African Musical Symbolism In Contemporary Perspective - Saoas.org

some light percussion instruments. In fact, women sometimes
run their own music performance groups that are linked to
women’s initiation groups, age-sets, secret societies and
economic associations. The Akan of Ghana for instance have allfemale
adenkum and nnwonkoro groups that perform at
funerals and whose recitatives sometimes dwell negatively on
the behaviour of their men-folk. It is a woman known as the
adowahemmaa (adowa queen) who runs the adowa court dance
in the Asante capital of Kumasi. The women of the Mende
people of Sierra Leone have their sande secret societies in which
they play their bundu drums.
In Africa, musicking is spread out more evenly between the
sexes, between young and old, between the players and
audience, drummer and dancers, cantor and chorus. As will be
discussed later, the music is also often composed communally
and owned communally.
The Balance of the Hot and Cool
Percussive energy and frictional heat is a result of several
factors generated within the polyrhythmic flux. One already
discussed is the internal polarised interplay between on/offbeats
in individual rhythms. Another is the permutational combination
produced by the overlapping of multiple rhythmic patterns.
However, these rhythms are not just percussive patterns but also
straightforward sound waves, therefore the various sound waves
of the cross-rhythms mingle and blend in a physical process that
was discussed earlier known as interference.
Polyrhythmic heat and power is generated irrespective of the
Beat’s tempo – whether slow or fast. But, even in the very fastest
types of African religious drumming47 used to spark off states of
trance-possession, the master-musician remains cool, calm and
tranquil. To borrow a phrase from the poet T.S. Eliot they
become “the still point in a turning world”.
47 So-called “fetish” or “juju” drumming: both derogatory European names for
traditional African religions. “Fetish” is from the Portuguese word for false or
idolatrous and “juju” is from the French word “jouer” to play; thus a jouer-jouer
or a play-play childlike religion.
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