African Perspectives: Pre-colonial History, Anthropology, and Ethnomusicology

On the occasion of Gerhard Kubik's 70th birthday scholars from most diverse disciplines and different cultures were invited to take part in an international symposium. This symposium was held at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Vienna in December 2004. The participants whose lectures are published in this book, came from various European countries and the USA, as well as from Japan and Africa. The symposium was dedicated to the work of Gerhard Kubik. The scholar who was born in Vienna, is one of the leading and most estimated ethnomusicologists of our time. His diversified cultural approach and his decidedly intra-cultural working method have always met with highest international approval. In the course of the past four decades Gerhard Kubik has undertaken extended field research every year which up to now has lead him to eighteen African countries, to Brazil and the USA. African Perspectives presents the scientific results of his friends and colleagues as well as the research activities of Gerhard Kubik.

Inhalt

Contents: Moya Aliya Malamusi: Akaning'a and his travels - Donald Hopkins: Smallpox in history. A contribution to pre-colonial history in Africa - Giorgio Adamo: Music - body - movement. An «African» perspective applied to the analysis of South Italian dances - Albert Ssempeke: Autobiographical note by a court musician - Sarah Sekintu: Buganda's history according to oral tradition - Maliya Moya Malamusi: Zopeka ndi zochitika - Fiction and non-fiction - Kayombo Kachinyeka: Konkha vya vanda - Search for the Hidden. Luchazi culture in historical perspective - Moses Yotamu: Chiyao Chieftainship and Initiation Ceremonies. A field report from Chief Makanjila's village, Lake Malawi - Pancho Guedes: Lomwe initiation masks. Description of seven examples from the collection of Dori and Pancho Guedes with an introduction - Moya Aliya Malamusi: Musical bows in South-East Africa - William Umbima: Art in music: Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa - Stanley Glasser: The condition of decay in contemporary West European «classical» music - Artur Simon: Nubian music in the Northern Sudan and the Southern Egypt. Research and recordings from 1973-2003 - David Evans: Patterns of reinterpretation in African-American music of the United States - Theodore Albrecht: African, autobiographical, and earlier operatic elements in Scott Joplin's Treemonisha - Ruth M. Stone: Inscribing history and culture in the Woi epic. Migration of the Kpelle people, performance, and the Kingdom of Mali - Kenichi Tsukada: Asafo and f nt mfr m as indices of social sentiments among the Fante (Ghana) - George T. Nurse: Pre-colonial colonialism in Central and Southern Africa - George Fortune: Aspects of life among the Shawasha of pre-Rhodesian days. A selection from a manuscript by Simon Tawoneyi - Mitchel Strumpf: African music history until the start of Independence and the history of some other world music traditions: a design for a course of study of African history, anthropology, and ethnomusicology.