African Musical Symbolism In Contemporary Perspective - Saoas.org

music, miming and masked dancing of Africa, whose master-ofceremonies
combine the roles of artist, priest, teacher, doctor,
historian and social commentator.
Another way black and African musical holism is manifested
is through circularity. Whereas European classical music follows
the strict time of the score-line from overture to grand finale,
black music proceeds in a series of more immediate and
digestible harmonic motions. These include the twelve and
sixteen bar cycles of the blues, the percussive alternations of on
and offbeat, the riffs and repercussions of rock and rumba and
the looped modes and rhythmic patterns of modern jazz and
traditional African dance-music.
The circle or mandala is one of the oldest symbols for the
harmony of opposites and this is why a curved musical sensibility
is so prevalent in non- or pre-industrial societies. The rounds and
catches of folk-music, twirling Sufi dervishes, the ragas of India,
baroque canon-fugues, the Gamelan orchestras of Indonesia, the
spiral dances of the ancient Mediterranean and the counterclockwise
ones of Africa. Thanks to African and African-derived
popular dance-music this archetypal symbol of unity is musically
back with us again in the contemporary world.
As mentioned earlier, the black music explosion from the
early twentieth century coincided with the decomposition of
European art music. However, this demise itself echoed the
broader disintegration of European symbols. To understand this
we have to first turn back to the optimism of the early industrial
age.
This period was the heyday of classical music, by which time
the earlier polyphony had been trimmed down to a single
monodic melody, and time had been cut up into regularly
accented bar-lines. It is no coincidence that it was around this
time that the Protestant Reformation was battling the vestiges
of polytheism they saw in the Catholic Church with its numerous
saints, angels and Virgin Mary. For they wanted to reduce
Christianity to the authority of a single Heavenly Maestro: or
more precisely the masculine Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost (Spiritus).
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