Tonality accompanied Europe’s ostensibly civilizing mission to Africa. Christian hymns, choral anthems and light orchestral music for ballroom dancing were introduced in various locales. These and other accoutrements of modernity were built on tonal scaffoldings. Although recent postcolonial criticism has continued to interrogate aspects of Europe’s legacy in Africa—in matters broadly cultural, in language, and in political and educational systems—the pervasive and lasting impact of functional tonality and the consequent suppression of the richness and potency of indigenous or precolonial African tonal resources have not received adequate attention. This paper begins a critical assessment of the African reception of European functional tonality. I argue that a program for decolonization that ignores the transformation in African musical consciousness wrought by tonality, or overlooks the fact that many modern Africans remain trapped in a prison-house of tonality, cannot achieve its ultimate emancipatory goals.
ABOUT KOFI AGAWU
Kofi Agawu is Professor
of Music at Princeton University and Adjunct Professor at the University of
Ghana, Legon. His work has focused on analytical issues in selected repertoires
of Western Europe and West Africa. His books include Playing with Signs: A Semiotic
Interpretation of Classic Music (1991), which won the Society for Music Theory’s Young Scholar
Award in 1994, African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (1995), Representing African
Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (2003) and Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures
in Romantic Music
(2008). A Guggenheim Fellow in 1990-91, he received the Dent Medal from the
Royal Musical Association, UK in 1992 and is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
VIDEO ARCHIVE - KOFI AGAWU
APA video citation:
Agawu, K. (2014, May 29). Tonality as a colonizing force in African music -
CIRMMT Distinguished Lectures in the Science and Technology of Music. [Video file].
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_sFVFsENMg&feature=youtu.be