page_title: Sub-Saharan African music traditions
section_title: The Gulf of Guinea
hierarchical_section_title: Sub-Saharan African music traditions / West Africa / The Gulf of Guinea
context_page_description: In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work and for religious ceremonies of birth, naming, rites of passage, marriage and funerals. The beats and sounds of the drum are used in communication as well as in cultural expression.
  African dances are largely participatory: there are traditionally no barriers between dancers and onlookers except with regard to spiritual, religious and initiation dances. Even ritual dances often have a time when spectators participate. Dances help people work, mature, praise or criticize members of the community, celebrate festivals and funerals, compete, recite history, proverbs and poetry and encounter gods. They inculcate social patterns and values. Many dances are performed by only males or females. Dances are often segregated by gender, reinforcing gender roles in children. Community structures such as kinship, age, and status are also often reinforced.
context_section_description: The Akan people  include the Fante, Ashanti, who originated the adowa and kete styles, the Baoulé whose polyphonic music introduced the gbébé rhythm to Ivory Coast, the Nzema people who play the edengole. Akan peoples have complex court music including the atumpan and Ga kpanlogo style, a modernized traditional dance and music form, developed around 1960. Yacub Addy, Obo Addy, and Mustapha Tettey Addy are Ga drummers who have achieved international fame. A huge log xylophone is used in asonko music. The 10–14 string Ghanaian seprewa, midway between the kora and the African harp, is still played but often replaced by guitar. Other styles include; adaha, agbadza, akwete, ashiko and gombe as well as konkomba, mainline, osibisaba and sikyi.  Instrumentation includes the aburukawa, apentemma, dawuro and torowa.
  Ewe music, the music  of the Ewe people of Ghana, Togo and Benin, is primarily percussive with great metrical complexity. Ewe drumming ensembles produce dance music and have contributed popular styles such as agbadza and borborbor, a konkomba/highlife fusion of the 1950s.
  The related Aja people are native to  south-western Benin and south-eastern Togo. Aja living in Abomey mingled with the local tribe, thus creating the Fon or Dahomey ethnic group, now the largest in Benin. Tchinkoumé.
  Yoruba music is prominent in the music of Nigeria and in Afro-Latin and Caribbean musical styles. Ensembles using the talking drum play a type of music that is called dundun after the drum, using various sizes of tension drum along with special band drums (ogido). The leader or oniyalu uses the drum to "talk" by imitating the tonality of Yoruba language. Yoruba music traditionally centred on folklore and spiritual/deity worship, utilising basic and natural instruments such as handclaps. Professional musicians were referred to by the derogatory term of Alagbe.
  Igbo music informs Highlife and Waka. The drum is the most important musical instrument for the Igbo people, used during celebrations, rites of passage, funerals, war, town meetings and other events, and the pot-drum or udu (means "pot") is their most common and popular drum: a smaller variant is called the kim-kim. Igbo Styles include egwu ota. Other instruments: obo – ufie – ogene, a flat metal pan used as a bell.
  Bassa people (Cameroon) originated  assiko, a popular dance from the South of Cameroon.
  The Kasena use a hocket vocal style. Other styles are; jongo, len yoro. Instruments include; gullu, gungonga, korbala, kornia, sinyegule, wua and yong wui.
  A Bamileke style is mangambe; Bamileke people use the gong.
  The Beti-Pahuin of Cameroon Style = bikutsi; Dance = bikutsi; Instrumentation = njang – rattle include Fang people chorus and drum group; Instrumentation  = mvet; Other = bebom-mvet. Music of São Tomé and Principe Styles: danço-Congo – dêxa – socopé – ússua – xtléva; Instruments: cowbell – flute – rattle; Other: Tchiloli
  The music of Cape Verde has long been influenced by Europe, Instrumentation includes the accordion (gaita), the bowed rabeca, the violão guitar and the viola twelve string guitar as well as cavaquinho, cimboa and ferrinho. Styles include batuque, coladera, funaná, morna and tabanca.
caption: The musical ensemble of the chief of Abetifi  (Kwahu people) c. 1890[28]
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