The continent of Africa boasts a vast and diverse musical landscape, with distinct musical traditions varying across different regions and nations. African music incorporates genres such as makwaya, highlife, mbube, township music, jùjú, fuji, jaiva, afrobeat, afrofusion, mbalax, Congolese rumba, soukous, ndombolo, makossa, kizomba, and taarab.
Like the music of Asia, India, and the Middle East, African music is highly rhythmic. The complex rhythmic patterns often involve one rhythm played against another to create a polyrhythm. The most common polyrhythm plays three beats on top of two, like a triplet played against straight notes. Another distinguishing form of African music is its call-and-response style, where one voice or instrument plays a short melodic phrase, and that phrase is echoed by another voice or instrument.
Besides vocalisation, which uses various techniques such as complex hard melisma and yodel, a wide array of musical instruments are also used. African musical instruments include a wide range of drums, slit gongs, rattles and double bells, different types of harps, and harp-like instruments such as the kora and the ngoni, as well as fiddles, many kinds of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira, and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.
Among these instruments, wind instruments hold a significant place, with flutes, reed pipes, and trumpets being the primary divisions. Let's delve into the fascinating world of African horn instrument types.
There are five groups of Sub-Saharan African musical instruments: membranophones, chordophones, aerophones, idiophones, and percussion. Aerophones are another name for wind instruments. These can include flutes and trumpets, similar to the instruments one hears in American music.
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African traditional music is frequently functional in nature. Performances may be long and often involve the participation of the audience. There are, for example, specialized work songs, songs accompanying childbirth, marriage, hunting and political activities, music to ward off evil spirits and to pay respects to good spirits, the dead and the ancestors. None of this is performed outside its intended social context and much of it is associated with a particular dance.
Historically, several factors have influenced the traditional music of Africa. The music has been influenced by language, the environment, a variety of cultures, politics, and population movement, all of which are intermingled. Each African group evolved in a different area of the continent, which means that they ate different foods, faced different weather conditions, and came in contact with different groups than other societies did.
The archaic bull-roarer (a board attached by rope to a stick and whirled about in the air) survives in various localities, notably in southern Africa among the San and neighboring peoples.
Of the wind instruments proper, the three main divisions-flutes, reed pipes, and trumpets-are all well represented, though the second of these is more restricted in distribution than the others.
10 Musical Instruments You Didn't Know Where Invented In Africa
Flutes
At the southernmost tip of the continent, the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1497 encountered a band of Khoekhoe people “playing upon four or five flutes of reed.” Ensembles of single-note stopped flutes playing on the hocket principle, with each flute blowing its note in rotation, have been reported from various regions, ranging from southern Africa through eastern Congo (Kinshasa), Uganda, and South Sudan to southern Ethiopia.
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Panpipe ensembles are less common, but notable examples have been witnessed in central Africa, and particularly among the Nyungwe of Mozambique. There are many other types of open and stopped flutes-cylindrical and conical; transverse and end-blown; made from bamboo, reed, roots, stems, wood, clay, bone, and horn. Globular flutes made from small spherical gourds or from hard-shelled fruits such as Oncoba spinosa are found in southern Africa, Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Guinea, and elsewhere.
End-blown notched flutes, with a U- or V-shaped embouchure, either with or without finger holes, are widely distributed across the continent. The long Zulu umtshingo has an obliquely cut embouchure; there are no finger holes, but a double range of overblown harmonics is produced by alternately stopping and unstopping the lower end with a finger. Such instruments and many others throughout the continent are played singly, but in many areas flutes are played in pairs or in combination with other instruments.
Reed Pipes
Transverse clarinets are used throughout the West African savanna region, from Guinea to Cameroon. These are single-reed pipes made from hollow guinea corn or sorghum stems, the reed being a flap partially cut from the stem near one end. Single and double clarinets are found in southern Sudan and South Sudan among the Dinka people.
Conical double-reed instruments of the oboe or shawm type have spread around the northeastern and northwestern fringes of Africa wherever Islam has taken root. Despite local variations, they are basically related to the Arab zūrnā, having a disk (or pirouette) below the reed that supports the player’s lips.
Trumpets
Lip-vibrated aerophones made from a variety of materials are widespread in Africa. Apart from musical uses, some serve for signaling. In West Africa, side-blown ivory or horn instruments may transmit verbal praises of chiefs and rulers. Among the Hausa, the long metal kakaki and wooden farai, both end-blown, fulfill this role in combination with drums.
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In East and central Africa, the instruments are often made from gourds, wood, hide, horn, or a combination of these materials. In the historic kingdom of Buganda (now part of Uganda), trumpet sets were part of the royal regalia. Throughout Africa, more than one or two notes are seldom produced from a single trumpet, but trumpet ensembles are common, playing in hocket fashion.
One notable example of a horn instrument is the vuvuzela.
The Vuvuzela
The vuvuzela is a horn with an inexpensive injection-moulded plastic shell about 65 centimetres (2 ft) long, which produces a loud monotone note typically around B♭ 3. Some models are made in two parts to facilitate storage, and this design also allows pitch variation. The term vuvuzela was first used in South Africa from the Zulu language or from a Nguni language.
Similar horns have been in existence for much longer. Controversies over the invention arose in early 2010. The world association football governing body, FIFA, proposed banning vuvuzelas from stadiums, as they were seen as potential weapons for hooligans and could be used in ambush marketing.
Columnist Jon Qwelane described the device as "an instrument from hell". South African football authorities argued that the vuvuzela was part of the South African football experience. FIFA President Sepp Blatter responded, "we should not try to Europeanise an African World Cup".
The vuvuzelas raised health and safety concerns, with the potential to cause noise-induced hearing loss. Nine English Premier League clubs have banned the device. However, two clubs (Manchester City and Stoke City) have allowed them.
Usage of vuvuzela in art music is limited. The vuvuzela is suitable as a toy musical instrument and for the music education for young children. John-Luke Mark Matthews has written a concerto in B-flat major for vuvuzela and orchestra.
| Instrument Type | Description | Materials | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-Note Stopped Flutes | Ensembles playing on the hocket principle | Reed | Southern Africa, Eastern Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, Southern Ethiopia |
| Panpipe Ensembles | Ensembles playing panpipes | Bamboo | Central Africa, Mozambique |
| Transverse Clarinets | Single-reed pipes | Guinea corn or sorghum stems | West African savanna region |
| Kakaki | Long metal trumpet | Metal | West Africa (Hausa) |
| Vuvuzela | Plastic horn producing a loud monotone note | Plastic | South Africa |
