Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

Music Is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music.

Article Excerpt
By Frank Tenaille. Photographs by Akwa Betote. Translated by Stephen Toussaint and Hope Sandrine. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002. [xiv, 205 p. ISBN 1-55652-450-1. $18.95.] Illustrations, glossary of musical genres and styles, glossary of instruments, bibliography, discography, index.

Frank Tenaille chooses Fela Kuti's provocative proclamation "Music Is the Weapon of the Future" as the title of his book Fifty Years of African Popular Music. Through thirty vignettes, serving as exposes of over sixty musicians and groups from twenty-eight countries, Tenaille explores life histories and genres of over half a century of popular music in Africa. It is an ambitious project, serving as an interesting overview of musical trends and situating characters in a light that attempts to reveal not only their private lives but also the context within which they worked.

One of the strongest points of the book can be found in the substantial and useful appendices where Tenaille offers an outlay of musical areas, a succinct yet comprehensive list of musical genres and styles, a glossary of instruments, a representative discography, and a selected bibliography divided into sections on music writings, dance writings, newspapers, magazines, films, and radio stations. Any reader unfamiliar with the music of Africa will find these appendices valuable as a resource.

Within the chapters of the book, however, the breadth of information covered does not give the reader a chance to absorb the passion of the lives of the musicians, to unravel the political complexities of the...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!