Methods and results in the reconstruction of music history in Africa and a case study of instrumental polyphony

Abstract

The reconstruction of the prehistory of African musical instruments and musical structures has barely begun, despite the importance of music in African culture in the present. This paper reviews the sources of information for the prehistory and history of music in Sub-Saharan Africa with examples from direct finds, iconography and textual sources. Due to the richness of its material, and the fact only some of it is relevant to other parts of the continent, evidence from Egypt is generally not presented in detail. Regarding the Stone Age, if the claimed flute fragment from Haua Fteah (Libya) is accepted, it would be of considerable significance for claims about early cognitive capacities. If diverse sources of evidence can be combined with the rich ethnographic record, then it is possible to reconstruct large-scale patterns, both of the spread of instruments and the distribution of musical practices. A methodological example of how such data integration would work is given: a proposal for the reconstruction of polyphonic wind ensembles, a musical form characteristic of Sub-Saharan Africa from Senegambia to Mozambique. This has the particular interest of being identifiable in Saharan rock art. The evidence suggests that archaeologists may not be identifying musical instrument fragments in their excavations and the combination of ethnography and other sources allows us to explore a much broader range of culture history than is usually recognised.