African Indigenous Musical Knowledge Systems

The imperative to climate change in the African continent is a matter of livelihood and survival. To secure and maintain livelihoods, historical evidence indicates that, native African communities had rich indigenous knowledge and science of responding to instances of climate change. This study interrogates extant data on the ethnoscience of rainmaking rituals, as a prototype of African indigenous knowledge on climate change, to show not only its prevalence across the African anthropological space, but also indicate its effectual outcomes in responding to manifestations of climate change. To fully tap into the potentials and strengths of this knowledge and science, the study tenders for its marriage with modern climatological science, for both to partner in providing solutions to the ever-recurring problem of climate change in contemporary Africa.

This paper is an attempt to define African musicology as a standalone discipline. The study of indigenous African music is, in the main, assumed to be the competency of ethnomusicology. That ethnomusicologists
are musical anthropologists suggests that they, like anthropologists, labour at presenting the image of the African
to the European as well as the American institutions for a plethora of reasons and purposes. This explains a sense
of reluctance when coming to addressing the need to fashion an alternative discipline designed, to unravel the
intricacies of indigenous African music for the benefit of the African processes of knowledge making. Since the efforts of one Kwabena Nketia fifty years or so ago, African musicology has not succeeded in entrenching itself. By asserting itself, African musicology could stand to benefit the study of African music, let alone its own disciplinary
development into the 21st century.

This paper is based on the study that examined peculiarities of the indigenous African music. Specifically, the study aimed to highlight the inadequacies of canonised (ethno)musicological methodologies. Participative observations, including dipoledišano (interviews), were used to gather data about indigenous African music over a period of five years. Particular attention was given to explications of the baletši (indigenous practitioners). Considering the baletši's perspective, the study found that the study of African music seems misaligned with indigenous African music practices. Consequently, attendant fabrications usually packaged as theories or philosophies about, and on the phenomenon by some scholars are self-serving, and at worst, moot. These theories seem to be scantily relevant insofar as the advancement of scholarship in African music is concerned. Furthermore, the results show the existence of African ways of conceiving, comprehending and communicating knowledge about indigenous African music. For this and other reasons, it becomes prudent to propose what could be known as Ordinary African Musicology,which would be capable of harnessing the best of both worlds; traditional scholarship and African folkloric epistemologies.

Mmino wa setšo has been interpreted from different angles. Most notably, these schools of thought are interpretative, but with a
considerable amount of misrepresentation. As such the efforts of bringing this and similar genres to the centre of scholarship
are undermined. Drawing from interviews, observations and discussions with practitioners of the genre, this article attempts to
proffer a descriptive analysis of mmino wa setšo. Whereas the presentation is in scholarly prose, the wish is to remain honest
to the initial intentions and ideations of the practitioners. Cognisant of the discrepancies that still need to be addressed, this
paper is an attempt at a type of African musicology, which seeks to capture the essence of the abstractions of the practitioners.

A lo largo de la historia colonial, el hombre blanco ha sido representado en las culturas colonizadas, siendo “el otro” en esta ocasión, el europeo en sus diferentes funciones, como misionero, comerciante o militar y representado como francés, británico, o español.
En las danzas fang la resistencia a la colonización ha hablado en metáforas mediante la ironía, el humor o la crítica dentro de una ambivalencia en la que el aspecto ritual “absorbe” la influencia colonial y al mismo tiempo re-interpreta en términos autóctonos la figura del blanco, en una búsqueda de control de un poder colonial de otro modo inaccesible, tras la pérdida del propio poder como sociedad organizada antes del encuentro colonial, y al mismo tiempo una búsqueda de protección ligada a los cultos tradicionales fang, coexistiendo estos significados y funciones con un aspecto de crítica y burla hasta hoy.
En este artículo analizamos la simbología y el recorrido en las décadas del periodo colonial y poscolonial de danzas como Ngoan Ntangan, Mademoiselle, Ndong Andrike, Olachá (Olaechea), Franco y De Gaulle, traspasando las fronteras entre Guinea Ecuatorial y Gabón y algunas vigentes en el siglo XXI.
Tradición y modernidad se entrelazan en la adopción de figuras europeas y ritmos  exógenos de influencia caribeña en danzas como la maringa que han formado parte de algunas de estas dramatizaciones hasta hoy.