Sub-Saharan African music traditions exhibit so many common features that they may in some respects be thought of as constituting a single musical system. While some African music is clearly contemporary-popular music and some is art-music, still a great deal is communal and orally transmitted while still qualifying as a religious or courtly genre.
Read more about Sub-Saharan African Music Traditions: Music and Dance in Sub-Saharan Societies, Regions, Sahel and Sudan, West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Instruments
Famous quotes containing the words african, music and/or traditions:
“Resolved, There can never be a true peace in this Republic until the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all women are practically established. Resolved, that the women of the Revolution were not wanting in heroism and self-sacrifice, and we, their daughters, are ready, in this War, to pledge our time, our means, our talents, and our lives, if need be, to secure the final and complete consecration of America to freedom.”
—Woman’s Loyal League (founded May 1861)
“It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears.... It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)