Gerhard Kubik’s Theory of African Music, published in two volumes, derives largely from fieldwork conducted in the 1960s, a time when African music scholarship, like the field of ethnomusicology itself, was still in its formative stages. Broad disciplinary issues highlighted in the book include the challenge of reconciling emic and etic standpoints, the balancing of ethnographic research and musicological analysis, and the ways in which the methods of historiography can be integrated effectively into ethnomusicological research. With specific reference to African music, Kubik’s volumes generate important perspectives about the challenge of interpreting African rhythmic language, how music articulates social boundaries, the cultural significance of musical storytelling, ensemble practices, and the connections between migration and musical practice.
Thematic diversity is matched by a study of multiple traditions from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa. There is indeed a sense in which reading the different chapters of the book evokes Kubik’s voyage across different parts of the continent, the difficult terrains of which Kubik sometimes paints in the book. In one such narrative he describes how local people helped him to survive hazardous conditions during one particular journey from western Nigeria through Cameroon, the Central African Republic, all the way to Zaire and southern Sudan. In the first part of this review I provide a summary of the topics covered in the book. In the second section I look at some of the main issues in greater detail.
Scope and Definition
The introduction deals with a number of issues, notably, the challenge of defining African music in a way that accounts for cross-cultural commonalities as well as differences emanating from the continent’s varied geographies and ethnicities, the relationship between music and language, the integral connections between music and society, and the historical processes that help to shape musical practice. Kubik signals his interest in applying the methods of historiography to the analysis of African music forms and practices, with particular reference to the impact of the migration of the Niger-Congo Bantu population to central, east, and southern Africa. History is also demonstrated to be at play in the cultivation of certain musical instruments. With reference to Yoruba music, for example, he draws our attention to the religious contexts in which igbin (cylindrical skin) drums were used during the classical Yoruba era between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries. It was not until the fifteenth or sixteenth century that the dundun hourglass drum—now generally considered Yoruba’s most important instrument—was used. In discussing the relationship between music and language, Kubik draws parallels between the locations of the four prevailing super-families of African languages (namely, Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, and Khoisan) and the continent’s musical topography. For example, he distinguishes between the music of southern African Khoisan speakers, the music of the Pygmies in central Africa, and that of the mainstream Niger-Congo speakers. As expected, the introduction prepares the ground for a wide-ranging discussion spread over five chapters in each of the two volumes.
Chapters 1 and 2 focus on two different instrumental traditions.Footnote 1 The first chapter discusses xylophone music in southern Uganda, while the second examines the harp music of the Azande people of northeastern Zaire and southern Sudan, and similar groups in the Central African Republic. Kubik’s discussion here, as in other parts of this book, derives from interviews with indigenous performers as well as missionaries who did some initial work on the kundi (harp music) in East Africa. Drawing on extensive transcriptions, Kubik discusses tuning and teaching methods as well as important stylistic elements of the music. Chapter 3 focuses on homophonic multipart singing in east, central, and southern Africa. The main procedures and intervallic features of multipart singing are analyzed, and the author traces their origins to ancient music practices of the San people. Chapter 4 returns to xylophone music in Uganda with special attention to the forms and structures of amadinda, akadinda, and embaire traditions. Chapter 5 analyzes the significance of music and movement in the mukanda initiation institution in eastern Angola.Footnote 2
Although volume 2 also discusses some specific musical traditions, it develops a much more reflective approach by generating important cross-cultural perspectives and emphasizing methodological and theoretical issues. Three of the five chapters were written specifically for this book: chapter 6 (which discusses a cognitive approach to the study of African musical rhythm), chapter 7 (which focuses on African music and auditory perception), and chapter 9 (which provides a genealogy of a Malawian family of musicians). The remaining chapters—chapter 8 (on alo-Yoruba chantefables) and chapter 10 (on African concepts of space and time)—emanated from previously published work. Of particular interest is Kubik’s pioneering study of the Yoruba alo chantefables, which demonstrates the socializing role of moonlight renditions comprising music and storytelling. His discussion of alo also provides the context for understanding the roots of a relatively new genre of folk opera in western Nigeria.
Main Issues
The Challenge of Bi-musicality
In Chapter 7, Kubik discusses the challenge of studying music as part of culture, especially when the investigator hails from another culture. Drawing on Fernando Ortiz’s (Reference Ortiz1940) concept of transculturation, and with reference to Kenneth L. Pike’s work (1954), Kubik examines the conceptual distinctions between etic and emic viewpoints and the danger of confusing idiocultural (popular but nonscientific observations of a researcher’s culture) with emic (scientifically verifiable) positions. Terms like hocket, hemiola, and organum are reflective of Western analytical ideas that may not be applicable to non-Western music. Kubik wonders whether it is possible to completely detach our interpretation of foreign music traditions from musical knowledge and experiences native to us. The crucial question is indeed whether “bi-musicality,” the ability to engage with and practice the music of the “other,” is achievable in a way that is completely detached from the influence of our primary or native musicality.
We might recall that when Mantle Hood came up with the concept of bi-musicality in 1960, he did so in response to the need for ethnomusicologists, most of whom were Westerners, to acquaint themselves through performance with the foreign music they were studying. As Kay Kaufman Shelemay has observed, Hood’s concept of bi-musicality speaks to “the long-standing interaction between scholarly documentation and the act of performance” (1997:190). Stressing its methodological significance, Shelemay also noted that the approach “became an increasingly common norm among ethnomusicologists, who capitalized on their bi-musicality by carrying out truly participatory participant-observation in the field” (1997:191). Kubik’s discussion of the concept here seems to stress its status as a continuous process rather than an achievable end. Continuous engagement through practice should facilitate an increasing level of proficiency in a given new tradition even if the researcher cannot completely detach the experience of his or her primary musical tradition from the process of mediating a new one. The challenge of attaining bi-musical competence is not unrelated to what Kubik describes as the closed nature of all musical cultures: closed in the sense that they are defined by specific cultural codes that pose a significant challenge to a foreigner seeking to penetrate new musical and cultural boundaries.
Interpreting Structural Multidimensionality
Kubik’s discussion of instrumental music in chapters 1 and 4 touches on some theories that have become entrenched in African musicology. He likens African interlocking patterns to “cog-wheels,” and links them to the phenomena of “inherent rhythms” and “resultant melodies.” In his discussion of amadinda xylophone playing, he explains that two of the performers usually generate two interlocking melodies, the result of which is realized by a third performer. This third player is known as omukoomezi, while the phrases that he or she plays constitute the okukoomera. The “resultant melodies” as theorized by Kubik represent the summary of constituent patterns played by a group of performers, while inherent rhythms refer to musical phrases that are not necessarily performed but are audible to (or aurally composed by) listeners. Inherent patterns emanate from a “mental process of aural re-composition” and represent a “psycho-acoustical fact” (71).
The principle of inherent patterns has been employed by other scholars to interpret African instrumental music genres, especially those with melodic capabilities. Describing the same phenomenon in the mbira music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, Paul Berliner, for example, notes that the complex character of the music
often gives the impression of more than one instrument being performed. Musicians explain this phenomenon in part by the fact that when they strike a sequence of keys, the keys’ pitches are sustained in the gourd resonator, overlapping and intermixing. As several patterns are repeated in a cycle, their beginnings and endings become ambiguous; new phrases appear in the music as one listens to the inner parts of the piece. (1981:52)
The phenomenon of inherent rhythm has implications for the analysis of African rhythm and the concept of meter, as I explain below.
Contemplating African Rhythm
Kubik postulates four levels of reference in African rhythmic language: elementary pulsation, gross beats, cycles, and timelines. In a drum ensemble, these layers define the groove that provides support for the improvisations of the master drummer. Elementary pulsation, which he describes as an “audio-psychological” and “inner perceptual awareness” phenomenon, is a rather controversial concept. Kubik explains that elementary pulsation comprises regularly spaced pulses, a type of “grid,” existing chiefly in the mind of performers and their audiences. He is not the only musicologist to have observed the presence of elementary pulsation. It has been characterized variously as the “metronome sense” (Waterman Reference Waterman and Tax1967) and “density referent” (Hood Reference Hood1971; Kauffman Reference Kauffman1980). The problem is that there does not seem to be any convincing ethnographic support for this phenomenon. For example, I have not observed any demonstration of it among Yoruba drummers of western Nigeria with whom I have worked for over twenty years. Nor is the counting of pulses—a practice suggested by the concept of elementary pulsation—a normal part of what African musicians do when they perform (see Agawu 2003).
More controversial, however, is Kubik’s interpretation of the significance of interlocking parts. According to him, when “several musicians play the same instrument (such as a log xylophone) no one sees his (or her) own as syncopated or as after beats.” He also explains that performers do not “conceive of a common beat”; rather, they refer their patterns to an “individual beat relative to the performers opposite” (77). These observations seem to suggest that the different beat patterns are independent of each other and signal the presence of polymeter. The issue of meter has generated mixed interpretations among scholars. A. M. Jones, a major pioneering scholar of African music, interpreted changing and staggered sequences of phrases with different note groupings as representing changing metric patterns. This interpretation, however, has not been supported by scholars like David Locke (Reference Locke2011), Kofi Agawu (Reference Agawu2006), James Burns (Reference Burns2010), Meki Nzewi (Reference Nzewi1978), Willie Anku (Reference Anku2006), or this writer (see Omojola Reference Omojola2012), all of whom have done extensive work in West Africa. Burns, for example, challenges the notion of duple or multiple meter in African music, preferring to use the term “interweave” to describe the relationship between duple (even) and triple groupings of notes rather than reading such groupings as bearers of multiple meters. Locke, while subscribing to the idea of “simultaneous multidimensionality,” does not embrace the concept of polymeter either.
While it is true that the amadinda xylophone music of Uganda is different from West African drumming traditions and may thus present a different concept of meter, it is worth noting that focusing on “resultant melodies” rather than on interlocking patterns may lead to a more relevant evaluation of how meter is conceived in African music. Thus, if, as Kubik explains, each of the interlocking parts in an amadinda xylophone performance represents an abstraction from the okukoomera, it might be instructive to focus on that part (the okukoomera) as the locus of the meter, rather than analyzing each of the two lower extractions as indices of competing meters. My conclusion therefore suggests that the okukoomera should not be considered a resultant melody, as Kubik theorizes, but rather, should be viewed as a generative melody. It would also be interesting to examine whether language plays any role in defining the character of the generative material as it often does in many others parts of Africa. As is generally known, language often provides clues about the beginning and end of African musical phrases and therefore the position of beats and cadences, and consequently, the metric orientations of such musical phrases.
Interpreting Structure through History
In chapter 3, Kubik links a widespread harmonic practice in southern Africa to the impact of migration. This harmonic practice, which he labels “!Kung polyphony” (a key element of the musical heritage of the San peoples) is distinguished by a “skipping process” in which a note is matched with a note that is separated by another note. This process helps to generate a species of multipart singing characterized by a progressive order of bichords of fourth and fifths, usually within an anhemitonic pentatonic scale. Clues to these harmonic practices are provided in the tuning mechanisms and the harmonic partials associated with the San one-string musical bow. Kubik attributes the development of this harmonic technique to the encounter between the San-speaking peoples, who were the original inhabitants, and the Bantu populations who migrated there. According to him, the tonal harmonic practice of “the–Nsenga, -Lala, -Shona, and others in this zone displays traits of a San heritage” (211). Kubik concludes that this form of polyphony (in fourths and fifths) antedated European presence in Africa and did not derive from European twelfth-century polyphony.
Kubik’s discussion is highly hypothetical in its projection into an undocumentable period of African history. Conjectures are indeed inevitable in a discussion like this that seeks to account for a form of sustained musical syncretism dating back to the Iron Age Africa. It should be noted, however, that the distinct quality of this harmonic practice—in how it contrasts with harmonic traditions from other parts of Africa—lends some credence to Kubik’s thesis. But Kubik’s rigorous interrogation of history is significant for another reason. It represents a refreshing departure from the frequent marginalization of history in Africanist music scholarship, a practice that has been observed as typical of ethnomusicological research in general. Reflecting on what she describes as the “inherently ahistorical” nature of ethnomusicology, Sarah Weiss, for example, recently implored ethnomusicologists to “think about process as much as result, to think about getting to historical nodes as much as about the nodes themselves” (2008:234–35). More importantly, by combining diachronic and synchronic methods, Kubik provides a methodological model that should feature more prominently in the study of African music and ethnomusicological research.
Age-Grade Rituals and Musical Gendering
Kubik’s discussion of the eastern Angolan mukanda initiation institution in chapter 5 focuses on the role of music in education, how music and dance performances incorporate day-to-day body gestures (like beating “bark cloth” or “winnowing”), and, most important, how music articulates intergender relationships. Explaining the significance of mukanda in Angolan society, Kubik states that circumcision “is part of a symbol syndrome which aims at a complex set of educational and personality-forming processes” (355). Kubik locates mukanda within the matrilineal structure of Mbwela/Nkhangala society in which “men often marry into the villages of their wives and where men as a whole traditionally feel threatened by the women” (355). This is a society where young boys are strongly attached to their mother, a “mother-fixation” phenomenon, which adult men consider threatening to their influence in the society and which provides the context for understanding the role of mukanda as a means of asserting the status of the male gender in the society. Kubik’s discussion in this chapter is particularly significant for drawing attention to his rather eclectic methods, which include an intracultural approach enabled through participant observation, a Freudian psychoanalytical approach—Kubik quickly points out that the so-called Oedipus complex is not a feature of matrilineal societies—and the study of mukanda as an institutional medium for socialization. I should note that the varied nature of Kubik’s methods in a project dating from the 1960s is in a way reflective of the multidisciplinary roots of ethnomusicology and how it has been shaped by theories emanating from the humanities and the social sciences.
The diverse as well as the continental nature of Theory of African Music speaks to the status of Kubik as a trailblazer in African music scholarship. No other scholar could be credited with such a wide-ranging intellectual engagement with the music of Africa. The strength of his theories derives from the vantage of his wide knowledge and experience of African music in a career spanning close to half a century. I must also note that Kubik’s ethnographic engagement with multiple traditions contrasts considerably with current trends in the field. Today scholars tend to concentrate on specific areas of the continent on a long-term or permanent basis, digging deeper and wider with each field trip and building enduring relationships with research consultants. The advantage of geographic concentration is often undermined, however, by the lack of a vibrant cross-cultural dialogue in which musical traditions and theories about different parts of the continent are discussed and compared in a manner that progressively deepens the Africanist music scholarship in a cumulative fashion. Kubik, in these two volumes, provides a remarkable forum for cross-cultural engagement in the study of African music.
This book, however, has a few weaknesses, in spite of its numerous strengths. Sometimes one feels a sense of organic incoherence that derives from the juxtaposition of diverse themes within a single chapter or the placing of similar topics in separate chapters. It is not clear, for example, why the discussions in chapters 1 and 4 were not merged. Kubik seemed to be more interested in maintaining the identities of the essays rather than integrating them into a more coherent form, which would have been more helpful to the reader.
It is also tempting to argue that Kubik’s diverse ethnographies are marked by a randomness in the selection of the groups that he studied, and do not make room for an integrative view of the music of some of the societies. I must add, however, that Kubik’s diverse ethnography—in spite of these attendant issues—is marked by a regional approach that has its own advantages. Some of the chapters discuss specific regions and precolonial ethnic clusters, and this regionalized approach tends to render colonial boundaries of the 1960s less relevant as a parameter for constructing the musical topography of Africa. Similarly, small ethnic groupings represent only a subset of larger musical communities. Kubik explains, for example, that “musical styles and specific traits are rarely linked in a rigid manner to entities as small as ethnic groups.” They are often “linked to ethnically related population clusters, speaking languages belonging to the same zone” (11). Regarding the need to probe beyond the colonial era for historical explanations about musical forms, Kubik explains that “historical developments before and during the colonial era leading to the current ethnic and national configurations in Africa” challenge the credibility of using “existing ethnic groups as a reliable framework for reference” (10). His discussion of the harmonic practices in East, Central and southern Africa in chapter 3, including those of the “south central African tonal-harmonic belt” comprising a cluster of ethnic groups, is a clear example of this historically grounded panregional approach.
Kubik navigates multiple musical and geocultural boundaries with the dexterity of a seasoned scholar. His writing is highly successful in integrating structural analysis of music, ethnographic investigation, and methods of historiography. His judicious balancing of these different methods despite the historical schism between the so-called contextualists and structuralists demonstrates how a major debate of the early decades of ethnomusicology was resolved in favor of an inclusive methodological approach.
