Oral tradition has throughout human history and across all cultures been the most powerful force for spreading cultural knowledge and skills from one generation to another. Even in literate cultures, most of the skills needed to function within the cultural group are taught not through the written word but rather through oral instruction from family and community members. Music making in Africa provides a useful illustration of the power of oral tradition; music is vital to a wide range of activities in a number of African cultures, yet musical practices are not usually passed down through written notation and instruction booklets but rather through community interaction and verbal teaching. This applies to both non-professional musicians, such those who participate in community singing and dancing during work, play and certain rituals, and professional musicians, such as praise singers and master drummers.

Although Africa contains an extraordinary variety of cultural groups, there are a few generalizations we can make regarding music that apply to a majority of those cultures. In most cases, musical practices are handed down orally rather than in written form. We should not, however, assume that this form of transmission can be used only for simple songs and straightforward dance movements. In fact, the rhythmic complexity of much African music, such as the Agbekor drumming of the Ewe people in Ghana, far exceeds anything conceived of by Beethoven, or even Henry Cowell. In addition, in many African societies musical performance involves complete community participation. As the entire community contributes to the music and dance, there is no such concept as performer and audience member. Finally, music plays a role in nearly every part of life in many traditional African societies. Farming, hunting, playing, holding religious rituals and greeting a ruler all call for unique forms of music and dance. As music plays integral roles in each of these activities, people do not necessarily differentiate the music from the activity it accompanies.

In most traditional African societies, community members learn the music and dance of everyday activities through a process of enculturation. Children absorb work songs, recreational songs, clapping patterns and dance movements simply by observing their elders and participating as soon as they are able. David Locke writes, “Babies move on the backs of their dancing mothers, youngsters play children’s games and then join adults in worship and mourning, teenagers groove to pop tunes. Raised in this way, Africans learn a way-of-being in response to music; intuitively, they know how to participate effectively” (Titon 91). This childhood absorption of musical practices allows for full community participation even music and dance involving quite rhythmic patterns and dance movements.

Professional praise singers and master drummers require training beyond the essentially effortless gaining of skills through enculturation. Praise singers such as those found in the Mande culture spend years apprenticed to a master before striking out to perform on their own. The master is often a relative of the apprentice, and the strict training regimen begins in adolescence. Masters use techniques of demonstration and oral explanation to teach apprentices how to extemporize texts based on historical stories and current events and how to improvise melodic and rhythmic accompaniment based on some traditional formulas. The specialized knowledge of the praise singer, or griot, includes not only the skills of singing and playing instruments, but also extensive genealogical information and historical stories. In the past, the griot were the primary repositories and means of transmission for both historical information and positive propaganda about their patrons, usually royalty. In the seventeenth century, English sea captain Richard Jobson wrote, “They [griot] use the singing of Songs unto their musicke the ground and effect whereof is the rehearsall of the ancient stock of the King, exhalting his antientry, and recounting all over the worthy and famous acts by him or them [that] hath been achieved: singing likewise extempore upone any occasion is offered, whereby the principall may be pleased” (Southern 8). Today, griot provide entertainment at public events such as weddings and market gatherings, depending on a broader audience for their financial support. A few have gained status as nationally-supported artists, and the practice, while changing, does not at present appear in immediate danger of dying out.

Like praise singers, master drummers learn their craft through lengthy apprenticeship. Drummers such as the lunsi of the Dagbamba in Ghana must learn not only complex rhythmic patterns, but also historical and genealogical knowledge. As was the case with praise singers, this knowledge is passed down verbally rather than in written form. In some cultures, the master drummer learns to perform drum language, an imitation of spoken word on an hourglass-shaped drum. Many African languages are tonal, meaning that the significance of an utterance depends not only on the syllable pronounced but on the pitch contour used in pronunciation. By changing the pitch on the drum, squeezing strings that run along the drum’s sides to tighten the drum heads and raise the pitch and relaxing the pressure on the strings to lower the pitch, a master drummer can imitate the pitch contours of various verbal phrases. Drum language can be used as a form of communication, but one must be well-versed in a master’s style of drum language to interpret what is being said. After years of training, master drummers can both perform the duties of historian and genealogist and take the lead in a variety of community musical events, providing the basis for the complex layers of rhythm (polyrhythm) in large group performances and providing audible signals to other performers regarding tempo and musical form.

Musicianship in traditional African societies clearly illustrates the power of oral tradition in the transmission of cultural knowledge. Without recourse to written notation or instruction, African musicians teach and learn an astonishing variety of skills and produce remarkably complex musical forms. African music owes much of its creative, improvisatory nature to oral tradition; without a codified written canon of music, performers are free to create their own versions of formulaic patterns and to extemporize song texts relevant to modern Africa. Since the time of the African Diaspora during the years of the slave trade, the rhythmic complexity and improvisatory freedom of traditional African musical skills have come to contribute greatly as well to the music of the West.

Sources:

Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd Edition. New York: Norton, 1997.

Titon, Jeff Todd, editor. Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples. 4th Edition. Belmont, CA: Schirmer Books, 2002.