West African Music

Oral-musical traditions predate written records, with drum, harp-lute, and xylophone lineages tied to ritual, agriculture, warfare, and praise. Call-and-response, timeline bells, and cross-rhythm (e.g., 3:2, 6:4) were already central, as was the role of hereditary musician-historians.

With the rise of the Mali Empire, Mande jeliya became a codified court art. Islamic scholarship and trade routes brought Sufi devotional aesthetics, poetic meters, and melismatic singing that blended with local forms, influencing Sahelian repertoires from Songhai to Hausa polities.

Port cities and missionary schools introduced guitars, brass, and harmony. Early 78‑rpm recordings captured griot ensembles and emerging coastal dance styles, laying groundwork for palm‑wine guitar idioms and urban band cultures.

Post‑colonial optimism fueled state bands and hotel circuits. Highlife (Ghana), jùjú (Nigeria), and dance‑band hybrids fused guitars and horns with traditional rhythms. Senegalese sabar innovations would soon crystallize as mbalax, while Malian/Guinean orchestras modernized griot repertoires.

Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat fused Yoruba rhythm, highlife, and jazz into extended political grooves. In Mali and Guinea, kora/ngoni guitar stylings and Wassoulou vocal music gained international attention; desert blues from Tuareg communities (e.g., Tinariwen) reframed Sahelian modalities for global audiences.

Digital production, mobile studios, and pan‑African collaboration catalyzed Afrobeats (distinct from Afrobeat), hiplife, azonto, and hybrid pop/R&B. Traditional ensembles thrive alongside cosmopolitan scenes, with West African rhythmic DNA embedded in global pop, hip‑hop, and electronic music.