The African Imagination in Music

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which it rests. Agawu leads his readers through an exploration of the traditions, structural elements, instruments, and performative techniques that characterize the music. In sections that focus upon rhythm, melody, form, and harmony, the essential parts of African music come into relief. While traditional music, the backbone of Africa's musical thinking, receives the most attention, Agawu also supplies insights into popular and art music in order to demonstrate the breadth of the African musical imagination. Close readings of a variety of songs, including an Ewe dirge, an Aka children's song, and Fela's 'Suffering and Smiling' supplement the broader discussion.
The African Imagination in Music foregrounds a hitherto under-reported legacy of recordings and insists on the necessity of experiencing music as sound in order to appreciate and understand it fully. Accordingly, a Companion Website features important examples of the music discussed in detail in the book. Accessibly and engagingly written for a general audience, The African Imagination in Music is poised to renew interest in Black African music and to engender discussion of its creative underpinnings by Africanists, ethnomusicologists, music theorists and musicologists.

• Representing African Music
• Kwaito's Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
• Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics (African Expressive Cultures)
• The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States
• Dance on the Volcano
• Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
• Sulwe
• Theory of African Music, Volume I (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
• Theory of African Music, Volume II (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
• The Music of Africa