Music Of Africa
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Music Of Africa
Given the vastness of the African continent, its music is diverse, with regions and nations having many distinct musical traditions. African music includes the genres amapiano, Jùjú, Fuji, Afrobeat, Highlife, Makossa, Kizomba, and others. The music and dance of the African diaspora, formed to varying degrees on African musical traditions, include American music like Dixieland jazz, blues, jazz, and many Caribbean genres, such as calypso (see kaiso) and soca. Latin American music genres such as cumbia, conga, rumba, son cubano, salsa music, bomba, samba and zouk were founded on the music of enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music. Like the music of Asia, India and the Middle East, it is a highly rhythmic music. The complex rhythmic patterns often involving one rhythm played against another to create a polyrhythm. The most common polyrhythm plays three beats on top of two, like a triplet played against straight notes. Sub-Saharan African mus ...
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Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, behind Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, tribalism, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Afr ...
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Calypso Music
Calypso is a style of Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago during the early to the mid-19th century and spread to the rest of the Caribbean Antilles and Venezuela by the mid-20th century. Its rhythms can be traced back to West African Kaiso and the arrival of French planters and their slaves from the French Antilles in the 18th century. It is characterized by highly rhythmic and harmonic vocals, and was historically most often sung in a French creole and led by a griot. As calypso developed, the role of the griot became known as a ''chantuelle'' and eventually, ''calypsonian''. As English replaced "patois" (Antillean creole) as the dominant language, calypso migrated into English, and in so doing it attracted more attention from the government. It allowed the masses to challenge the doings of the unelected Governor and Legislative Council, and the elected town councils of Port of Spain and San Fernando. Calypso continued to play an important role in politic ...
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African Popular Music
African popular music (also styled Afropop, Afro-pop or Afro pop), like African traditional music, is vast and varied. Most contemporary genres of African popular music build on cross-pollination with western popular music. Many genres of popular music like blues, jazz, afrobeats, salsa, zouk, and rumba derive to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by enslaved Africans. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, and rhythm and blues. Likewise, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music. The term does not refer to a specific style or sound but is used as a general term for African popular music. Influence of Afro-Cuban music Cuban music has been popular in Sub-Saharan Africa since the mid-twentieth century. It was Cuban music, more than any other, that provided the initial template for Afropop. To the Africans, ...
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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa that had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders,Thornton, p. 112. while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; Europeans gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade (which was prior to the widespread availability of quini ...
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Zouk (musical Movement)
Zouk is a musical movement pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. It was originally characterized by a fast tempo (120–145 bpm), a percussion-driven rhythm and a loud horn section. The fast zouk béton of Martinique and Guadeloupe faded away during the 1980s. Musicians from Martinique and Guadeloupe added MIDI instrumentation to their compas style, which developed into zouk-love. Zouk-love is effectively the French Lesser Antilles' compas.Popular Musics of the Non Western World. Peter Manuel, New York Oxford University Press, 1988, p74 Zouk gradually became indistinguishable from the genre known as compas. This light compas influenced the Cape-Verdean new generation. Zouk béton The original fast carnival style of zouk, best represented by the band Kassav', became known as "zouk béton", "zouk chiré" or "zouk hard". Zouk béton is considered a synthesis of various French Antillean dance music styles of the 20th century: kadans (cadence), konp ...
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Samba
Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Having its roots in Brazilian folk traditions, especially those linked to the primitive rural samba of the colonial and imperial periods, it is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country's symbols. Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "batuque-like circle dance", a dance style, and also to a "music genre". This process of establishing itself as a musical genre began in the 1910s and it had its inaugural landmark in the song " Pelo Telefone", launched in 1917. Despite being identified by its creators, the public, and the Brazilian music industry as "samba", ...
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Bomba (Puerto Rico)
Bomba is both a traditional dance and musical style of Puerto Rico.Berkeley: Bay Area Puerto Ricans bring bomba to La Peña
Andrew Gilbert, ''San Francisco Chronicle'', 29-6-2005, access date 05-01-2012
Its origins are rooted in the island's history of but today has evolved into a community expression of Puerto Rican culture. While Bomba can be used as the generic name for a number of rhythms, it is truly about a creative, interactive relationship between dancers, percussionists and singers. Today it's practiced as a communal activity in its centers of origin in
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Salsa Music
Salsa music is a style of Latin American music. Because most of the basic musical components predate the labeling of salsa, there have been many controversies regarding its origin. Most songs considered as salsa are primarily based on son montuno, with elements of Mambo (music), mambo, Latin jazz, Bomba (Puerto Rico), bomba, plena and guaracha. All of these elements are adapted to fit the basic son montuno template when performed within the context of salsa. Originally the name salsa was used to label commercially several styles of Latin dance music, but nowadays it is considered a musical style on its own and one of the staples of Latin American culture. The first self-identified salsa bands were predominantly assembled by Cubans, Cuban and Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rican musicians in New York City in the '70s. The music style was based on the late son montuno of Arsenio Rodríguez, Conjunto Chappottín and Roberto Faz. These musicians included Celia Cruz, Willie ColónRuben Blade ...
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Son Cubano
Son cubano is a genre of music and dance that originated in the highlands of eastern Cuba during the late 19th century. It is a syncretic genre that blends elements of Spanish and African origin. Among its fundamental Hispanic components are the vocal style, lyrical metre and the primacy of the tres, derived from the Spanish guitar. On the other hand, its characteristic clave rhythm, call and response structure and percussion section ( bongo, maracas, etc.) are all rooted in traditions of Bantu origin. Around 1909 the son reached Havana, where the first recordings were made in 1917. This marked the start of its expansion throughout the island, becoming Cuba's most popular and influential genre. While early groups had between three and five members, during the 1920s the ''sexteto'' (sextet) became the genre's primary format. By the 1930s, many bands had incorporated a trumpet, becoming ''septetos'', and in the 1940s a larger type of ensemble featuring congas and piano became th ...
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Cuban Rumba
Rumba is a secular genre of Cuban music involving dance, percussion, and song. It originated in the northern regions of Cuba, mainly in urban Havana and Matanzas, during the late 19th century. It is based on African music and dance traditions, namely Abakuá and yuka, as well as the Spanish-based ''coros de clave''. According to Argeliers León, rumba is one of the major "genre complexes" of Cuban music, and the term rumba complex is now commonly used by musicologists. This complex encompasses the three traditional forms of rumba (yambú, guaguancó and columbia), as well as their contemporary derivatives and other minor styles. Traditionally performed by poor workers of African descent in streets and ''solares'' (courtyards), rumba remains one of Cuba's most characteristic forms of music and dance. Vocal improvisation, elaborate dancing and polyrhythmic drumming are the key components of all rumba styles. '' Cajones'' (wooden boxes) were used as drums until the early 20th cent ...
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Conga (music)
The term conga refers to the music groups within Cuban comparsas and the music they play. Comparsas are large ensembles of musicians, singers and dancers with a specific costume and choreography which perform in the street carnivals of Santiago de Cuba and Havana.Millet, José and Brea Rafael 1989. Del carnival santiaguero: congas y paseos. In Oscar Ruiz Miyares (ed) ''Guía cultural de Santiago de Cuba''. The instrumentation differs between ''congas santiagueras'' and ''congas habaneras''. ''Congas santiagueras'' include the ''corneta china'' (Chinese cornet), which is an adaptation of the Cantonese suona introduced in Oriente in 1915, and its percussion section comprises bocúes (similar to African ashiko drums), the quinto (highest pitched conga drum), galletas and the pilón, as well as brakes which are struck with metal sticks. ''Congas habaneras'' lack the ''corneta china'' but include trumpets, trombones and saxophones, and they have a different set of percussion instrume ...
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Cumbia
Cumbia refers to a number of musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America, generally involving musical and cultural elements from American Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans during colonial times, and Europeans. Examples include: * Colombian cumbia, is a musical rhythm and traditional folk dance from Colombia. It has elements of three different cultures, American Indigenous, African, and Spanish, being the result of the long and intense meeting of these cultures during the Conquest and the Colony. * Panamanian cumbia, Panamanian folk dance and musical genre, developed by enslaved people of African descent during colonial times and later syncretized with American Indigenous and European cultural elements. Regional adaptations of Colombian cumbia Argentina * Argentine cumbia * Cumbia villera, a subgenre of Argentine cumbia born in the slums * Fantasma, a 2001 group formed by Martín Roisi and Pablo Antico * Cumbia santafesina, a musical genre emerged in Santa Fe, ...
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