Reading Analysis Paper #1

Reading Analysis Paper #1

1. What is the relationship between African music and dance?

   • Typically, African music and dance are performed at social occasions (Ghana)
   • Most dances consist of some kind of music or rhythm such as drums, songs, or handclapping. Although they play various instruments, drums are one of the most popular instruments. It can be a single drum or a drum ensemble.
   • The musicians and dancers have a close relationship. They feed off each other. From what we have learned in class, the musicians will give cues on when the dancers should change predetermined steps. Nketia also discusses this by explaining a "basic routine may be prescribed and the team of dancers may simply follow signals from their leader or cues given by the leading instrumentalist in changing from one set of movements to another.
     • Nketia, Kwabena H. "The Interrelations of African Music and Dance." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungarica. T.7, Fasc. 1/4      (1965): 91-101. JSTOR. Web. 28 Dec. 2012. 

2. What is the relationship between the music and dance forms of your country?

   • identify how values held by your own culture compare or contrast to values in other cultures.
   • In most of the dance classes I have encountered in my life, the music is prerecorded and we listen to it through a stereo. It seems like very few dance classes and performances have live music. Concerts and classes at universities are usually when I witness live music. This seems different from most African dance cultures. Many African forms seem to feed off of the musicians and even when the dancers don't have musicians they are making rhythms with their vocals or songs.

3. Works Cited: