Composing the Music of Africa: Composition, Interpretation and Realisation (Ashgate Studies in Ethnomusicology)

The book brings together scholars and composers from many parts of Africa and beyond to investigate the range of processes involved in the creation of African music. The study explores how specialists put together music for their instruments or voices and how communities are involved in composition. There are discussions of traditional music and its composition from particular parts of North, South, East and West Africa, and contemporary composers talk about their involvement with African music as part of their material or as their inspiration, including methods of incorporation and assimilation, and their effectiveness. -- Contents: 1. Introduction: Composing the Music of Africa /Malcolm Floyd; 2. Melodic and Rhythmic Aspects of African Music / Christopher James; --- Pt. I. The Making of 'Traditional' Musics -- Egypt: 3. Egyptian Folk Music / Adel Kamel; -- Ghana. 4. The Roots of Ghanaian Composers / James Flolu; 5. Drumming in Ghana / Trevor Wiggins; 6. The Xylophone Tradition of North-West Ghana / Trevor Wiggins; -- Uganda. 7. The Making of Karimojong' Cattle Songs / Kenneth Gourlay; 8. Embaire Xylophone Music of Samusiri Babalanda / Gerhard Kubik; -- Kenya: 9. Warrior Composers: Maasai Boys and Men / Malcolm Floyd; 10. New Lyres in Northern Kenya: The Enchamunge of the Samburu and the Kilumba of the Turkana / Malcolm Floyd; --- Pt. II. The Changing Faces of Music: 11. Consumer-led Creation: Taarab Music Composition in Zanzibar / Janet Topp Fargion; 12. Kwela: The Structure and Sound of Pennywhistle Music / Lara Allen; 13. Keeping our Ears to the Ground: Cross-Culturalism and the Composer in South Africa, 'Old' and 'New' / Hans Roosenschoon; 14. Timbila / Hans Roosenschoon; 15. Black - White - Rainbow: A Personal View on what African Music means to the Contemporary Western Composer / Geoffrey Poole; 16. Egyptian Composition in the Twentieth Century / Adel Kamel