page_title: Music of Africa
section_title: Influence on North American music
hierarchical_section_title: Music of Africa / Influences on African music / Influence on North American music
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: "Traffic" mit Steve Winwood und Pete Brown 1973 in der Musikhalle, HamburgEnglish: Traffic with Steve Winwood and Pete Brown in 1973 at the Hamburg Music Hall (now the Laeiszhalle).
context_page_description: African music is a tradition mainly played at gatherings at special occasions. The traditional music of Africa, given the vastness of the continent, is historically ancient, rich and diverse, with different regions and nations of Africa having many distinct musical traditions. Music in Africa is very important when it comes to religion. Songs and music are used in rituals and religious ceremonies, to pass down stories from generation to generation, as well as to sing and dance to.
  Traditional music in most of the continent is passed down orally and is not written. In sub-Saharan African music traditions, it frequently relies on percussion instruments of every variety, including xylophones, djembes, drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira or "thumb piano." The music and dance of the African diaspora, formed to varying degrees on African musical traditions, include American music and many Caribbean genres, such as soca, calypso and zouk. Latin American music genres such as samba, bomba, conga, rumba, salsa and cumbia were founded on the music of enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music.
context_section_description: Although African American music is widely known and loved, and much popular North American music emerged from it, white American music also has strong African roots. The musical traditions of the Irish and Scottish settlers merged with African-American musical elements to become old-time and bluegrass, among other genres.
  African music has been a major factor in the shaping of what we know today as Dixieland, the blues and jazz. These styles have all borrowed from African rhythms and sounds, brought over the Atlantic Ocean by slaves. African music in Sub-Saharan Africa is mostly upbeat polyrhythmic and joyful, whereas the blues should be viewed as an aesthetic development resulting from the conditions of slavery in the new world.
  On his album Graceland, the American folk musician Paul Simon employs African bands, rhythms and melodies as a musical backdrop for his own lyrics; especially Ladysmith Black Mambazo. In the early 1970s, Remi Kabaka, an Afro-rock avant-garde drummer, laid the initial drum patterns that created the Afro-rock sounds in bands such as Ginger Baker's Airforce, The Rolling Stones, and Steve Winwood's Traffic. He continued to work with Winwood, Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger throughout the decade.
  Certain Sub-Saharan African musical traditions also had a significant influence on such works as Disney's The Lion King and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, which blend traditional music with Western music. Songs such as "Circle of Life" and "He Lives in You" combine of Zulu and English lyrics, as well as traditional African styles of music with more modern western styles. Additionally, the Disney film incorporates numerous words from the Bantu Swahili language. The phrase hakuna matata, for example, is an actual Swahili phrase that does in fact mean "no worries". Characters such as Simba, Kovu, and Zira are also Swahili words, meaning "lion", "scar", and "hate", respectively.
  Babatunde Olatunji, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masakela were among the earliest African performing artists to develop sizable fan bases in the United States. Non-commercial African American radio stations promoted African music as part of their cultural and political missions in the 1960s and 1970s. African music also found eager audiences at Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and appealed particularly to activists in the civil rights and Black Power movements.
caption: Steve Winwood's progressive rock/jazz rock band Traffic often used West African rhythms
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