Concepts of African Musical Theory

Abstract

It may be worth pointing out right at the outset that most of the theories formulated on the music of sub-Saharan Africa have come from western researchers. Although some of these investigators have been trained musicians and musicologistsespecially in recent years-many have stumbled onto African music through other disciplines or, in some cases, by the happenstance of finding themselves in Africa as missionaries, doctors, explorers, or mere adventurers. The approach to the subject of African music emanates from equally varied perspectives: some come with preconceived ideas into which African music must be made to fit, some dabble into African music as a way out, having failed to make a success in the practice of the music of their own culture or to make a significant contribution in the scholarship of it, and yet some approach things African with disdain or, at best, condescension. One of the best-known scholars in African music, the Reverend Arthur Morris Jones (1949: 18), states that:

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