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O Tonalismo Como Força Colonizadora Na África, Kofi Agawu, José H. Padovani

Publications and Research

Resumo do tradutor: No ensaio, Kofi Agawu aborda a relação entre o tonalismo – entendido como “sistema hierarquicamente organizado de relações entre alturas” – e a música africana. A partir de diferentes exemplos e em diálogo com contribuições dos estudos decoloniais e da etnomusicologia, Agawu desenvolve uma interpretação crítica que busca compreender como aspectos da imaginação musical africana responderam à violência colonial imposta a partir de uma linguagem harmônica estrangeira. Após três momentos, em que busca respectivamente expor (1) aspectos do tonalismo na música africana da atualidade, (2) aspectos do pensamento tonal africano pré-colonial e (3) elaborações composicionais de criadores …

Lives In Musicology: My Life In Writings, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Responding to an invitation from the editors of Acta Musicologica to tell the story of his life in musicology, Kofi Agawu describes his upbringing and early education in Ghana and his university studies in the UK and the US. In a career focused on teaching, research, and writing, he outlines a number of intellectual projects involving the analysis of African and European music. He ends by acknowledging renewed discussions of race and identity in the musical academy today, and hints at his own growing interest in African art music.

To Cite Or Not To Cite? Confronting The Legacy Of (European) Writing On African Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

English Abstract:

The current citational practice in Western scholarship is ideologically loaded, being far more suited to a written economy than a primarily oral culture in which knowledge is preserved in memory and disseminated through repeated performance. The impact of orality on musical scholarship should be more closely investigated; African scholars have all too often become informants rather than theorists of their own traditions. It is therefore proposed that the routine citation of a body of scholarship developed without Africa's historically-specific intellectual needs and ambitions in mind should in fact be discouraged.

German Abstract:

Die heutige Zitierpraxis der westlichen Wissenschaft …

The Invention Of "African Rhythm", Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

"African ryhthm" was invented in the 1950s when, thanks to pioneering research by the Reverend A. M. Jones, Alan Merriam, Gilbert Rouget, Erich von Hornbostel, and John Blacking, among others, "African music" was construed as an essentially rhythmic phenomenon. Three decades and a sizable body of empirical research later, it is easy to see that an overriding ideology of difference (between "Africa" and the "West") motivated these early efforts. This essay reinvents "African rhythm" not by denying its own ideological construction but by engaging in an imaginary dialogue with earlier researchers in an effort to concretize that which was missing …

Representing African Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Of all the currents of change that have swept the humanities during the last half-century, the most far-reaching revolve around language. Philosophy, history, and literary criticism, among other language-based disciplines, have developed what is often presented as a largely unprecedented self-consciousness about representation. The message to scholars in nonlanguage-based disciplines is clear: to be taken seriously, one can no longer view language as a transparent window to an objective reality but must confront the foundational political and ideological baggage of the medium itself, as well as its constant slippage in the hands of the producer.