African popular music
As African popular music , abbreviated Afropop that is popular music of the African continent called. The various influences include regionally widespread styles of music, some of which are mixed with North American jazz , blues and hip-hop and South American salsa, reggae , zouk and rumba rhythms.
history
Until 1960
- Gold coast
The history of African popular music began in the 1880s on the Gold Coast under European influence. This was primarily evident in the expansion of the instrument portfolio with violins, cellos, clarinets, trumpets and guitars. In the mission schools, hymns and brass bands were introduced for the musical accompaniment of church services. In the coastal areas, brass bands were created based on the model of the military bands , which mainly played ragtime and European marches and dances. At the beginning of the 20th century, under these influences, the highlife music form developed , which became more and more African as it spread in the hinterland. The British colonial government intervened again and again to prevent “immoral” dances.
- Nigeria
A second focus in the development of urban popular music was Lagos in Nigeria . It is there that the musician Tunde King allegedly created the Jùjú around 1932 , in which elements of the music of the Yoruba are combined with Christian church chant and Afro-Cuban influences to create a call and answer chant. Western string instruments such as the banjo or the six-string guitar as well as the tambourine and sekere or maracas (rattles) used by the Salvation Army were used . The texts were adapted to the social occasion and often served to showcase urban sophistication. In the Muslim part of Yorubaland , the Islamic-oriented waka developed since the 1950s , made popular by the singer Batile Alake († 2013).
- Congo
From around 1935, under Cuban influence, son and rumba groups, whose music was based on the clave rhythm, formed in Léopoldville and Brazzaville . Radio Congo Belge also spread this Afro-Cuban music to neighboring countries. The first internationally known star of the Congolese rumba was the ship mechanic and boxer Antoine Kolosay ( Wendo Kolosoy , "Papa Wendo", 1925–2008).
- East Africa
Another focus of popular music influenced by the Swahili Taarab was East Africa (particularly Kenya and Uganda ) since around 1930, where local musicians initially played for the whites. In Kenya, developed in the 1940s Benga whose dominant instrument was the guitar. Influences from what was then the Belgian Congo were added later, where the fingerstyle technique was adopted in the 1950s .
- South Africa
In the South African province of Natal , the Mbube (“Lion!)” Was created in the 1930s , the spread of which was due to the success of the millionaire seller The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Solomon Linda .
Since the 1930s, the record recording became the defining moment in the development of new musical styles and promoted their spread over large parts of the continent. The fingerstyle technique from the Congo was spread through phono recordings in East Africa. In the late 1950s, the radio partially took over this function.
1960-1990
Before and during the Second World War, musical forms had been transported back from the Caribbean to Africa. a. because African military musicians were used worldwide during the war. Then there were the influences of swing . In the 1960s, the rapidly danced arose from the Congolese rumba and Cuban influence Soukous (from the French. Secouer , "shake" even Lingala called). An important soukous band was the African Fiesta , founded in 1963 , whose records were also very successful in France. Probably the best known performer of rumba and soukous was Papa Wemba . In Cameroon since the 1960s, developed Makossa , which mainly by Mama Ohandja was spread abroad.
Since the late 1960s, the influence of European, Latin American and American pop music grew across the continent. In addition to the Cuban rumba, the Brazilian samba and rock 'n' roll were particularly influential. In comparison with the guitar and the percussion, the wind instruments lost their importance. In the 1970s, the benga prevailed in large parts of western Kenya. A modern interpreter of traditional benga is the Kenyan Peter Akwabi . Above all, however, the soukous spread throughout East Africa in the 1970s.
Many musicians from Mali emigrated to Abidjan , Dakar or Paris because of the bad economic situation , including Salif Keita , which spread the music of the Mandé . The most famous musician in Senegal was Youssou N'Dour , who was heavily influenced by Cuban music.
In South Africa in the 1960s, the powerful Mbube of Mbaqanga emerged as a jazz-influenced synthesis of European instrumental and African vocal music. Since the 1980s, these styles have been supplanted by the bubblegum . On the East African coast, the Lingala developed its own Swahili sound and in western Kenya the regionally limited Benga style was replaced by hip hop (in Nairobi: Genge ) in the 1990s . In Mozambique, the marrabenta dance became popular in the 1980s, and Dilon Djindji was one of its fathers in the 1960s .
It was not until the 1970s that the novelty and diversity of African urban music was recognized in Europe and America. For the first time, music from rural and rural areas such as that of the Zulu migrant workers was also received: their a cappella singing Isicathamiya was popularized by Paul Simon through his album Graceland (1986). Since 1980, new centers of music production such as Sierra Leone , Mali and Angola emerged.
Since 1990
On the one hand, around 1990 a “re-Africanization” of African music began. At the same time, however, influences from Brazil (especially in Angola), from Cape Verde , the Caribbean from Jamaica and Cuba to Guadeloupe ( reggae , calypso , Zouk ) and the West ( house , techno ) mixed with local pop styles and constantly formed new syntheses (e.g. B. Kizomba , Kuduro ).
On the other hand, since around 2010 in large parts of Africa, more or less fast variants of hip-hop have replaced older forms of music, with the lyrics expressing the global needs of young people: partying, money, fancy cars, brand clothes, love, girls and sometimes even social criticism.
Reggie Rockstone is believed to be the father of the Ghanaian Hiplife in the 1990s. Hip-hop and reggae dominate the Nigerian and Senegalese music scene today. From the soukous the Ndombolo developed in the Congo , which also became popular in Cameroon, Mali and Kenya and was unsuccessfully ostracized by several governments because of its obscenity.
Genres
Afropop includes the following genres:
See also
literature
- Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje (Ed.): Turn up the Volume. A Celebration of African Music. UCLA, Los Angeles 1999
- Veit Erlmann (ed.): Popular music in Africa. Publications of the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, Department of Music Ethnology 1991. With 2 CDs.
- Daniel Siebert: African popular music as hybrid world music . In other words: Music in the age of globalization. Processes - Perspectives - Styles . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-2905-7 , pp. 161–171 (partly available from Google Books )
- Hugh Tracey : Listen All Around: The Golden Age of Central and East African Music. 2 CDs with book. Dust to Digital, 2018. (Recordings from the 1950s from the then Belgian Congo , Kenya, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.)
- Jack Vartoogian: Afropop !: An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music. Chartwell Books, New York 1995, ISBN 978-0-7858-0443-7
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ About Afropop Worldwide • Afropop Worldwide. In: Afropop Worldwide. Retrieved July 30, 2016 .
- ^ Nathan A. Plageman: Everybody Likes Saturday Night: A Social History of Popular Music and Masculinities in Urban Gold Coast / Ghana, C. 1900-1970. ProQuest 2008.
- ^ Gary Stewart: Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos. Verso, 2000. ISBN 978-18598-4368-0 .
- ↑ Erlmann 1991, introduction, especially p. 13.
- ↑ Corinna Jentzsch: Interview with Bram De Cock alias DJ LeBlanc: Mozambique's Pandza Music on africasacountry.com, October 2013.
- ↑ Francis Ngwa-Niba: Anger at Cameroon dance ban on BBC News, July 25, 2000th