An earlier article here explored some of the depths of traditional African music. It has often been commercialized, so I’ll now recommend some of my favorite artists.
Floodgates opened in Africa in the 1960s. The late ‘60s and early ‘70s made up a golden era of African pop music, as they did in Western rock. As the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Cream, the Kinks, the Electric Flag, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck, Yes, Moby Grape, Chicago, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, and Frank Zappa synthesized many styles into some of the most exciting music ever played, so did several African bands. Many nations had gained independence in the 1950s and 1960s, and people had high hopes for prosperity before crackdowns by corrupt governments, crushing inflation, and intertribal wars plagued much of the continent. Funk, reggae, rock, blues, jazz, psychedelia, soul, and Latin American music were synthesized with African instruments and traditional rhythms. A flowering of styles emerged that grooved all over the world.
In Nigeria Fela Kuti and his drummer Tony Allen created Afrobeat by fusing funk, rock, jazz, and traditional rhythms. Fela was jailed and beaten nearly to death for lyrics that protested his government’s brutality and corruption, but it’s impossible to stop his music’s appeal. It spread to young Westerners, and the legendary rock and jazz drummer Ginger Baker, who formerly played with Eric Clapton in Cream and Blind Faith, moved to Nigeria and performed with him. Baker included several Nigerian drummers in his answer when a fan asked what music made him cry.
Tony Allen then embarked on a brilliant solo career. His albums blend different instruments and voices into balanced dialogs, and each album is unique. Black Voices has a sultry afterhours urban sound, with a prominent electric bass guitar, a muffled six-string electric guitar, electric keyboards, and Tony’s deep voice. He recorded a later album, Home Cooking, in London and included British and female voices. A more recent album, The Source, mixes several horns which play jazzier harmonies. All of his releases create soundscapes with textures that express tolerance and global harmony and project them with irresistible beats.
Several high-octane bands emerged in Benin, which blended traditional African music and Western pop. If T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, El Rego, Antoine Dougbe, and Honore Avolonto don’t get you moving, check your pulse; you might be dead.
Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab played the Cuban pop that had dominated its country’s music in the 1950s, and added polyrhythmic drumming and extended jams with rock guitar and jazzy saxophone lines. Zimbabwe’s the Green Arrows spiced up bars in tough mining towns by mixing funk and rock on electric guitars at breakneck tempos that could put Metallica through their paces. John Chibadura was an equally energetic performer from the same country.
Hip hop is now sometimes added to African ensembles. Even the South African group Ladysmith Black Mombazo blended a little of it with their joyful a cappella gospel music.
Some musicians invent new instruments. The CD Congotronics II contains music of people in DR Congo who migrated to Kinshasa’s suburbs from the country. The sprawling city’s crowds were too big and loud for traditional performances to be heard by the whole community. Unable to afford regal Gibson electric guitars and stacks of Marshall amplifiers, some bands created makeshift electronic instruments by adding magnets and copper wires to homemade guitars and traditional thumb pianos and hooking them to cheap amplifiers. They obtained much of their equipment from a local car parts yard. One instrument, a bass thumb piano that’s so big that the player sits on its resonating chamber, creates a loud buzz that rumbles under the interlocking drums, guitars, rattles, and singers. Don’t play the CD loud while driving unless you want a speeding ticket.
Gigi is an entrancing singer who has been called Ethiopia’s gift to the world. She blends impassioned singing from her mountainous land’s pastoral traditions with Western pop music. Baba Maal is a Fulani vocalist from Senegal with the soulful voice of his people’s heritage of wandering.
Mali has spawned many extraordinary musicians. Toumani Diabate is a virtuoso kora player. Bassekou Kouyate formed a band of stellar ngoni players (a stringed instrument with a wooden body with animal skin stretched over it, which is related to the banjo) that perform traditional songs and jam the roof off. Habib Koité is a guitarist and singer who claims that Mali is rich, and backs it up by blending many of its musical styles.
Eyuphuro is a band from Mozambique with guitars, horns, and percussion complementing pliant female singers. They often use harmonies from their country’s Portuguese heritage.
Konono No1 and the Kasai Allstars are rocking DR Congo with amplified traditional instruments. The music of both bands is a dense blend of sounds rather than distinct notes that you hear clearly. Voices, drums, amplified thumb pianos, and electric guitars fuse into lush soundscapes that seem to convey the energy of the forest that people lived in before they crowded into cities.
Not all African music is up-tempo. Ayub Ogada is a Luo singer from Kenya who mixes his gentle voice with lyre playing and complex rhythms. His music is so joyful that it’s ideal for children. The Ugandan singer and kalimba player Samite writes and performs some of the most tender-hearted music I’ve ever heard. He also directs Musicians for World Harmony.
Each artist is unique, and African countries have their own music scenes with revered legends and up-and-comers. An American fan said that if music were currency, Africa would be the richest place on earth. He obviously should learn more about Western classical, jazz, Latin American music, Southeast Asian music, and Indian, Chinese, Arabic, and Persian classical, but Africa is one of the richest places. You can explore wealth in Indian and Chinese assumptions about music here.