African Music in Religion

Music plays an important role in religion in any culture. One has never existed without the other, especially in Africa. African Music Cafe covers the music of the major religions of the continent: Christian, Islamic, and Animistic. The rhythms, tones, instruments and dances differ, but music flows from the far depths of the heart - the passions, desires, and wounds of life. The sacred writings and oral traditions lay out the teachings and the history of each religion, but it is the music that gives us a view of the heart of the followers.

African religious music is found everywhere: eminating from loud speakers in markets, sung by congregations in the houses of worship, and lone farmers in their fields. Taarab, gospel, or voodoo, African religious music permeates all aspects of life.

In West Africa the animistic religions are very public: songs are sung, often accompanied by dance, at almost every household or village event. Lyrics to some of the songs are the private possession of those initiated in a particular voodoo cult; others are common knowledge. The music is addressed to ancestrial spirits and the gods

In East Africa most of the animistic songs are only heard during rites of passage like, birth, death, and circumcisions. They are most often sung to the ancestors..

African Christian music has been greatly influenced by their European and American counterparts to the extent that many a Sunday worship would be filled with tunes, though translated in some trade language language or mother tongue, would be readily recognized by a foreign visitor. Many urban African churches employ the latest Christian music from the United States with out any translation at all.

This trend is counter to the thousands upon thousands of songs composed by local Christian poets and set to traditional African melodies and heard only in the tongue in which they were composed. These songs are a testimony to the vitality of the communities of faith in which they play a major role of worship and edification.

In northern Africa and the coasts of east and west Africa the music takes on Arab influences often monophonic and accompanied by only string insttruments or fluts. Most of the African Islamic singing is preformed by soloists, often a griot.