Paperback
Published: (November 21, 2017) Language: English ISBN-10: 1624280609 ISBN-13: 978-1624280603 Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 0.6 x 10.8 inches Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds |
Thomas C. Oden with Curt Niccum
In the Songs of Africa, the authors present evidence that the oldest written form of African music with embedded musical notation in the sub-Saharan region was Ethiopian chant, song, dance, and instrumentation. Those who are looking for the most ancient known roots of African song, jazz, musical phrases, composition, and scripted musical notation may find them echoing from the Ethiopian highlands from the fifth century and codified in a stable manuscript tradition dating to the fourteenth century.
These manuscript sources predate by many centuries most other oral traditions found in traditional African religions. Despite their crucial importance in centuries of culture-formation, the Ethiopian Canticles have never before been the specific subject of rigorous critical textual investigation. In this volume one encounters significant implications for jazz history, African studies, and Christian culture in eastern Africa. This useful volume opens a door onto the Ethiopian Psalter, a hybrid text containing the biblical Psalms but also unique Ethiopian creations, delivering to us a book that is 'not just a text, but a world.' Designed for a wide audience, the volume includes essays on many fascinating aspects of this text world--from its motifs and concerns to the practices of the scribes who made them. This work illustrates, as vibrantly as do the colourful manuscripts themselves, the invaluable contribution of Africa to bridging the cultures of East and West and of antiquity and the modern world. |
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