African Music

The Sounds of Africa

                Africa, when people think of Africa I think people mostly think of Africa as a wartorn and tribalistic continent. Which is a pretty reasonable assumption looking at Africa and its great history. And like all other places in the world music plays a central part in African culture. And like many other places music can serve many purposes which include entertainment, and religion.

                    
                       A big chunk of Africa still does not have internet or even electricity and a large portion of the African population actually do actively go out and actually meet with people more than developed nations. In areas that are not as developed people actually get closer to their neighbors like how people in medieval times are close because they do not have access to the internet and only know about themselves. Not that developed nations do not have relationships with their neighbors or music. Well anyway, let us talk about the music.


                 Since Africa is such a large continent many places get influenced by many cultures especially the northern part which is connected to the middle east and thus get influenced by middle eastern culture. Africa is not a singular unified continent, I mean look at China and India despite being one country culturally the people in those nations have different cultures. Music is universal and people use them in different ways, some to entertain themselves, some do it for religious reasons, and some do it to organize and create order ie. military songs. 


                 A lot of African (folk) music like Filipino music is actually more or less the daily lives of the people and the activities they do like work and their daily routine. And seeing how common it is I believe everyone around the world is actually just the same even if the cultures are different. Now the second reason is for religious purposes, a lot of African music is also about religion as Africa is a vast place with various religions from different tribes and some religions from more major religions ie. Islam, Christianity. And music is a good way to send messages to the people and a good way for people to know more about something. Now the final part is that so that people can do things in a more orderly fashion, now what do I mean that music help people things in a more orderly fashion? Music especially military music is designed in such a way that the people listening to the music do not really need to really know the music and the beat and rhythm of the music is more important and if people follow the rhythm and beat obviously people will be more orderly as the people try and follow the music.















Reference:



Oum Dermam Stars, (December 21, 2017), Wadaana Baas, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nvKqyPTzuE

(No author surname or first name as they are a group.)










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