African Religion Music

African Religion Music
by Richard Chowning

Music and religion play an important role in any culture. One has never existed without the other, especially in Africa. All streams of religion in Africa, Christian, Islamic, and African Traditional Religion contain their unique forms of music. The rhythms, tones, instruments and dances my differ, but all of it flows from the depths of the heart where passions, desires, and wounds reside. The sacred writings and oral traditions lay out the teachings and the history of each religion, but it is the music that is channels the feelings of the heart of the divine and human.

African religious music is found everywhere: blasting forth from loud speakers in markets, hymned by congregations in the houses of worship, and hummed by farmers in their fields. Taarab, gospel, or voodoo, African religious music permeates all aspects of life.
In many West Africa cultures the African traditional religions are very open and public. During all festivals and initiation rites songs are sung, often accompanied by dance. Lyrics to some of the songs are only known by those who are initiated into a cult to a particular god. Others are common knowledge. In the cool of the evening in many villages, the praises lifted up to gods and ancestral spirits can be heard.

In East Africa most of the African Traditional religion songs are heard only during rites of passage like, birth, death, and circumcision. Almost all of them are sung to the ancestors.
A large number of prominent songs sung by African Christians are imported from European and American Christian communities. A Sunday worship might be filled with tunes, sung in a vernacular yet they would be readily recognized by a foreign visitor. Some urban, African churches sing the latest Christian music from the United States in English. This type of imported music is contributes to the notion of some Africans that Christianity is a Western religion.
There are, however, a great number of Christian groups that sing songs composed by local Christian poets and set to traditional African melodies. These songs are normally sung in a vernacular. They are a testimony to the vitality of the communities of faith.

In northern Africa and on the coasts of east and west Africa, music takes on Arab influences. They are monophonic and accompanied by only string instruments or flutes. Most of the African Islamic singing is preformed by soloists, often a griot.

African forums on the Internet discuss all genre of African Music. The forums reflect the broad taste of the members.

So, you say you like African music. What genre of African music?