"Ethnomusicology in East Africa ... brings together thinkers and artists from Uganda, East Africa and further afield to discuss an area of vital importance to Africans as a people. The book presents selected papers from the First International Symposium on Ethnomusicology in Uganda, held at Makerere University in Kampala on 23-25 November 2009 ... [and] represents an important step in the continued professionalisation of ethnomusicology in Uganda. It presents new work by Uganda-based researchers, from students to academic staff, and solidly places that work within the international scholarly ethnomusicological conversation"--Cover.
Music in East Africa is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present.
What is it about the history, geographical position and cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia that has made music such a potent and powerful agent? This volume presents the first direct look at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres and countries. Discourses of power in the region centre on some of the most contested social issues, most notably in relation to nationhood, gender and religion. Individual chapters examine the ways in which music serves as a forum for playing out issues of power, ideology, resistance and subversion. How does music become a space for promoting - or conversely, resisting or subverting - particular ideologies or positions of authority? How does it accrue symbolic power in ways that are very particular, perhaps unique? And how does music become a site of social control or, alternatively, a vehicle for agency and empowerment, at times overt and at others highly subtle? What is it about music that facilitates, and sometimes disrupts, the exercise and flows of power? Who controls such flows, how and for what purposes? In asking such questions in the context of countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and Tajikistan, the book draws on a wide range of relevant theoretical and critical ideas, and many disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, politics, Middle Eastern studies, globalization studies, gender studies and cultural and media studies. The countries and areas explored share a great deal in historical and cultural terms, including a legacy of colonial and neo-colonial encounters and predominantly Judeo-Muslim religious traditions. It is hoped that the volume will contribute ultimately to a richer understanding of the role that music plays in these societies.
'Mashindano' - from Kiswahili, Kushindana (to compete) - is a generic term for any organised competitive event. Here it relates to popular entertainment activities within which cultural groups competing for recognition by their communities, as leaders in their fields. Nineteen leading scholars contribute new studies on this little researched area, making a long overdue contribution to musical scholarship in East Africa, with a focus on Tanzania. The authors address key questions: What are the various roles played by competitive pratices in musical contexts? How do music competitions act as mechanisms of innovation? How do music competitions act as mechanisms of innovation? How do they serve their communities in identity formation? And what, specifically, do competitive music practices communicate, and to whom? Local dance contests, choir competitions, popular entertainment, song duels, and sporting events are all described. Work is drawn from ethnomusicology, history, musicology, anthropology, folklore, and literary, post-colonial, and performance studies.
Ethnomusicology deals with the study of the music of the world. The field is interdisciplinary, and ethnomusicologists draw on theory and method from folklore, cultural anthropology, historical musicology, literature, cultural studies and media studies, among other disciplines. So when ethnomusicologists met at Makerere University's symposium on ethnomusicology in October 2011, the issues dealt with spanned a wide spectrum of concerns which can be grouped under three major categories: Institutions, culture and identity. African Musics in Context discusses the place of performing arts in Ugandan society, archiving music and music sources, performing archival music, performing health and religious issues in music, music and identity in East Africa as well music in motion, which tackles how identity shifts when people move from one place to another. All these are key aspects of our day-to-day lives, and they are the themes that colour the music we listen to. This book follows up on and extends work in an earlier volume (Nannyonga- Tamusuza and Solomon 2012) which included papers from the first symposium in the series. While this book focuses primarily on music and music research in Uganda, the chapters by the contributors from Tanzania, South Africa and Norway demonstrate the importance of scholarly and professional networks that connect the different countries of the African continent with each other and with the larger international scholarly community. If the published proceedings from the first symposium mentioned above represented a first in the history of ethnomusicological publishing in Uganda, this second book in the series shows that professionalised ethnomusicology in Uganda continues to gain ground and make contributions to music research in Uganda, Africa, and the global ethnomusicological community. The chapters collected here show that ethnomusicology in Uganda has a healthy institutional basis and promises to continue to make contributions that are relevant locally, regionally, and internationally.
First published in 1999, this volume explores the great diversity of music created by African communities is reflected in this book, which discusses the ways in which a wide range of musical forms are composed and performed from Egypt to South Africa and from Ghana to Kenya. As two composers explain here, this diversity provides much inspiration for western contemporary composition. Particular attention is paid to the contexts generate musical creativity. Ceremonies and festivals celebrating birth, death, marriage or rites of passage provide the impetus for much composition and performance, enabling young people to pick up, early on, some of the techniques and styles of which they then become the new exponents. The book also looks at the role played by formal music education programmes and bodies such as the South African Music Rights Organization and the South African Broadcasting Corporation in fostering musical activity, as well as the contribution of composers to the social and political changes that have dominated South African life in recent years.
A useful addition to the growing literature of popular culture in Africa, this book takes a multidisciplinary angle and can easily fit within the disciplines of political science, urban studies, literature, sociology and media studies.
Taken together, these comprehensive volumes offer an authoritative account of the music of Africa. One of the most prominent experts on the subject, Gerhard Kubik draws on his extensive travels and three decades of study in many parts of the continent to compare and contrast a wealth of musical traditions from a range of cultures. In the first volume, Kubik describes and examines xylophone playing in southern Uganda and harp music from the Central African Republic; compares multi-part singing from across the continent; and explores movement and sound in eastern Angola. And in the second volume, he turns to the cognitive study of African rhythm, Yoruba chantefables, the musical Kachamba family of Malaŵi, and African conceptions of space and time. Each volume features an extensive number of photographs and is accompanied by a compact disc of Kubik’s own recordings. Erudite and exhaustive, Theory of African Music will be an invaluable reference for years to come.
