Simultaneous multidimensionality in African music: musical cubism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v8i3.1826Abstract
"Simultaneous multidimensionality" names a condition prevalent in many African traditions of performance art in which music is coherent from different aural and kinesthetic perspectives at the same time. This changeable, plural quality is preset in composed musical works and, in musical performance, affects on-the-spot decisions. Simultaneously multidimensional music can have charismatic force that is capable of generating a transformative affective experience in knowing listeners. The quality of simultaneous multidimensionality warrants consideration as a fundamental dimension in a general theory of structure and aesthetics of African works of performance art.References
Agawu, Kofi 1995 African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Agawu, Kofi 2003 Representing African Music, London: Routledge
Ampene, Kwasi 2005 Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana: The Creative Process in Nnwonkoro, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Company
Anku, Willie 1997 "Principles of Rhythm Integration in African Drumming", Black Music Research Journal, 17(2)(Autumn): 211-238
Antliff, Mark and Patricia Leighten 2001 Cubism and Culture, London: Thames and Hudson
Arom, Simha 1991 African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Benson, Bruce 2003 Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Berliner, Paul 1993 The Soul of Mbira, Berkeley: University of California Press
Blake, Jody 1999 Le Tumulte Noir, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press
Bohannan, Paul and Phillip Curtin 1995 Africa and Africans, Prospect Heights, ILL: Waveland Press
Brandel, Rose 1959 "The African Hemiola Style", Ethnomusicology, 3(3)(September): 106- 117
Burns, James 2005 "My Mother Has a Television, Does Yours? Transformation and Secularization in an Ewe Funeral Drum Tradition", http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/20ii/bums
Chernoff, John 1979 African Rhythm and African Sensibility, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Chernoff, John 1985 "Drummers of Dagbon", in Marks and Haydon (eds) Repercussions: A Celebration of African-American Music, London: Century Publishing, pp. 101-127
Clifford, James 1985 "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 351- 368
Cooper, Harry 2002 "Popular Models: Fox Trot and Jazz Band in Mondrian's Abstraction", in Leggio (ed.) Music and Modern Art, pp. 163-202
Crowley, Daniel 1966 "An African Aesthetic", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24(4) (Summer): 519-524
Djedje, Jacqueline 1978 The One String Fiddle in West Africa: A Comparison ofHausa and Dagomba Traditions, 3 vols., PhD Dissertation, Los Angeles: UCLA
Euba, Akin 1990 Yoruba Drumming: The Dundun Tradition, Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies Series
Feld, Steven 1982 Sound and Sentiment, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Flam, Jack with Miriam Deutch (eds) 2003 Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press
Friedson, Steven 1996 Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Goldwater, Robert 1967 Primitivism in Modern Art, New York: Vintage Books.
Gray, Christopher 1953 Cubist Aesthetic Theories, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press
Hochschild, Adam 1998 King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Hornbostel, E.M. von 1928 "African Negro Music", Africa 1(1):30-62
Jones, A.M. 1954 "African Rhythm", Africa 24(January): 26-47
1959 Studies in African Music, London: Oxford University Press
Karmel, Pepe 2003 Picasso and the Invention of Cubism, New Haven: Yale University Press
Katz, Richard 1982 Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Kealiinohomoku, Joann W. 1976 Theory and Methods for an Anthropological Study of Dance, PhD Dissertation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Keil, Charles 1995 "The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies : A Progress Report", Ethnomusicology, 39(1)(Winter):1-19
Knight, Roderic 1974 "Mandinka Dnimming", African Arts, 7(4):24-35
Koetting, James 1970 "Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music", Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, 3:115-46
Kubik, Gerhard 1962 "The Phenomenon of Inherent Rhythms in East and Central African Instrumental Music", African Music 3(1):33-42
Lemke, Sieglinde 1985 "Primitivist Modernism", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth- Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 409-413
Locke, Alain 1924 "A Note on African Art", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 187-192
Locke, David 1978 "The Music ofAtsiagbekor", PhD Dissertation, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
1982 "Principles of Offbeat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Ewe Dance Drumming", Ethnomusicology, 26(2):217-246
1988 Drum Gahu, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
1990 Drum Damba, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
1992 Kpegisu: A War Drum of the Ewe, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
2005 "Africa/Ewe, Mande Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka", in Jeff Titon (ed.) Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples, Fourth Edition, NY: Schirmer Books
Marks, Dennis and Geoffrey Haydon (eds) 1985 Repercussions: A Celebration of African-American Music, London: Century Publishing
Mbiti, John 1990 African Religions and Philosophy, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
McEvilley, Thomas 1984 "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth- Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 337-349
Merriam, Alan 1982 "African Musical Rhythm and Concepts of Time-reckoning", African Music in Perspective, New York: Garland, pp. 443-61
Netti, Bruno 2005 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts, Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Nketia, J.H. Kwabena 1974 The Music of Africa, New York: W.W. Norton
Nzewi, Meki 1997 African Music: Theoretical Content and Creative Continuum. The Culture-Exponents Definitions, Oldershausen, Germany: Institut fur Didaktik Populärer Musik
Polak, Rainer 2009 "Rhythmic Feel as Meter: The Swing Patterns of Jenbe Drum Ensemble Music of West Africa", Music Theory Online [in submission]
Rouget, Gilbert 1985 Music and Trance: A Theory for the Relations between Music and Possession, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Rubin, William (ed.) 1984 "Primitivism " in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, vol. 1, New York: Museum of Modern Art
Rubin, William 1984 "Modernist Primitivism An Introduction", in William Rubin (ed.) "Primitivism " in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, vol.1, New York: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 1-79
Serwadda, Moses and Hewitt Pantaleoni 1968 "A Possible Notation for African Dance Drumming", African Music 4(2):47-52
Shattuck, Roger 1955 The Banquet Years: The Arts in France 1885-1918: Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Eric Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company
Stein, Gertrude 1967 Geography and Plays, New York, Haskell House
Stone, Ruth 1985 "In Search of Time in African Music", Music Theory Spectrum, 7(Spring): 139-148
2005 Music in West Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Thompson, Robert Farris 1966 "An Aesthetic of the Cool: West African Dance", African Forum, 2(2) (Fall):40-43, 64-67, 89-91
1974 African Art in Motion, Los Angeles: University of California Press
Turner, Victor 1969 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company
Varnedoe, Kirk 2003 "On the Claims and Critics of the 'Primitivism Show'", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 369-383
Waterman, Richard 1952 "African Influence on American Negro Music", in Sol Tax (ed.) Acculturation in the Americas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 207-218
Wertheimer, Max 1982 Productive Thinking, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wilson, Oily 1974 "The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and West African Music", The Black Perspective in Music, 2(1) (Spring):3-22
Sound Recordings
Anon [CD] 2001 Exponent of Bamaya, Zadonu
Chernoff, John 1985 Master Drummers of Dagbon, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records
1990 Master Drummers of Dagbon, vol.2, Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records
Locke, David 1996 Drum Damba (CD). Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
2008 Drumming for Dagomba Chiefs: Tornale, Ghana 1985 (Earth CDs 6H-DDC)
Agawu, Kofi 2003 Representing African Music, London: Routledge
Ampene, Kwasi 2005 Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana: The Creative Process in Nnwonkoro, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Company
Anku, Willie 1997 "Principles of Rhythm Integration in African Drumming", Black Music Research Journal, 17(2)(Autumn): 211-238
Antliff, Mark and Patricia Leighten 2001 Cubism and Culture, London: Thames and Hudson
Arom, Simha 1991 African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Benson, Bruce 2003 Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Berliner, Paul 1993 The Soul of Mbira, Berkeley: University of California Press
Blake, Jody 1999 Le Tumulte Noir, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press
Bohannan, Paul and Phillip Curtin 1995 Africa and Africans, Prospect Heights, ILL: Waveland Press
Brandel, Rose 1959 "The African Hemiola Style", Ethnomusicology, 3(3)(September): 106- 117
Burns, James 2005 "My Mother Has a Television, Does Yours? Transformation and Secularization in an Ewe Funeral Drum Tradition", http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/20ii/bums
Chernoff, John 1979 African Rhythm and African Sensibility, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Chernoff, John 1985 "Drummers of Dagbon", in Marks and Haydon (eds) Repercussions: A Celebration of African-American Music, London: Century Publishing, pp. 101-127
Clifford, James 1985 "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 351- 368
Cooper, Harry 2002 "Popular Models: Fox Trot and Jazz Band in Mondrian's Abstraction", in Leggio (ed.) Music and Modern Art, pp. 163-202
Crowley, Daniel 1966 "An African Aesthetic", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24(4) (Summer): 519-524
Djedje, Jacqueline 1978 The One String Fiddle in West Africa: A Comparison ofHausa and Dagomba Traditions, 3 vols., PhD Dissertation, Los Angeles: UCLA
Euba, Akin 1990 Yoruba Drumming: The Dundun Tradition, Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies Series
Feld, Steven 1982 Sound and Sentiment, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Flam, Jack with Miriam Deutch (eds) 2003 Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press
Friedson, Steven 1996 Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Goldwater, Robert 1967 Primitivism in Modern Art, New York: Vintage Books.
Gray, Christopher 1953 Cubist Aesthetic Theories, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press
Hochschild, Adam 1998 King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Hornbostel, E.M. von 1928 "African Negro Music", Africa 1(1):30-62
Jones, A.M. 1954 "African Rhythm", Africa 24(January): 26-47
1959 Studies in African Music, London: Oxford University Press
Karmel, Pepe 2003 Picasso and the Invention of Cubism, New Haven: Yale University Press
Katz, Richard 1982 Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari Kung, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Kealiinohomoku, Joann W. 1976 Theory and Methods for an Anthropological Study of Dance, PhD Dissertation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Keil, Charles 1995 "The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies : A Progress Report", Ethnomusicology, 39(1)(Winter):1-19
Knight, Roderic 1974 "Mandinka Dnimming", African Arts, 7(4):24-35
Koetting, James 1970 "Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music", Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, 3:115-46
Kubik, Gerhard 1962 "The Phenomenon of Inherent Rhythms in East and Central African Instrumental Music", African Music 3(1):33-42
Lemke, Sieglinde 1985 "Primitivist Modernism", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth- Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 409-413
Locke, Alain 1924 "A Note on African Art", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 187-192
Locke, David 1978 "The Music ofAtsiagbekor", PhD Dissertation, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
1982 "Principles of Offbeat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Ewe Dance Drumming", Ethnomusicology, 26(2):217-246
1988 Drum Gahu, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
1990 Drum Damba, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
1992 Kpegisu: A War Drum of the Ewe, Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
2005 "Africa/Ewe, Mande Dagbamba, Shona, BaAka", in Jeff Titon (ed.) Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples, Fourth Edition, NY: Schirmer Books
Marks, Dennis and Geoffrey Haydon (eds) 1985 Repercussions: A Celebration of African-American Music, London: Century Publishing
Mbiti, John 1990 African Religions and Philosophy, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
McEvilley, Thomas 1984 "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth- Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 337-349
Merriam, Alan 1982 "African Musical Rhythm and Concepts of Time-reckoning", African Music in Perspective, New York: Garland, pp. 443-61
Netti, Bruno 2005 The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts, Urbana: University of Illinois Press
Nketia, J.H. Kwabena 1974 The Music of Africa, New York: W.W. Norton
Nzewi, Meki 1997 African Music: Theoretical Content and Creative Continuum. The Culture-Exponents Definitions, Oldershausen, Germany: Institut fur Didaktik Populärer Musik
Polak, Rainer 2009 "Rhythmic Feel as Meter: The Swing Patterns of Jenbe Drum Ensemble Music of West Africa", Music Theory Online [in submission]
Rouget, Gilbert 1985 Music and Trance: A Theory for the Relations between Music and Possession, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Rubin, William (ed.) 1984 "Primitivism " in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, vol. 1, New York: Museum of Modern Art
Rubin, William 1984 "Modernist Primitivism An Introduction", in William Rubin (ed.) "Primitivism " in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, vol.1, New York: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 1-79
Serwadda, Moses and Hewitt Pantaleoni 1968 "A Possible Notation for African Dance Drumming", African Music 4(2):47-52
Shattuck, Roger 1955 The Banquet Years: The Arts in France 1885-1918: Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Eric Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company
Stein, Gertrude 1967 Geography and Plays, New York, Haskell House
Stone, Ruth 1985 "In Search of Time in African Music", Music Theory Spectrum, 7(Spring): 139-148
2005 Music in West Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Thompson, Robert Farris 1966 "An Aesthetic of the Cool: West African Dance", African Forum, 2(2) (Fall):40-43, 64-67, 89-91
1974 African Art in Motion, Los Angeles: University of California Press
Turner, Victor 1969 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company
Varnedoe, Kirk 2003 "On the Claims and Critics of the 'Primitivism Show'", in Flam (ed.) Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 369-383
Waterman, Richard 1952 "African Influence on American Negro Music", in Sol Tax (ed.) Acculturation in the Americas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 207-218
Wertheimer, Max 1982 Productive Thinking, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wilson, Oily 1974 "The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and West African Music", The Black Perspective in Music, 2(1) (Spring):3-22
Sound Recordings
Anon [CD] 2001 Exponent of Bamaya, Zadonu
Chernoff, John 1985 Master Drummers of Dagbon, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records
1990 Master Drummers of Dagbon, vol.2, Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records
Locke, David 1996 Drum Damba (CD). Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company
2008 Drumming for Dagomba Chiefs: Tornale, Ghana 1985 (Earth CDs 6H-DDC)
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Published
2009-11-30
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How to Cite
“Simultaneous Multidimensionality in African Music: Musical Cubism”. 2009. African Music : Journal of the International Library of African Music 8 (3): 8-37. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v8i3.1826.
