The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #95495   Message #1859083
Posted By: Azizi
14-Oct-06 - 09:28 PM
Thread Name: So what is *Traditional* Folk Music?
Subject: RE: So what is 'TRADITIONAL' Folk Music ?
One website on traditional African music that I recommend is http://www.coraconnection.com/

As that website notes:
Finding good recordings of West African music is not easy. Some stores may carry some of the more popular CDs, but it's hard to evaluate them, and sales people rarely know that much about African music. You can find new and old African music on the web, but what to buy?

As many have found out the hard way, the quality of today's World Music offerings varies widely, in terms of both music and production values. So what can you do to find the good recordings?

Let Cora Connection help you tap into the world of exceptional African music recordings. Explore our web site to learn more about our favorite African music artists and their music.

Listen to the rich musical traditions of West Africa
• Timeless Kora Classics »

• Vintage sounds of Golden Afrique»

• New Recordings and Old Favorites »

• Guitar music from Malian musician, extraordinaire, Djelimady Tounkara" …

etc.

-snip-

One reason I like that particular website is the information it provides on selected traditional African instruments such as the cora {kora] and the ngoni. Here is an excerpt of the article on the ngoni.

"Ngoni is the Bambara name for an ancient traditional lute found throughout West Africa. Though typically a small instrument the ngoni has a big sound and a big place in the history of West African music. Its body is a hollowed-out, canoe-shaped piece of wood with dried animal skin stretched over it like a drum. The neck is a fretless length of doweling that inserts into the body, which unlike the kora (whose neck goes totally through its calabash resonator) stops short of coming out the base of the instrument. For this reason musicologists classify the ngoni as a "internal spike lute." The ngoni's strings (which are made of thin fishing line like the kora) are lashed to the neck with movable strips of leather, and then fed over a fan-shaped bridge at the far end of the body. The string closest to the player actually produces the highest pitch, and the player plucks it with his thumb, just like a 5-string banjo. This feature, coupled with the fact that the ngoni's body is a drum rather than a box, provides strong evidence that the ngoni is the African ancestor of the banjo."
http://www.coraconnection.com/pages/ngoni.html

-snip-

A diagram of the ngoni, and some notation, and sound clip are also provided at that link.