The Yoruba God of Drumming

The Yoruba God of Drumming PDF

Author: Amanda Villepastour

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1496803523

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As one of the salient forces in the ritual life of those who worship the pre-Christian and Muslim deities called orishas, the Yorùbá god of drumming, known as Àyàn in Africa and Añá in Cuba, is variously described as the orisha of drumming, the spirit of the wood, or the more obscure Yorùbá praise name AsòròIgi (Wood That Talks). With the growing global importance of orisha religion and music, the consequence of this deity's power for devotees continually reveals itself in new constellations of meaning as a sacred drum of Nigeria and Cuba finds new diasporas. Despite the growing volume of literature about the orishas, surprisingly little has been published about the ubiquitous Yorùbá music spirit. Yet wherever one hears drumming for the orishas, Àyàn or Añá is nearby. This groundbreaking collection addresses the gap in the research with contributions from a cross-section of prestigious musicians, scholars, and priests from Nigeria, the Americas, and Europe who have dedicated themselves to studying Yorùbá sacred drums and the god sealed within. As well as offering multidisciplinary scholarly insights from transatlantic researchers, the volume includes compelling first-hand accounts from drummer-priests who were themselves history-makers in Nigerian and Cuban diasporas in the United States, Venezuela, and Brazil. This collaboration between diverse scholars and practitioners constitutes an innovative approach, where differing registers of knowledge converge to portray the many faces and voices of a single god.

African Drumming

African Drumming PDF

Author: Modesto Mawulolo Kwaku Amegago

Publisher: Africa Research and Publications

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781592219353

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The book will be useful to musicians, drummers, dancers, musicologists, dance ethnologists, arts therapists, art historians, linguists, philosophers and other social scientists. The book is divided into eight chapters: Chapter one reviews the definitions, concepts, and origins of African drums. Chapter two provides a discussion of drums found among the African peoples and samples of drums. Chapter three re-examines the uses and functions of drums in African and African Diaspora societies while chapter four reviews the role of drummers in African societies; drummers' training, status and remuneration. Chapter five discusses the organization of drumming/music and dance groups in African and African Diaspora societies. Chapter six discusses the materials used in constructing the drums, the drum making, tuning and naming processes.

Oral Literature in Africa

Oral Literature in Africa PDF

Author: Ruth Finnegan

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2012-09

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 1906924708

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Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Tony Allen

Tony Allen PDF

Author: Tony Allen

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2013-09-27

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0822377098

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Tony Allen is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the rhythmic engine of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Conversational, inviting, and packed with telling anecdotes, Allen's memoir is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the musician and scholar Michael E. Veal. It spans Allen's early years and career playing highlife music in Lagos; his fifteen years with Fela, from 1964 until 1979; his struggles to form his own bands in Nigeria; and his emigration to France. Allen embraced the drum set, rather than African handheld drums, early in his career, when drum kits were relatively rare in Africa. His story conveys a love of his craft along with the specifics of his practice. It also provides invaluable firsthand accounts of the explosive creativity in postcolonial African music, and the personal and artistic dynamics in Fela's Koola Lobitos and Africa 70, two of the greatest bands to ever play African music.

Orishas: African Hidden gods of Worship

Orishas: African Hidden gods of Worship PDF

Author: Jim Landry

Publisher: Truth Book Publishers

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1618132814

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A emerging shift in praise, worship and music has secretly been introduced into many Christian fellowships during past 400 years and now is the hour of restoration. The demonic effects of drumming in Christian Worship, Drum assisted Prophesy, Secular Music and Television.

Divining the Self

Divining the Self PDF

Author: Velma E. Love

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-29

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 0271061456

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Divining the Self weaves elements of personal narrative, myth, history, and interpretive analysis into a vibrant tapestry that reflects the textured, embodied, and performative nature of scripture and scripturalizing practices. Velma Love examines the Odu—the Yoruba sacred scriptures—along with the accompanying mythology, philosophy, and ritual technologies engaged by African Americans. Drawing from the personal narratives of African American Ifa practitioners along with additional ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oyotunji African Village, South Carolina, and New York City, Love’s work explores the ways in which an ancient worldview survives in modern times. Divining the Self also takes up the challenge of determining what it means for the scholar of religion to study scripture as both text and performance. This work provides an excellent case study of the sociocultural phenomenon of scripturalizing practices.

Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum

Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum PDF

Author: Amanda Villepastour

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780754667537

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The bata is one of the most important and representative percussion traditions of the people in southwest Nigeria, and is now learnt and performed around the world. Although the bata is one of the oldest known Yoruba drumming traditions, the drum and its unique language are now unfamiliar to many contemporary Yoruba people. Amanda Villepastour provides the first academic study of the bata's communication technology and the elaborate coded spoken language of bata drummers, which they refer to as 'ena bata'. The description and analysis of this unique musical system adds substantially to what is known about bata drumming specifically, Yoruba drumming generally, speech surrogacy in music and coded systems of speaking. In this way, the book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and anthropologists, but also to linguists and those interested in African Studies.

Music and Trance

Music and Trance PDF

Author: Gilbert Rouget

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1985-12-15

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0226730069

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Ritual trance has always been closely associated with music—but why, and how? Gilbert Rouget offers and extended analysis of music and trance, concluding that no universal law can explain the relations between music and trance; they vary greatly and depend on the system of meaning of their cultural context. Rouget rigorously examines a worldwide corpus of data from ethnographic literature, but he also draws on the Bible, his own fieldwork in West Africa, and the writings of Plato, Ghazzali, and Rousseau. To organize this immense store of information, he develops a typology of trance based on symbolism and external manifestations. He outlines the fundamental distinctions between trance and ecstasy, shamanism and spirit possession, and communal and emotional trance. Music is analyzed in terms of performers, practices, instruments, and associations with dance. Each kind of trance draws strength from music in different ways at different points in a ritual, Rouget concludes. In possession trance, music induces the adept to identify himself with his deity and allows him to express this identification through dance. Forcefully rejecting pseudo-science and reductionism, Rouget demystifies the so-called theory of the neurophysiological effects of drumming on trance. He concludes that music's physiological and emotional effects are inseparable from patterns of collective representations and behavior, and that music and trance are linked in as many ways as there are cultural structures.