Prof Daniel Avorgbedor, University of Ghana, Legon
Prof Thomas Pooley, University of South Africa
We are excited to launch this first issue of Analytical Approaches to African Music (AAAM) with three outstanding essays on musical practices from across the continent. Our goal in establishing this new journal is to develop a multidisciplinary critical forum for theories of African music that is freely accessible to students and scholars everywhere. We hope that AAAM will foster a community of scholarship that is open and diverse. The journal aims to grow scholarship on and for the continent thus embracing trends that are most salient to Africa’s intellectual discourses. We are delighted to have the support of an enthusiastic editorial board, as well as strong support from the International Foundation for the Theory and Analysis of World Musics (IFTAWM) who have sponsored the journal’s online platform.
The journal encourages a broad reading of ‘theory’ while emphasising the ‘analytical.’ Thus, we anticipate contributions on the following themes: theorising African music; the analysis of African art music and composition; redefining “African musicology”; new perspectives on orature and the oral-written interface; technologies and ideologies of transcription and interpretation; re-examining the intersections of music theory, composition, performance, and ownership; and indigenous knowledge systems and epistemologies as the ground for new analytical approaches. Scholars working creatively to theorise African music, dance, sound, and gesture, and those whose work productively engages with established discourses in the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, composition, music theory, music psychology, anthropology, ethnochoreology, artificial intelligence and technologies of transcription, analysis; all are encouraged to join this critical forum. We look forward to publishing a range of data sets that will be critical to refining and sustaining interest in general analytical constructs on African music; and that are necessary in moving scholarship on African musics and related sites of performance into a new transdisciplinary dialogue.
Why this journal, now? What sets AAAM apart from established journals is the emphasis on theory, analysis, and technologies that will advance our understanding of African music in a forum that is freely accessible to all. African music studies have for too long been denied a disciplinary home with music theory and analysis relegated to a peripheral role. There are many reasons for this neglect. The ideology of African complexity, and its corollary, chaos, have overcomplicated African music and sidelined it from the broader field of music theory. This is not to deny the extraordinary work of generations of scholars dedicated to the sounds of the continent and its peoples, but to recognise that theories of African music remain neglected by the traditional academic specialisations that inform the hiring of faculty at institutions globally but on the African continent in particular. Ethnomusicology is increasingly the disciplinary home to which Africanists are transplanted, and yet its disciplinary agendas are not primarily analytical. To recognise the size and scope of African music theories requires a broader panoply of disciplinary agendas that admits of diversity and ideological controversy.
There are several regional and a few pan-African journals that have a multidisciplinary character. AAAM is however unique in requiring that authors engage with music’s sounded elements in a fundamental way. We hope that the contents, future directions, and readership of AAAM will develop a strong profile of those committed to the practice of African music, enlivening the performance of traditional, popular, and art musics in schools, universities, and in public spaces around the world. Theory and praxis work best in harmony. We are also acutely aware that the diversity of African musics has barely been touched on in the published literature. The many thousands of dialects and instrumental traditions of the continent and in its diaspora remain a vast and poorly tapped reservoir of knowledge for which new technologies of transcription, analysis, and theorisation offer new avenues for exploration and explication. This journal will serve as a fulcrum for those harnessing the potential of these new methods in advancing networks of scholarship that we hope. Our objectives are thus plural; they include a vision of illuminating and supporting, among others, the more “politically correct” nomenclature and signifier “African Musics,” the plural, instead of the singular—“African music.” Thus, even if AAAM might seem nonchalant to contemporary tendencies toward “political correctness” and “multiplicities” the scope, contents, range of discourses and analytical schemes engaged and provoked in AAAM over time will certainly enable and sustain critical and innovative analytical imaginations. Thus, analytical rigor and yet in creative-critical theoretical purview, and without being imbricated unproductively in extended decolonial foregroundings. What we might label as “pure scholarship” may assume or admit phases and forces of political-social activisms, beyond any pure “intellectual activism.” Ultimately, AAAM hopes to contribute both to enlarging spaces for the production of new and significantly enhanced knowledge and appreciation of the musics of African and African-derived societies and cultures in time and place. AAAM hopes to encourage and build on recent scholarship by stimulating fresh analytical ideas and supportive materials from diverse geocultural areas and from various fields of study.
Published in this inaugural issue are three important essays on topics, issues, and analytical techniques and processes. The first of these is Marc Chemillier’s work on Malagasi music which is titled, “The smile of Velonjoro: Bi-musicality and the use of artificial intelligence in the analysis of Madagascar zither music.” Chemillier revisits Mantle Hood’s concept of bi-musicality through the lens of artificial intelligence. His case study of Malagasi music draws on a decades-long collaboration with the zither player, Velonjoro, who passed on prior to the completion of this work. The use of AI in reconstructing his practice of improvisation and music performance raises important ethical questions while at the same time demonstrating the potential of this technology for advancing African music studies. Chemillier’s article interfaces with cross-disciplinary work by scholars in music perception and cognition, music theory, jazz, and machine learning. Importantly, his article is based in a humanist tradition and the reference to a smile emphasises the possibilities of AI for embracing interpersonal connection that arises from ethnographic research.
Martin Scherzinger’s essay draws on a rich vein of historical research in the fields of music theory and African music to advance new approaches to the study of meter. In, “Meter as algorithmic transformation: The case of precolonial Africa,” Scherzinger centres his analysis on studies of musical meter by Gerhard Kubik before moving to critical appraisal of philosophies of musical meter grounded in his deep reading of historical and contemporary literatures on these topics. That the “precolonial” figures in this “algorithmic transformation” is significant in light of the questions Scherzinger poses at the end of his article, such as: “How […] might one relativize Euro-industrial practices of meter (and its attendant rhythm-concept) as well as Africanize those metric practices that go as universal? Can we assume, in the spirit of the central protagonists of this story, that the Eurogenetic inflection of musical time is but an historical outburst, however massive, of the inevitable forces leading toward an insurgent set of universal ideas?” Theorists of musical time will find these questions especially provocative and engaging as they respond to recent critiques their disciplines.
The third essay in this first issue is by Rainer Polak: “From Mali to Ghana: An Empirical Critique of the Theory of African Rhythm.” Polak’s research converges on the music of two West Africa nations, Mali and Ghana, to rethink the theory of African rhythm. The supposed unity of African music is a concept that has frequently been celebrated and denied. Leaning on the latter, Polak questions the plausibility of a unified theory of rhythm on empirical grounds. He elucidates a tension in African music research between those emphasising the diversity of its creations and others pointing to its stylistic coherence and uniformity. Following a wide-ranging review of the literature, he questions whether the unified theories are “even empirically plausible.” By focusing on the temporal structure of the fast pulse in drumming ensembles he demonstrates through analysis how important differences across cultures nullify the hypothesis of an underlying essence to practices; and this within a single region of Africa. This article calls out for debate on a theoretical praxis in African music studies that is both ideological and political, and we encourage responses in future issues.
As the editors of this new critical forum, we call on scholars invested in the musics of Africa to think anew the possibilities for theory and analysis in this journal. The editors encourage article submissions, reviews, commentaries, and correspondence that constructively engages with the data and issues raised by AAAM authors. Please remember to visit the journal’s website frequently to access the latest essays. Our sincere thanks to Lawrence Shuster and the team at the International Foundation for the Theory and Analysis of World Music for supporting the establishment of this journal. We are also grateful to those who contributed to its intellectual formation, including Kofi Agawu, Martin Scherzinger, and Rainer Polak.