Download or read book Ethnomusicology and African Music Modes of inquiry and interpretation written by J. H. Kwabena Nketia and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume in hand deals with modes of inquiry and interpretation broadly organised into sections on theory, and historical and creative studies. The section on theoretical issues comprises papers on: the problem of meaning in African music; musicology and African music; the juncture of the social and the musical; integrating objectivity and experience in ethnomusicological studies; the aesthetic dimension in ethnomusicological studies; universal perspectives in ethnomusicology; and contextual strategies of inquiry and systematisation. The section on creative and historical topics covers the following: the history of music in African culture; history and the organization of music in West Africa; historical evidence in Ga religious music; processes of differentiation and interdependency in African music; African musical roots in the Americas; and developing contemporary idioms out of traditional music.
Download or read book On Reason written by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-04 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given that Enlightenment rationality developed in Europe as European nations aggressively claimed other parts of the world for their own enrichment, scholars have made rationality the subject of postcolonial critique, questioning its universality and objectivity. In On Reason, the late philosopher Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze demonstrates that rationality, and by extension philosophy, need not be renounced as manifestations or tools of Western imperialism. Examining reason in connection to the politics of difference—the cluster of issues known variously as cultural diversity, political correctness, the culture wars, and identity politics—Eze expounds a rigorous argument that reason is produced through and because of difference. In so doing, he preserves reason as a human property while at the same time showing that it cannot be thought outside the realities of cultural diversity. Advocating rationality in a multicultural world, he proposes new ways of affirming both identity and difference. Eze draws on an extraordinary command of Western philosophical thought and a deep knowledge of African philosophy and cultural traditions. He explores models of rationality in the thought of philosophers from Aristotle, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes to Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jacques Derrida, and he considers portrayals of reason in the work of the African thinkers and novelists Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka. Eze reflects on contemporary thought about genetics, race, and postcolonial historiography as well as on the interplay between reason and unreason in the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He contends that while rationality may have a foundational formality, any understanding of its foundation and form is dynamic, always based in historical and cultural circumstances.
Download or read book The African Imagination in Music written by Kofi Agawu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which it rests. Agawu leads his readers through an exploration of the traditions, structural elements, instruments, and performative techniques that characterize the music. In sections that focus upon rhythm, melody, form, and harmony, the essential parts of African music come into relief. While traditional music, the backbone of Africa's musical thinking, receives the most attention, Agawu also supplies insights into popular and art music in order to demonstrate the breadth of the African musical imagination. Close readings of a variety of songs, including an Ewe dirge, an Aka children's song, and Fela's 'Suffering and Smiling' supplement the broader discussion. The African Imagination in Music foregrounds a hitherto under-reported legacy of recordings and insists on the necessity of experiencing music as sound in order to appreciate and understand it fully. Accordingly, a Companion Website features important examples of the music discussed in detail in the book. Accessibly and engagingly written for a general audience, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists.
Download or read book African American Music written by Mellonee V. Burnim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Music: An Introduction, Second Edition is a collection of seventeen essays surveying major African American musical genres, both sacred and secular, from slavery to the present. With contributions by leading scholars in the field, the work brings together analyses of African American music based on ethnographic fieldwork, which privileges the voices of the music-makers themselves, woven into a richly textured mosaic of history and culture. At the same time, it incorporates musical treatments that bring clarity to the structural, melodic, and rhythmic characteristics that both distinguish and unify African American music. The second edition has been substantially revised and updated, and includes new essays on African and African American musical continuities, African-derived instrument construction and performance practice, techno, and quartet traditions. Musical transcriptions, photographs, illustrations, and a new audio CD bring the music to life.
Download or read book Ethnomusicology written by Jennifer Post and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Africa and Beyond written by Patrick J. Ebewo and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Africa and Beyond: Arts and Sustainable Development is a massive undertaking by thoughtful theorists and practitioners in the creative/cultural industry. The combined effect of the volume is to disabuse the fixed, prevailing conception of the role of culture in society; a view that consigns the arts to the periphery of social life, devoid of any meaningful contribution to the alleviation of poverty and general development. Contrary to this view, the volume presents a more comprehensive, meaningful, insightful set of perspectives and paradigms that ascribe agency to creative/cultural products in all facets of human development. The usefulness of the volume extends beyond the industry itself. It is meant for a broader readership and is therefore highly recommended for specialists and the public at large.” – Professor Mokubung Nkomo, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa
Download or read book Rediasporization written by Gillian Richards-Greaves and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rediasporization: African-Guyanese Kweh-Kweh examines how African-Guyanese in New York City participate in the Come to My Kwe-Kwe ritual to facilitate rediasporization, that is, the creation of a newer diaspora from an existing one. Since the fall of 2005, African-Guyanese in New York City have celebrated Come to My Kwe-Kwe (more recently called Kwe-Kwe Night) on the Friday evening before Labor Day. Come to My Kwe-Kwe is a reenactment of a uniquely African-Guyanese pre-wedding ritual called kweh-kweh, and sometimes referred to as karkalay, mayan, kweh-keh, and pele. A typical traditional (wedding-based) kweh-kweh has approximately ten ritual segments, which include the pouring of libation to welcome or appease the ancestors; a procession from the groom’s residence to the bride’s residence or central kweh-kweh venue; the hiding of the bride; and the negotiation of bride price. Each ritual segment is executed with music and dance, which allow for commentary on conjugal matters, such as sex, domestication, submissiveness, and hard work. Come to My Kwe-Kwe replicates the overarching segments of the traditional kweh-kweh, but a couple (male and female) from the audience acts as the bride and groom, and props simulate the boundaries of the traditional performance space, such as the gate and the bride’s home. This book draws on more than a decade of ethnographic research data and demonstrates how Come to My Kwe-Kwe allows African-Guyanese-Americans to negotiate complex, overlapping identities in their new homeland, by combining elements from the past and present and reinterpreting them to facilitate rediasporization and ensure group survival.
Download or read book Edward W Blyden s Intellectual Transformations written by Harry N. K. Odamtten and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished by its multidisciplinary dexterity, this book is a masterfully woven reinterpretation of the life, travels, and scholarship of Edward W. Blyden, arguably the most influential Black intellectual of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces Blyden’s various moments of intellectual transformation through the multiple lenses of ethnicity, race, religion, and identity in the historical context of Atlantic exchanges, the Back-to-Africa movement, colonialism, and the global Black intellectual movement. In this book Blyden is shown as an African public intellectual who sought to reshape ideas about Africa circulating in the Atlantic world. The author also highlights Blyden’s contributions to different public spheres in Europe, in the Jewish Diaspora, in the Muslim and Christian world of West Africa, and among Blacks in the United States. Additionally, this book places Blyden at the pinnacle of Afropublicanism in order to emphasize his public intellectualism, his rootedness in the African historical experience, and the scholarship he produced about Africa and the African Diaspora. As Blyden is an important contributor to African studies, among other disciplines, this volume makes for critical scholarly reading.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History written by Martin S. Shanguhyia and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-28 with total page 1360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging volume presents the most complete appraisal of modern African history to date. It assembles dozens of new and established scholars to tackle the questions and subjects that define the field, ranging from the economy, the two world wars, nationalism, decolonization, and postcolonial politics to religion, development, sexuality, and the African youth experience. Contributors are drawn from numerous fields in African studies, including art, music, literature, education, and anthropology. The themes they cover illustrate the depth of modern African history and the diversity and originality of lenses available for examining it. Older themes in the field have been treated to an engaging re-assessment, while new and emerging themes are situated as the book’s core strength. The result is a comprehensive, vital picture of where the field of modern African history stands today.
Download or read book The Ox and the Slave written by Kazadi wa Mukuna and published by Diasporic Africa Press. This book was released on 2017-08-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary study sheds light on the communal creative process of music and discusses the process of music change in Bumba-meu-Boi, and provides an example of exo-semantic analysis in the quest for the truth of this folk drama in Brazil. It argues that Bumba-meu-Boi sheds light on eighteenth century Brazil and reveals existing levels of interaction between classes (master-slave, oppressor-oppressed) on sugar cane plantations and mills. A sociologist perspective demonstrates that the structure of the Bumba-meu-Boi reflects a similar network of relations, as they exist in communities where it was and still is performed.
Download or read book Yor b Music in the Twentieth Century written by Bode Omojola and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on extensive field research conducted over the course of two decades, Bode Omojola examines traditional and contemporary Yorùbá genres of music.
Download or read book The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture written by Janet Sturman and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 2730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world's musical cultures, styles, and practices. The diverse voices of contributors to this encyclopedia confirm ethnomusicology's fundamental ethos of inclusion and respect for diversity. Combined, the multiplicity of topics and approaches are presented in an easy-to-search A-Z format and offer a fresh perspective on the field and the subject of music in culture. Key features include: Approximately 730 signed articles, authored by prominent scholars, are arranged A-to-Z and published in a choice of print or electronic editions Pedagogical elements include Further Readings and Cross References to conclude each article and a Reader’s Guide in the front matter organizing entries by broad topical or thematic areas Back matter includes an annotated Resource Guide to further research (journals, books, and associations), an appendix listing notable archives, libraries, and museums, and a detailed Index The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and Cross References combine for thorough search-and-browse capabilities in the electronic edition
Download or read book The Embodiment and Transmission of Ghanaian Kete Royal Dance written by Emmanuel Cudjoe and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kete dance form, once exclusive to royal courts, carries intricate movements, symbolic gestures, and rhythms that mirror Ghanaian history and values. It embodies storytelling, often depicting tales of bravery, unity, or significant historical events. These dances were traditionally reserved for specific occasions within the royal setting, symbolizing prestige, honor, and tradition. With the passage of time, the transmission of Kete royal dance has transcended its original palace context, finding its way into academic domains. Universities and cultural institutions now extend the legacies of this dance form and even act as custodians of this art form, where scholars, dancers, and enthusiasts collaborate to study, preserve, and teach Kete dance. Through meticulous documentation, research, and practice, the academy endeavors to honor the Kete dance while making it accessible to a broader audience. This transmission from palace to academy serves as a testament to the resilience and adaptability of cultural traditions. It ensures the continuity of Ghanaian heritage and allows future generations, both within and beyond Ghana, to appreciate and learn from this profound dance form from an Afrocentric perspective.
Download or read book The African Diaspora and the Disciplines written by Tejumola Olaniyan and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the problems and conflicts of doing African diaspora research from various disciplinary perspectives, these essays situate, describe, and reflect on the current practice of diaspora scholarship. Tejumola Olaniyan, James H. Sweet, and the international group of contributors assembled here seek to enlarge understanding of how the diaspora is conceived and explore possibilities for the future of its study. With the aim of initiating interdisciplinary dialogue on the practice of African diaspora studies, they emphasize learning from new perspectives that take advantage of intersections between disciplines. Ultimately, they advocate a fuller sense of what it means to study the African diaspora in a truly global way.
Download or read book Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra written by Steven Feld and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished scholar Steven Feld shaped the field of the anthropology of sound and music. In this new work, he looks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, including some who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. He describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound. Feld combines memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, telling a story of diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests both American nationalist and Afrocentric narrations of jazz history.
Download or read book Cape Town Harmonies written by Armelle Gaulier and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cape Towns public cultures can only be fully appreciated through recognition of its deep and diverse soundscape. We have to listen to what has made and makes a city. The ear is an integral part of the research tools one needs to get a sense of any city. We have to listen to the sounds that made and make the expansive mother city. Various of its constituent parts sound different from each other [T]here is the sound of the singing men and their choirs (teams they are called) in preparation for the longstanding annual Malay choral competitions. The lyrics from the various repertoires they perform are hardly ever written down. [] There are texts of the hallowed Dutch songs but these do not circulate easily and widely. Researchers dream of finding lyrics from decades ago, not to mention a few generations ago back to the early 19th century. This work by Denis Constant Martin and Armelle Gaulier provides us with a very useful selection of these songs. More than that, it is a critical sociological reflection of the place of these songs and their performers in the context that have given rise to them and sustains their relevance. It is a necessary work and is a very important scholarly intervention about a rather neglected aspect of the history and present production of music in the city."
Download or read book Music and Dance Traditions of Ghana written by Paschal Yao Younge and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The music and dance traditions of Ghana's four main ethnic groups are covered comprehensively in this book. It discusses concepts of music, dance and performance in general, and also goes into cultural perspectives, performance practices and the form and structure of 22 musical types or dance drumming ceremonies. As a guide to multicultural education, it provides teaching methods and components of curriculum development. Numerous photographs, maps, and musical scores generously illustrate the book.
