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West African music traditions

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Genre

West African music traditions · Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, more than twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas as slaves, most of them from West and Central Africa. They took with them music that was unknown in Europe: rhythms in several layers at once, call and response between a lead singer and a group, music as a fixed part of work, dance and faith, and instruments from which the banjo descended. At Congo Square in New Orleans, enslaved Africans were allowed to dance, sing and drum on Sundays until well into the nineteenth century. Those elements are present in virtually all the African American music that followed.

Listening

Listening tip. In this field recording of Atsiagbekor, an old war dance of the Ewe in Ghana, hear how the drums and the bell each play a pattern of their own, layered over one another, and how the group answers the lead singer.

In School of Rock

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See also

Categories: Genres