World Music

World Music

• Music of the Caribbean
• Music of Africa
• Music of India

World Music is a term often used to describe musical traditions, styles and genres that are non-Western. This includes the traditional folk music and song of a particular region, non-Western classical music and popular music. Some forms and genres of World Music have been influenced by Western classical and popular music. Some forms and genres of world music have been influenced by Western music, especially popular styles, instruments and rhythms which is called fusion.

Music of the Caribbean

The Caribbean is a group of 7,000 islands and reefs located between the United States and South America and divided into a number of separate countries. Each country has its own particular musical styles and genres but some styles are shared and can be found all over the Caribbean.

Caribbean music has its roots in other musical traditions particularly those of Africa and Europe.

Calypso

This is a style of music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago at the start of the 20^th Century and spread to other Caribbean Islands. It is a form of a solo song that combines story telling with memorable tunes and rhythms. Calypso has always been associated with some form of social comment and is an important feature of carnival. Calypso is often performed by the singer accompanied by guitar, although there can be a larger backing group which might include brass, saxophones, drums and electric guitars. Calypso lyrics are about topics concerning island life and are often highly personal and political so they were used as a means of spreading news and gossip. Calypso became so popular and influential that politicians and public figures often tried to censor the lyrics.

Steelbands

After the Second World War the oil drums left by the Americans on the island of Trinidad were converted into pitched musical drums. Each steel drum or pan can produce several different notes and there are different sizes of pan, so that steelbands can play a wide range of notes like a choir. A steel pan does not sustain so each note is struck repeatedly to produce a characteristic “shimmering” sound.

Salsa

Salsa means sauce in Spanish and is a type of dance music associated with Cuba. It developed in the 1960s from a mixture of two traditional dances (the son and the rumba) with other kinds of American music such as Jazz.

The rhythm and instruments of son are influenced by Spanish and African music. The guitar is used in son bands to play a simple, harmonic accompaniment and is an example of the Spanish influence, while the rhythms and use of the percussion instruments such as bongo drums, claves and maracas are inspired by African music.

Salsa traditionally uses a 4/4 time signature and is based on a repeated rhythm called clave, around which musicians play repeated rhythmic accompaniments. The clave rhythm is central to all salsa, whether it is performed on the claves or by another instrument. The most common clave rhythm is the son clave which is eight beats long and can be played in a 2-3 or 3-2 style:

Reggae

Reggae developed in Jamaica at the end of the 1960s, emerging from two forms of Jamaican popular music, ska and rock steady. Ska combined elements of mento, jazz and rhythm ‘n’ blues to create a lively musical style which had an emphasis on the second and fourth beats of the bar. During the mid-1960s the beat of ska was slowed down to produce rock steady, a more vocal style of music which used riffs, a limited number of chords and a strong bass line. Like ska and rock steady, reggae makes use of syncopated rhythms and a characteristic back beat (emphasis on beats which features catchy melodic riffs played by the electric bass guitar.

Music of Africa

Africa is vast continent with many different regions and nations, each with its own traditions and identity. Music plays an important part in African society. It has religious, ritual and ceremonial functions as well as being used at social gatherings. African music has its roots in legends, mythology and folklore and is used to communicate feelings and emotions that express the way the society in which it is produced views the world.

Music is often combined with dance. Traditional African music is an oral tradition and was never written down. Despite Africa’s diverse and different cultures, there are some musical features such as rhythm patterns, structures, textures and the use of improvisation that unite the music of various groups and areas.

African choral music

Many African languages are tonal languages which means that the pitch level at which a word is spoken or often determines its meaning.

This affects the way melodic and rhythmic patterns in vocal music are created. Most African melodies are based on four, five, six or seven note scales. African vocal melodies are usually short and simple often being extended by repetition and improvisation.

A common way of structuring a choral piece is by using call and response. The solo singer starts with a melody and this is responded to (answered) by the other singers. During a performance it is common for different melodies to be improvised at the same time, producing a rich polyphonic/contrapuntal texture. At other times a harmonic/homophonic texture may be used. In African music this is often created by singing in thirds, fourths or fifths. Unison and parallel octave textures are also common.

Popular Music

African music has been a major influence on the development of popular music, contributing rhythms, structures, melodic features and the use of improvisation to such styles as blues and jazz brought over to America by slaves.

African Drumming

The drum is an important musical instrument in African culture. Drums have been used as a means of communication for hundreds of years, and there are many different varieties found throughout the different regions. For example: tama – talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa. The djembe is a single-headed drum which comes in a range of sizes in order to produce different pitch ranges.

Drum music may be performed by a solo instrument or in ensembles. Like vocal music, it is not notated so in a drum ensemble the performance is directed by a master drummer who stands in the middle of a circle of drummers. The master drummer often starts a piece by vocalising – making sounds with their voice- and then plays a short solo so to set the mood and tempo. This is a cue to the other drummers, who respond by copying the rhythm or by answering it with a different rhythm. This is another example of the call and response form. The drummers then add improvised rhythms to a rhythmic cycle.

The drummers often cut across the rhythm using accents in different places and on different parts of the beat which produces cross rhythms. The combination of two contrasting rhythms is called a bi-rhythm. When a number of different rhythms are combined the texture is polyrhythmic.

African Instruments

There is a wide variety of African instruments which are chosen for a particular song or instrumental performance depending on the suitability of their timbre. There are many kinds of percussion, wind and string instruments, including different kinds of harp which often have complicated tuning systems. As in African drumming, instrumental music makes use of repetition and ostinato, cyclic structures, improvisation, polyrhythmic and polyphonic/contrapuntal textures.

Xylophone

The xylophone is used in almost all of Africa but there are different types, depending upon the area. The wooden bars are set on a frame that has gourds (hollow dried shells of fruit) underneath them to help amplify the sound.

Kosika

The Kosika is a percussion instrument which consists of two small gourds or seed pods filled with beans and connected by a string. One gourd is held in the hand and the other is swung from side to side as you shake your hand. The Kosika has two sounds: a ‘shake’ created by the beans and a ‘clack’ when the two gourds or seedpods hit each other.

Kora

A kora is built from a large calabrash gourd cut in half and covered with cow skin to create a resonator. It has a notched bridge like a lute or guitar. The sound of a kora resembles a harp. The player uses the thumb and index fingers of both hands to pluck the strings, while the remaining fingers hold the instrument. Traditional koras have 21 strings, 11 played by the left hand and 10 by the right. Strings were traditionally made from thin strips of hide. The kora player moves leather tuning rings up and down the neck to tune the instrument.

Music of India

The history of Indian music stretches back over two thousand years. It is one of the oldest musical traditions in the world and is fundamentally associated with religious and cultural expression. There are two main traditions: the Hindustani tradition of northern India and the Carnatic tradition of Southern India. Indian music is not notated but is taught from master to pupil by listening and playing. Indian classical music can often be very complex but there are three common elements:

Melody – this is usually improvised from a type o scale called a rag. The melody might be sung or played on an instrument.

Drone – Indian classical music focuses on the development of melody; therefore accompaniments are usually simple. The drone is an accompaniment using only two notes a fifth apart.

Rhythm – known as the tala it is organised into repeating cycles.

Indian Instruments

The sitar

This is a plucked instrument. It has seven metal strings on which two are used to play the drone. Below these are a number of loose strings which vibrate when the strings above them are plucked with a wire plectrum. This produces the characteristic ‘twangy’ sound.

The sarangi

Smaller than the sitar with a softer sound makes it an ideal accompaniment to the voice, the sarangi uses a bow to produce its notes.

The tabla

This is a set of two different sized drums played with both hands. They play tala or rhythm cycle.

The bansuri and The shenhai

These produce sounds similar to the flute and oboe but do not have metal keys. The player covers a series of holes with his or her fingers, similar to the way a recorder is played.

Rag

A rag is the basic melody which forms the basis for melodic improvisation. It is similar to a Western scales in that it ascends and descends. However unlike a western scale each rag is individual so that the pitches of the notes may vary not only between different rags, but also on the ascending and descending forms. There are also varying numbers of notes in different rags. This is because unlike a Western scale, each Rag has a unique mood which is associated with a different occasion, season, purpose an emotion. There are over 200 different rags. In a performance the rag is used as the basis for improvisation.

Tala

The tala is a rhythm pattern that forms the basis for a set of repeating rhythmic cycles. The tala is usually played by the tabla drums. There are different talas but the most common tala used in the music of northern India is tintal. Tintal is a symmetrical rhythmic pattern made up of four individual, main beats, repeated four times (4+4+4+4). Each individual beat is called a matras and the first beat of the cycle is called a sam. During the tala cycle rhythms are improvised by both the tabla player and the instrumentalist or singer but must start and end on the first beat of the cycle (sam). These improvised rhythms or bols, contrast with the main beat of the cycle, often use accents or syncopation.

Raga

A raga performance contains all three of the elements used in Indian classical music: melody (based on a rag), the drone and the tala rhythm played by the tabla drums. There is usually a defined structure for a raga performance, with different sections. The first section called alap, starts with a slow exploration of the notes of the rag. It is in free time, often to the accompaniment of a drone. The final section called gat, contains the rhythmic tala cycle introduced on the tabla, solos and improvisation. There are often other sections in between the alap and the gat and can last for several hours.

Bhangra

Bhangra originated in the Punjab district of India and Pakistan and is traditionally a kind of folk song/dance performed during harvest. It is now associated with a fusion between Western popular music and Indian classical music. Bhangra is characterised by the use of Indian instruments such as the dhol drum, repetitive rhythms and the Punjabi language – with shouts of hoi, mixed with Western instruments such as the synthesiser.