Is African Music Possible?

Abstract

Sometime during the midsixties, I had the good fortune to attend a major arts festival being held in Belgium, that of Knokkele-Zoute. At the pavillion devoted to electronic music, to which I had wandered out of curiosity, I found myself in conversation with one of the organizers, who, observing my obvious perplexity at the sounds which emanated from the formidable array of equipment there and on learning that I was from Africa, remarked that since this music was really no different in its fundamental principles from the traditional music of my native continent, I was well placed to appreciate what he himself felt to be its special appeal. One can of course summon an array of objections to the remark of my Belgian interlocutor, beginning with the assumption that electronic music has any intrinsic musical or aesthetic appeal. But I have often wondered, ever since my conversation with him, about the wider implications of the rapprochement he made between traditional African music and the

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