Sub-Saharan African music traditions
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sub-Saharan African music traditions exhibit so many common features that they may in some respects be thought of as constituting a single musical system. While some African music is clearly contemporary-popular music and some is art-music, still a great deal is communal and orally transmitted while still qualifying as a religious or courtly genre. The music of the Luo, for example, is functional, used for ceremonial, religious, political or incidental purposes, during funerals (Tero buru) to praise the departed, to console the bereaved, to keep people awake at night, to express pain and agony and during cleansing and chasing away of spirits, during beer parties (Dudu, ohangla dance), welcoming back the warriors from a war, during a wrestling match (Ramogi), during courtship, in rain making and during divination and healing. Work songs are performed both during communal work like building, weeding, etc. and individual work like pounding of cereals, winnowing.
Southern
- Chewa people Dance = gule wa mkulu - nyau
- Lomwedance = tchopa
- Luvale dance = manchancha
- Nyanja dance = chitsukulumwe - gule wa mkulu - likhuba
- Tumbuka dance = vimbuza
- Kaondedance kachacha
- Henga dance = vimbuza