WorldMusic.pdf

LearnEnglish Professionals

WORLD MUSIC AUDIOSCRIPT

Listen to a lecture on music from the African continent.

Optional listening activity:

While listening, decide if these sentences are true or false.

Sentence

True or false?

1. There are only three types of music in Africa.

2. Highlife is influenced by European and North American music.

3. Soukous has only ever been popular in Africa.

4. Juju is popular nowadays.

(You will find the answers at the bottom of the page).

Good evening and thank you for coming. This evening I’m going to give a short introduction

to music from the African continent. I would first like to point out that there is no such thing as

African music. By this I mean that there is a great diversity of styles of music originating from

Africa, but no one style that can be called African music. I’d like to illustrate this by

introducing you to several types of music from different African countries.

This first extract is an example of Highlife. Highlife first appeared in Sierra Leone and Ghana

during the 1920s, but soon spread throughout West Africa. It’s actually a fusion of traditional

West African rhythms and melodies with European and North American sounds. Highlife was

extremely popular during the 1950s and 60s, but went into decline in the 1970s. The

instruments used in Highlife include drums, guitars, harmonicas and accordions.

Now I’d like to play a short extract of Soukous. Soukous originated in Zaire and Congo, and

is traditionally played on the likembe, or thumb piano, guitar and bottle. It can be traced back

to the beginning of the 20th century, and in the 1970s it became popular in France and the

UK. One of its most successful international performers, Papa Wemba, is now based in

Paris.

The next example I’d like you to hear is Juju, which comes from Nigeria. Juju is based on a

traditional form of Nigerian music, but instead of being played only on drums, guitars,

keyboards and pedal steel guitars are also used. Juju started out in the 1950s, and is still

popular today, thanks to internationally renowned performers such as King Sunny Adé.

Activity answer:

Sentence True or false?

1. There are only three types of music in Africa. False

2. Highlife is influenced by European and North American music. True

3. Soukous has only ever been popular in Africa.

False

4. Juju is popular nowadays.

True

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