Talk:Music of Uganda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of the "World music" set of articles nominated for Version 0.7. Discuss this nomination, or see the set nominations page for more details. |
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Africa, which collaborates on articles related to Africa in Wikipedia. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details. | ||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. | ||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. | ||
 |
This article is supported by WikiProject Uganda. See also the Uganda WikiPortal. | ||
|
Assessment comments
|
|||
 |
Music of Uganda is within the scope of the WikiProject Regional and national music, an attempt at building a resource on the music of all the peoples and places of the world. Please visit the project's listing to see the article's assessment and to help us improve the article as we push to 1.0. |
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. |
[edit] Folk vs. Traditional Music
I have replaced the heading "Folk music" with "Traditional music". The term folk music is absolutely inappropriate for some of the forms of traditional music like for example amadinda, enanga, and akadinda music. This is composed music with an intricate structure, some of which is going back to the 1800 centurry or is even older. It is performed by professional musicians. It is courtly music performed at the court of the kabaka or at the courts of chiefs. If any European term is appropiate here, it would be "(African) classical music". I suppose that a large part of African music is not folk music at all (I also doubt that the term "folk music" is very usefull generally). The terms folk and folklore contain a valuation, a distinction between high and low. The distinction between "high" and "low" music that exists in the European distinction between classical music and folk music developed in Italy during the renaissance time and served a function in the hierarchical society of that time. It should not be extended to the music of other cultures without a very close look.
I suggest not to use the term folk musik in Africa unless it is really appropriate. (There seems to be a tendency among westerners (and Africans with western education) to look down at African culture. African peoples are often called "tribes". Their languages are referred to as "dialects" or "vernaculars". I prefer to call them "peoples" or "ethnic groups" and "languages" respectively. Calling classical African music "folk" goes into the same direction.)
The term "traditional music" is not without problems, because things develop and some "traditional" forms of music are quite recent (e.g. the kadongo lamellophone of busoga is a new development from the early 20th century) but at least this term is more neutral. Nannus 20:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
