In the West, philosophy is generally confined to the domain of the intellect, and music to the domain of the emotion. This book makes either domain the location for the other. African musical aesthetics constitutes this location, and has its home in it. Moreover, since the separation of the domain of the intellect and the domain of emotion represents a bifurcation of what it is to be a human being, and by making either domain the location of the other, what African musical aesthetics accomplishes is the affirmation of a unified sense of what it is to be a human being. Accordingly, the unity of philosophy and music give rises to a unified sense of being human. It is to such unity that African musical aesthetics takes us. For African musical aesthetics to accomplish this task, this book challenges the conventional Western understanding of philosophy—an understanding that projects Africa as devoid of philosophy. It is this projection that pervaded Africa during the colonial period, and it is the projection that is challenged in African philosophy. From an African philosophical perspective African musical aesthetics turns out to be an emancipatory process that seeks to affirm the humanity of Africans but also a process that seeks to affirm common humanity. Music is not solely a matter of audiology, what is played, or what one dances to. It has its elemental task in calling our attention to what we are as human beings. In so far as it is sensuous, it constitutes us as members of the sensible world, and links us intrinsically to all that is sensuous. It is more than humanism. Music registers us as members of nature. It is nature naturing.

In the tradition of African musicologists who have pioneered serious scholarly study of African music, notably J.H. Kwabena Nketia, this extended essay considers the subject of aesthetic value in African music, in particular, in the Ewe and Akan (Ghanaian) traditions. It examines African - as compared with Western - ideas about musical experience and its appeal; and music in relation to values, morality and human emotion.

In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country’s urban black youth developed kwaito—a form of electronic music (redolent of North American house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today—who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread crime—Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa’s crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them. Politicians and cultural critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on problematic assumptions about the political function of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren’t escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that “music is always political,” Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its radically ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state.

What Makes That Black? The African-American Aesthetic identifies and defines seventy-four elements of the aesthetic through text and illustration. Using the magnificent camerawork of R.J. Muna, Sharen Bradford, Jae Man Joo, Rachel Neville, James Barry Knox, and more- as they point their cameras at Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and jazz artists such as Cécile McLorin Salvant and Wynton Marsalis- a specific artistic consciousness or sensibility visually unfolds. Luana even joins the camera crew as she shoots Oakland Street Graffiti--Backcover.

Engaging and enlightening, this guide explores African music's forms, musicians, instruments, and place in the life of the people. A discography classified by country, theme, group, and instrument is also included.

Essays on the African heritage in the art and music of the Americas.