Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Music

Advisor

V. Kofi Agawu

Committee Members

L. Poundie Burstein

Yayoi Uno Everett

James M Salinas Burns

Subject Categories

Music Theory

Keywords

Musical form, musical structure, African music, form analysis, oral tradition, block-based analysis

Abstract

This dissertation examines the organizational principles in African music through the analysis of four distinct musical traditions: the San music of Southern Africa, Por Por honk-horn music of urban Accra (Ghana), the Northern and Southern Ewe music of Ghana, and the Aka music of the Central African Republic. While the study of African music has often emphasized its sociocultural and rhythmic aspects, structural principles have remained a relatively underexplored subject. This study argues that African music is highly structural yet should not be analyzed as fixed blueprints. Instead, it introduces a “block-based method” for analyzing oral music, the first step of which is to identify the fundamental building blocks of a piece while recognizing that the performance is a fluid, real-time assembly of these blocks.

Based on the author’s original transcriptions and analysis of 88 complete recordings from these four traditions, this study identifies several recurring forms across cultures, including the single-block form, two-block form, three-block form, medley form, and strophic form. Meanwhile, certain forms remain unique to specific traditions, such as the layered single-block form found in Aka music. Each chapter presents a case study on the formal structures of a different musical tradition. Chapter 1 examines the music of the San people of the Kalahari Desert. Chapter 2 focuses on Por Por honk-horn music in Accra, Ghana. Chapter 3 features both Northern and Southern Ewe music, ending with a comparative analysis. Chapter 4 explores Aka music from the Central African rainforest. In conclusion, this dissertation suggests the existence of pan-African organizational principles while acknowledging that each culture shapes and applies these forms in distinctive ways.

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