What About the Music

When thinking of African music, it's often in terms of drumming as if we came out of trees about one hundred and twenty thousand years ago, started drumming on logs or whatever and never made any significant advance after that.  As you have already concluded, this is not even close to true or there would be no reason to comment.

There's an additional twist to the timing as Ice Ages have decimated populations multiple times during the course of human history and the last one, about fifty thousand years ago, wiped out everything all the way to equatorial regions.  However, as much as possible, people would have moved to stay ahead of it and there are two things we always bring with us when we move:  our language and our music.  Even though the loss of life must have been staggering, it's not unreasonable to believe there is a continuous thread of music back to the beginnings of man.

Some may dispute the timing of a hundred thousand years and some will tell you the human history only goes back six thousand years because science exists only as a Satanic plot to discredit the history in the Bible.  There are others who believe Homo sapiens emerged in multiple places around the Earth rather than only in Africa and consequently radiated everywhere else.  For the purpose here, it makes no difference if there were other points of emergence as the African history is ancient and quite likely the most ancient of all.

It's logical to believe we started drumming first as chest-pounding is observed in primates so graduating from that to hitting logs or anything else that would make noise isn't a huge leap.  What makes it interesting is that the increased mental capacity of H. sapiens meant the rhythms got enormously more interesting.  And this, for at least some people, is where it stops; savages beat drums in the jungle, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's little I've said about the relationship with Cat but music is an important topic when we talk.  When I spoke with her about African music, it didn't surprise me at all that she was already well-versed in the subject and here's an example of a video she offered showing an expert job playing an African musical instrument.



Discerning the age of this type of instrument goes beyond what I want to say as my interest is the diversity of African instruments rather than determining the age of one relative to another.   (Wiki:  Kora)

Another instrument that fascinates me is the udu which is a deep-voiced instrument Voodoo Shilton often uses in his arrangements and you can hear him do it in his performances at Cat's Art MusikCircus on Friday nights.  (Wiki:  Udu)

Even though it's a percussion instrument, the sophistication of a wooden African xylophone intrigued me.  It's much more an instrument of melody rather than rhythm and, as with the others, the sound is unique and extraordinary.  I apologise for not having the name of it but there isn't enough access to the net to fully research things as much as I would like.

What I suggest is to continue this theme in your own time and you will discover a wealth of musical expression you may not have imagined.  It's much like the phenomenon of the bouzouki in Greece which looks and sounds similar to a guitar but it is played with a unique style that gives much of the national character to Greek music.  You might wish to review that further as well because there is an Irish adaptation of the bouzouki and I'm not familiar with the style in which it is played but I'm sure that is unique as well.  I know for sure the tuning is not the same as for a Greek bouzouki.