‘‘Greenotation:’’ A system for representing African drum sounds and techniques

Abstract

Within the past few decades technology has made it possible not only to write African music on paper like western notation, but also to retrieve and perform it from the printed page. In this paper I will present an overview of and demonstrate a system for writing African music I designed and tested over the past 20 years. Greenotation (after my name, Doris Green) was created for percussion instruments of Africa because Western musical notation could not notate the nuances and actions found in percussion music. Greenotation can notate the music of bells, rattles, drums, talking drums, sticks, stamping tubes, xylophones, hand clapping, and water drums; it is also able to represent dance movements that are integral to many sub-Saharan African drum and dance traditions.