Native American Music And Culture

In Music 300, we had four main objectives that we were supposed to be learned and two of them was to learn about musical and cultural traditions and reflect them in our class through reflective essays. Besides reflecting on Native American Music, another topic that I am going to reflect on is Africa Music. In this paper, I am going to talk about what stands out to me in music in Africa through their culture and music, how the music-making process impacted by understanding on music in Africa, and finally the overall takeaway from listening and playing music from Africa. To start off with, what stands out to me regarding their music in Africa? First off, music in Africa is so much different than music in Native America. Music in Native American

So what is something that stood out to be regarding music and their culture and how culture influences their music? Something that stood out to me regarding culture and music is not just how everything is about togetherness, but how they involve the forest into their music. In their culture, they use all of their resources, like land, to provide a mobile lifestyle in their community. The forest is a part of the land they utilize in their music. In Africa, the forest is viewed as a god-figure-and humans as children figure in their culture; therefore, they connect with the forest through their culture and music by yodeling into their surroundings. They sing into the forest and the echoing in the forest represents the forest singing back to them in reply. This is something that really stood out to me because it is something that is unique and different. Before this semester, before I knew about their music and culture, I didn’t see the interaction between the forest and African music being a part of their culture; I kind of had this cloudy judgement that African music was similar to Native American Music. So learning about something like this, really shapes my judgement and also helps me understand more about their culture and also their

In our class, a part of participation as well as learning about culture is the act of doing music itself to help further understand their culture. Music-making impacted my understanding because it helped me understand what it was like to produce their music. For instance, in class, we use actual instruments that are used in African music. For an example, we have used Gankogui, a two iron bell instrument, gourd shakers (Axatse), as well as different drums like the Lunga. These instruments give us an idea of how their music sounds. Another thing that impacted my understanding about producing their music was how doing similar music to their culture really impacted my understanding about how togetherness is key in their music. Music-making as really helped my understanding on how togetherness is key because without having other individuals helping you make similar music; you can’t get the full effect of their music. Plus, music-making helps us connect to our lecture notes about how in Africa, music is passed on orally. We can connect together through different types of music even if it is out of our norm by producing music and listening to it with our green