Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa

With Mande Music , Eric Charry offers the most comprehensive source available on one of Africa’s richest and most sophisticated music cultures. Using resources as disparate as early Arabic travel accounts, oral histories and archival research as well as his own extensive music lessons and interviews, Charry traces this music culture from its origins in the 13th-century Mali empire to the recording studios of Paris and New York. He focuses on the four major spheres of Mande music - hunter’s music, music of the jelis or griots, jembe and other drumming, and guitar-based modern music - exploring how each evolved, the types of instruments used, the major artists, and how each sphere relates to the others. With its maps, illustrations and musical transcriptions, as well as an exhaustive bibliography, discography and videography, this book is useful reading for those seeking an in-depth look at one of the most exciting, innovative and deep-rooted phenomena on the world music scene. A compact disc is available separately.