MUSICAL CULTURE OF WEST AFRICA
WEST AFRICAN DRUMMING
Ensemble drumming is practiced throughout West Africa. Drum ensembles play for recreation, ceremonies, weddings, funerals, parties, and religious meetings. Other instruments often join the drums to accompany singing and dancing. Drumming, singing, and dancing are often performed in a circular formation.
WEST AFRICAN VOCAL STYLES
Solo and group singing are both performed in West Africa. One of the most popular singing formats is the call-and-response alternation between a soloist and the group that sings the response. In a West African call-and-response song, the soloist often varies both the melody and the words while the group sings the same response each time. This form of improvisation on the solo call has remained an important characteristic of the music of Africans wherever they have gone. Enslaved Africans sang in this style, and it has remained a feature of some styles that developed later, such as African American spirituals, work songs, jazz, calypso, and other styles found in the United States, the Caribbean, and South America.
West African singers frequently sing without vibrato, favoring a strong, straight tone that vocalists call the "chest voice." Sometimes West Africans sing with an intentionally raspy or buzzy quality. Glissandos, bends, and swoops are common vocal traits.
Harmony is a prominent characteristic of West African singing. In Ghana, for example, the melody is often harmonized by a parallel part sung a third or a sixth above or below. This same parallel harmony is also heard in the singing of people of African descent living in Latin America.