Until a few decades ago, the musical picture in many parts of Africa was primarily that of traditions of linguistic groups as cultural units. So there was as now Akan music, Adangme music, Yoruba music, Kalahari music, etc., each one practised by communities sharing common beliefs, common values and common ideals. Because of the way in which this music was organized and practised in the past, striking variations in levels of attainment, in the emphasis on different instrumental resources, and more particularly in the choice of singing styles have been inevitable.

Thus when we compare the singing styles of the Akan and the Anlo-Ewe of Ghana, we find that the dominant features of Akan singing style are the use of a heptatonic scale and polyphony based on the third as a consonant interval. Men and women rarely sing in octave parallels. In Ewe singing, on the other hand, the predominant features are singing in unison or in parallel octaves where men and women sing together and the use of sporadic fourths'as consonant intervals. Both hemitonic and anhemitonic pentatonic forms are used.

Dance research is a rapidly expanding field. Because a detailed overview and categorization of dance studies has been published recently, I will not dwell on the historical background of dance research here. My aim rather is to emphasize some areas that have not been adequately discussed in other papers, and to offer some positive suggestions for future research.

The origin of the Bon-Odori, or Bon Dance, is described in the Ullambana Sutra of Buddhist scripture. It tells how Mauggallana (sometimes spelled Maudgalyana, and in the Japanese language called Mokuren), one of the ten disciples of Buddha, became aware of his mother's suffering in the inferno of the dead. He tried to relieve her hunger by offering her rice, but when she brought it to her lips it turned to fire. Mauggallana went to the Buddha for help and was advised for his mother's sake to give food-offerings to the bhikus (priests), on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when they returned from the mountains after their long meditation during the rainy season. The spontaneous dance of joy following his mother's release from the torment of hell was the first Bon Dance. This ritual offering and festive celebration became an annual event.

Traditional music in Yoruba society may to a considerable degree be regarded as music-drama. The dramatic element of this music is given its highest expression in situations of a ceremonial nature in which music, dance, speech, physical movement, costume, and art objects all combine to constitute the complete performance. Music in the context of traditional dance, even when the dance is not connected with ceremonial functions, illustrates another aspect of the dramatic use of music; for Yoruba dance, like much African dance, is akin to dance-drama.

Modes and modal systems (groups of related modes) are none other than generalized types of melodic movement occurring in folk music, both vocal and instrumental. Arising first in folk song, they become fixed in the scaling of folk musical instruments, in the linear measurements that determine the structure of intervals. The chief types of instruments with fixed scaling are wind instruments with finger-holes, and fretted stringed instruments of the lute family. Whereas the human voice and lutes-without-frets belong (potentially at least) to the realm of free melodic creativity, musical instruments with fixed scales preserve historical stages in the development of melody, of individual modes and of entire modal systems. The scaling of an instrument is indeed a kind of notation; its symbols are not written on paper but exist as linear proportions on the instrument itself.

As an aspect of my research in Colombian folksong I examined a number of published Spanish sources in an attempt to find analogues for the texts and melodies of songs I had recorded in Colombia. By this means I hoped to determine that a particular text or melody had been diffused from Spain to Latin America. This proved feasible in the case of a small number of song texts but very difficult in the case of the melodies associated with these song texts.

In comparison with the most admired scholarly disciplines of the twentieth century Western World, musicology has only tardily formed concepts of its total field, or universe, and of its lowest common denominator. And these concepts, such as they are, have not yet made a dent upon the “excessive historicism” still entrenched in academic fortresses. Meanwhile, the natural and social sciences have advanced from positions of main reliance upon analytical techniques to bold syntheses of universal proportions, while in musicology, even mention of synthesis is not quite respectable. It should not be, but probably is, necessary to point out that except within a universal conceptual frame and in terms of a lowest common denominator, analysis is harzardous.

The points raised herein address the methodologies and assumptions which undergird the theory-building process in ethnomusicology and ethnology. Hypotheses and conclusions are derived from field research among the Mapuche-speaking peoples of Andean Argentina (1971-72) and have been further tested in cooperative research with Edward A. DeCarbo, Jr., among Kasem-speakers in Northern Ghana. The discussion concerns the description and explanation of tayil, a form of musical communication among the Argentine Mapuche, as well as the utility of the Western musicological category “music” as a point of entry to the explication of a social system.

Performers of music practised and perpetuated by oral tradition are guided by their knowledge of repertoire, by awareness of usages, procedures and techniques, and above all by their musicianship. Among the Gogo of Tanzania, as indeed among other societies with oral music tradition, these enable performers not only to reproduce what they have learnt, but also to re-create it where tradition allows it; they enable them to make their own additions to existing repertoire or bring new musical types into being. Thus a traditional composer of a particular piece of music need not provide everything for those who learn his music from him. Only the essentials such as the basic text, the melody, type of accompaniment need be provided or suggested.

Jaap Kunst (1891-1960) schreibt zu Beginn seines Buches Musicologica:

“To the question what is the study-object of comparative musicology, the answer must be: mainly the music and the musical instruments of all non-European peoples, including both the so-called primitive peoples and the civilized Eastern nations. Although this science naturally makes repeated excursions into the field of European music, the latter is, in itself, only an indirect object of its study. The name of our science is, in fact, not quite characteristic; it does not ‘compare’ any more than any other science. A better name, therefore, is that appearing on the title page of this book: ethnomusicology.”

Musical scholars often have great difficulty in studying acculturated music. It is somehow easier to deal with an older tradition which has been purified from spurious external influences over a period of years and can now be studied as a product of a particular culture. When we encounter acculturation, and there are few areas of the world where strong acculturative influences are not at work, we tend to ignore it, and retreat, instead into an ethnocentric idealism which will allow us to retain our image of what a music should be.