Talk:Music of Africa

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Regional and national music Top‑importance

	Music of Africa is within the scope of the WikiProject Regional and national music, an attempt at building a resource on the music of all the peoples and places of the world. Please visit the project's listing to see the article's assessment and to help us improve the article as we push to 1.0.Regional and national musicWikipedia:WikiProject Regional and national musicTemplate:WikiProject Regional and national musicRegional and national music articles
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Africa Top‑importance

	Africa portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica articles
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Music/Music genres task force

Music of Africa is within the scope of the Music genres task force of the Music project, a user driven attempt to clean up and standardize music genre articles on Wikipedia. Please visit the task force guidelines page for ideas on how to structure a genre article and help us assess and improve genre articles to good article status.Music/Music genres task forceWikipedia:WikiProject Music/Music genres task forceTemplate:WikiProject Music/Music genres task forcemusic genre articles

African diaspora Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject African diaspora, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of African diaspora on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.African diasporaWikipedia:WikiProject African diasporaTemplate:WikiProject African diasporaAfrican diaspora articles
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The following Wikipedia contributor may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.

Dr clave (talk · contribs) / David Peñalosa This user has contributed to the article.

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 21 October 2013 for a period of one week.

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 29 February 2016 for a period of one week.

Afropop

Afropop is more or less a soft redirection here, but we have little here on contemporary popular music. We either need to expand this or have a separate article. - Jmabel | Talk 03:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have created a stub at African popular music. --Ezeu 00:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason these should be separate articles unless this one gets renamed to make it clear that pop is excluded. But pop is not excluded from the content of this article, so either it needs to be rewritten or the two articles need to be combined. Rscragun (talk) 18:03, 18 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Music

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 Jùjú, Fuji, Highlife, Makossa, Kizomba, Afrobeat and others. The music and dance of the African diaspora, formed to varying degrees on African musical traditions, include American music like Dixieland, the blues, jazz, old-time, and bluegrass and many Caribbean genres, such as calypso (see kaiso) and soca. Latin American music genres such as zouk, bomba, conga, rumba, son cubano, salsa music, cumbia and samba, were founded on the music of enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music.[1]

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 music traditions frequently rely on percussion instruments of many varieties, including xylophones, djembes, drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira or "thumb piano."[1][2]

Another distinguishing form of African music is its call-and-response nature: one voice or instrument plays a short melodic phrase, and that phrase is echoed by another voice or instrument. The call-and-response nature extends to the rhythm, where one drum will play a rhythmic pattern, echoed by another drum playing the same pattern. African music is also highly improvised. A core rhythmic pattern is typically played, with drummers then improvising new patterns over the static original patterns.

Traditional music in most of the continent is passed down orally (or aurally) and is not written. There are subtle differences in pitch and intonation that do not easily translate to Western notation. African music most closely adheres to Western tetratonic (four-note), pentatonic (five-note), hexatonic (six-note), and heptatonic (seven-note) scales. Harmonization of the melody is accomplished by singing in parallel thirds, fourths, or fifths (see Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony).

Music is important to religion in Africa, where rituals and religious ceremonies use music to pass down stories from generation to generation as well as to sing and dance to. 136.158.120.54 (talk) 01:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

African genres and country of origin

A type of music and which country it originally came from 77.246.53.155 (talk) 12:56, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]