Introduction to African Music 101

African music typically ranges from 110 BPM to somewhere around 128 BMP .

It mainly uses a poly-rhythmic structure and features ethnic percussion instruments like kalimba's , Silimba's djembe's or ngoma's . Unfortunately there a few places where you can find sound sample packs of these instruments but if you have a K100 or $10 then just visit Kabwata Cultural Market in Lusaka or a local drum in your area they might have some .

Traditional African music like Kalindula and Rumba tend to use guitars a lot . Kalindula however places a lot of emphasis on guitar picking, the guitars are usually acoustic guitars or electric guitars , most notable Kalindula artists like Kalambo Hit Parade or PK Chishala had powerful guitar skills .

Rumba in contrast places emphasis on the vocals and bass rhythm of the track .

In recent years Afro beat another sub-genre of African Music has gained massive popularity , Afrobeat tends to fuse African musical elements with foreign music elements . It tends to use African rhythms and percussions accompanied with synthesizers  . Popular tracks include Davido's Dami Duro , Wizkid's Azonto , Fuse ODG's Antenna and P - Squares Shekinini. Notable producers include Don Jazzy , Oscar , Shizzi , Killbeat ,Dice-On-The-Beat and Tonny Breezy .

In our next post we shall continue with our introduction and discuss South African House .