient world had purposes that are little
diff erent from its purposes in modern life. Farmers—and
probably slaves as well—chanted songs to make their la-
bor lighter and to make the time pass. Soldiers used music
in marching as well as to celebrate military victories. Music
was used during festivals, parades, and celebrations and to
accompany theatrical presentations, such as mimes. In the
ancient world, epic poems, legends, and tales were oft en sung
or chanted to make them more memorable not only for the
audience but for the poet or storyteller as well. Music also
played a key role in religious rituals. Like modern people, the
ancients believed that music was a way to honor or appease
the gods and to take part in the divine spark that gave people
life. Music has no tangible existence; it disappears as soon as
it is produced.
AFRICA
BY DAVID OTIENO AKOMBO
Th roughout Africa vocal music has been sung for millennia.
All cultures in Africa have used vocal music, believing that
vocalization of thought through some musical medium such
as song and chant is eff ective in reaching out to the super-
natural deities ruling the land. Th ese ancient beliefs are sup-
por ted by contemporar y production of voca l music in various
cultural settings.
Even though vocal music is a distinctively older genre in
the African musical repertory, compared with other genres of
instrumental music and declamatory dirges (songs of mourn-
ing) such as those performed by griots (oral historians who
recount cultural tradition through song), a systematic study
of the variety of its forms has lagged for two reasons. One is
that the use of vocal music among Africans is still an area
of esoteric knowledge. Another is that the ownership of vo-
cal music is communal rather than individual. For example,
when a work song is composed, the composer delegates the
work to the community, and the community owns it as they
sing it within the context of their social events. When an
individual musician composes a puberty song to be sung at
ritual ceremonies such as Orunyege, a tribal courtship dance
of the Nyoro (also called Banyoro, Bunyoro, or Kitara) people
of western Uganda, the community and the new initiates will
eventually claim ownership of both the song and the dance.
Th is sense of collective ownership of song and dance artifacts
makes it diffi cult for the work of art to remain purely a solo
piece, for it is transformed into a group performance intended
as a collective social phenomenon.
Classifi cation of African musical instruments is generally
fraught with diffi culty. According to one widely accepted
classifi cation of musical instruments, there are four broad
categories of instruments: membranophones, which pro-
duce sound by a vibrating membrane; idiophones, which
produce sound by vibrating themselves; chordophones,
which produce sound by vibrating strings; and aerophones,
which produce sound by vibrating columns of air.
It has been theorized that the possible sequence of in-
strumental evolution in Africa can be traced from drums
to pipes to strings. Since rhythm antedates melody, Africa’s
oldest instruments are hypothesized to have been percus-
sive—specifi cally, hands and feet used to create rhythm.
Other percussion instruments included pieces of wood or
even skulls of animals. Th e drum has been the instrument
of religious ritual among many African peoples from prehis-
toric to present times. Later ancient Africans added pipes,
such as bamboo woods and horns that easily transformed
into the aerophones. Th e chordophones, similar to lyres, were
also created from various artifacts, such as the hunting bows
of the Kamba people of Kenya.
Geography infl uenced the origins of ancient African mu-
sical instruments. For instance, people living in sub-Saharan
Africa migrated slowly, with strong and weak tribes scram-
bling for richer valleys. Th ese migratory patterns reshaped
the musical instruments found in sub-Saharan Africa in
three ways: Vegetation from swamps and forested areas gave
rise to large membranophones and idiophones, aerophones
such as reeds were found mainly in the semiarid regions, and
unaccompanied choral singing was established mainly in
open grassland.
Th e African scales (series of notes diff ering in pitch,
varying with the frequency of vibration) and modes (set
patterns of notes played over an octave using the white keys
of a keyboard) took centuries to develop. It is diffi cult to
determine how many modes actually exist, since the mu-
sic is functional as opposed to contemplative, like that of
Western forms. Th e musical scales and modes of African
music are based mainly on impassioned speech and as such
have never been fully conventionalized. In essence, musical
melody is subordinated to some form of meaningful tone
by following the natural infl ection of speech within the
language. Th is is because most African languages are tonal;
hence, the base meaning of the words will change accord-
ing to the intonation, the rise and fall of the voice’s pitch.
As such, these idiosyncratic attributes have infl uenced the
way Africans view their scales and modes and have made it
diffi cult to point to the exact tonal and modal characteris-
tics of African music.
Th ese African modes can also be heard when a drum-
mer plays in the speech mode by reproducing the tonal and
rhythmic patterns of speech on the drums. Th is type of trans-
fer is drawn from ritual, work, or play, and so the modes are
externally motivated. Th is is, in a sense, contrary to the con-
ventional Western staff transcriptions, because the African
scales diff er in microtones and the pitch classifi cations are
completely dissimilar.music and musical instruments: Africa 763