African Negro Music

Abstract

The purport of this article is to provide an answer to the following questions: 1. What is African music like as compared to our own? 2. How can it be made use of in Church and School? The answer might be as brief as the questions: 1. African and (modern) European music are constructed on entirely different principles, and therefore 2. they cannot be fused into one, but only the one or the other can be used without compromise. The attention of most of my readers will only be engaged by the second of these points as being one of practical interest, while the first is of a more theoretical nature. But my second answer being only a conclusion drawn from my first one, I shall have to support it by entering on some theoretical detail; it will not, therefore, be possible to keep altogether clear of musical technicalities. Readers who feel alarmed at the idea of having to find their way through analyses of this kind, or to read music, may safely confine their attention to the last section; as for the preceding ones, they will, it is hoped, be indulgent towards the author, granting him that it would be difficult to state a thing without speaking of it.

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