Of music the world over, African music has been the least well-known and the most devalued, which is certainly disconcerting. In the past, it was thought that this music propagated only vague cries and had nothing at all to do with science and art. It is true that the keys to a better understanding of this music were elusive: music and life being intimately connected, it was difficult to separate the various elements. This was a world that did not separate daily life from artistic activity: this interweaving became such that it discouraged analysis, and in the past, it made any attempt at understanding fruitless. An overall anthropological approach must be implemented, in which the social life unveils the musical life, and in which the latter follows from the system of the former, which complicates the approach even more.

To make music in Africa, it suffices for someone to begin in order for a second person to come in unexpectedly by tapping on a makeshift instrument, which can be just a bottle. Then a third person joins in, without doubt a passer-by who happens to come along. This person will trace a few dance steps. Then another person arrives, then still another. Each person fulfills an exact function that is never formulated. Everything happens as if a lesson related to myth were being rehearsed at the subconscious level. For example, it is known that one person will initiate an isochronous rhythmic formula, the basis of the system. Another will vary it, and a third will embellish it. Nevertheless, although this scene suddenly bursts forth full of bonhomie and general mirth, the resonant sound gives the impression of extreme disorder or of performers stamping their feet in place. This has made some think that Black Africa surges more from primitive speech rather than from being aligned in the concert of nations as Africans claim. Furthermore, it is an oral tradition in which history fades into the background. It is also true that the notion of form is a very disconcerting thing in Africa. It never begins at the point where one could expect it. It can fly off somewhere in its development. This music unfolds according to the principle of continual by cyclic variation. One always comes back to the point of departure, which is never the same for each interpretation.
Yet in many cases, a certain functionalism dictates African music, however improvised it may be. It obeys well-defined reasons rooted in the social system. It has a role to fulfill, and despite the upheavals of this century, this music still keeps its mark of originality that also confers upon it all of its mystery.

Knowledge of African music has considerably widened in recent decades. The continent has offered many forms of music and has shown that they can be distinguished from one another. Specialists have gathered many documents which now enable them to have a more exact idea of this field. They have made it publicly known through records, concerts, and broadcasts. Furthermore, Africa hasn't always been present at the "Expositions Universelles" (Paris) as in 1889, when a dugout of Gabonese rowers paddled down the Seine while singing. The world had to wait until the 1966 "Festival des Arts Negres" in Dakar and the 1969 "Festival Pan-Africain" in Algiers for planet-wide awareness of this music and its claims to legitimacy. Before this event, the Keita Fodeiba ballet, founded in 1954, had traveled throughout Europe and timidly prepared the ground. Today we have come to a point where African musical values have thoroughly come into question again: they are recognized and perceived such as they are. They have made the Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji say that his music can pull itself up to the level of masterpiece and be the equivalent of a Beethoven symphony. In this sense, this revolutionary statement was preceded by the points of view of a few individuals like Julien Tiersot, who stated as early as 1889 that the Blacks were passionately interested and gifted in music. Undoubtedly, a little-known text by the Arab polygrapher al-Jahiz (9th century) should be mentioned. He argued that in music and dance, black people were superior to white people.
So, the question has been asked whether African music is a single or multiple phenomenon or whether this question is even meaningful. The more our knowledge of this continent deepens, the more this surface approach, which had lumped the external behavior of all African music together for many centuries, is evolving.
Single or multiple, here the answers are building up: from the bush to the heart of the tropical forest, African music undoubtedly forms a whole, but it varies depending on the region so that it becomes impossible to confuse the vocal musical from West Africa and East Africa. West Africa has received much attention for its caste of professional musicians, the griots, who are real historians. Furthermore, they have shown themselves to be extraordinary players of portable drums, which have variable tension in the drumhead and allow spoken language to be produced. In East Africa, one notes a multitude of harps and lyres that mark the descent of the Nile Valley and Rift Valley as they open a passage that could go back to Egypt of the pharaohs.

Nevertheless, when we speak of African music, it is above all the drum in all its forms that comes to mind. It could be the raison d'etre of the continent. In spite of everything, the drum is not an instrument particular to Africa, since in Zaire the drum has lost its aura and is now relegated to second position. Another distinctive trait is the flowering of polyphonic vocal and instrumental textures like the horn orchestras of the Central African Republic. These polyphonies, the most famous type belonging to the Pygmies, have not, in all likelihood, followed a hierarchized path, unlike European ones, but they also pose the fundamental question of their primary significance. Why do the human beings sing in polyphony? Nevertheless, polyphony does not cover the whole continent. In many regions it is absent (Sahel).
If one really looks for a trait distinctive to all forms of this music, it is towards the responsorial that we must turn. By responsorial it is understood a song in which an utterance is given by a leader and the formula is taken up, either in extenso, either with modifications, or in part by the collective group. This structure is so strong in Africa that for vocals, even instruments, it seems to condition the spirit of African music. Notwithstanding, there are lullabies, which are, by nature, songs by individuals derived from this collective and responsorial notion, as for example the Zairian Pende lullabies. Of all the African instruments, and there are many of them, only the sanza can claim to be the unique invention of the continent and proves to be African since this typology exists nowhere else in the world. The sanza consists of a resonating box on which a series of blades has been set that the performer vibrates. Forms of sanza music are numerous in Africa, and in Zimbabwe, a very elaborate style of this
music has been developed.

On the other hand, although the Africans are great virtuosi of the xylophone, much debate surrounds its African origins. Terms for the xylophone change depending on the region. Westerners have adopted the term of balafon, a type particularly widespread in West Africa. Thus we owe this surprising thesis to Reverend A.M. Jones, who presented it in 1965. In basing his arguments on a comparative study, A.M. Jones established the Asian origin of this instrument brought to Africa by invading settlers 2,000 years ago. This attractive thesis has been accepted by many specialists, while others consider it to be rash and preposterous. It is true that when listening to Chopi xylophone orchestras in Mozambique, one can rightfully wonder about this correlation between Indonesia and Africa in terms of the xylophone's origin.
Modern life has considerably disrupted African habits, and the music strongly shows these effects. There are not many forms of urban music born with the development of urban areas. Nevertheless, in spite of galloping demography, cities have not covered all of Africa where traditional music still widely survives. In Africa, tradition claims that instruments speak before they sing. The term balafon is said to come from a Mandingo word bala, which means to speak. As long as instruments are the vehicles of speech, the African tradition will endure forever.

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