Music of Sierra Leone
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| West African music | |
|---|---|
| Benin | Burkina Faso |
| Chad | Côte d'Ivoire |
| Gambia | Ghana |
| Guinea | Guinea-Bissau |
| Liberia | Mali |
| Mauritania | Niger |
| Nigeria | Senegal |
| Sierra Leone | Togo |
| Western Sahara | |
Sierra Leone's music is a mixture of native and French influences. Palm wine is representative, and is played by an acoustic guitar with percussion in countries throughout coastal West Africa. Palm wine, the drink, is the source of the name of the music and the clubs where it was both drunk and played.
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Palm-wine
Main article: Palm-wine music
Sierra Leonean palm wine music is known as maringa, and it was first popularized by Ebenezer Calender & His Maringar Band, who used styles that came from freed slaves from the Caribbean, especially Trinidadian calypso. Calendar's most popular song was "Double-Decker Bus", which was commissioned by Decca to promote the launching of a double-decker bus line. Calender was a skilled instrumentalist who played the guitar, trumpet, mandolin and the cornet. Calendar eventually moved towards socially and spiritually aware lyrics, while also penning some of the most oft-played songs in Sierra Leonean music in the 1950s and 60s [1] (http://www.sierra-leone.org/heroes10.html).
Gumbe
Main article: Gumbe
Gumbe (goombay), a genre more closely associated with the music of Guinea-Bissau, has also had a long presence in the form of milo-jazz. Milo-jazz is a distinctly Sierra Leonean style named for a brand of chocolate powder, empty cans of which were filled with stones to form a core percussion instrument of the genre. Israel Cole is the most widely-acknowledged innovator of milo-jazz [2] (http://www.afropop.org/explore/country_info/ID/19/Sierra%20Leone/).
Afropop
Main article: Afropop
Beginning in the 1970s, maringa, Congolese music, funk and soul combined to formed a popular kind of Afropop. Major bands of this era included Sabannoh 75, Orchestra Muyah, Super Combo and the Afro-Nationals. Sierra Leoneans abroad have created their own styles, such as the Spanish Seydu, German Ansoumana Bangura and the Brit Abdul Tee-Jay [3] (http://www.afropop.org/explore/country_info/ID/19/Sierra%20Leone/).
References
- Ashcroft, Ed and Richard Trillo. "Palm-Wine Sounds". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 634-637. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
- [4] (http://www.sierra-leone.org/heroes10.html)
- [5] (http://www.afropop.org/explore/country_info/ID/19/Sierra%20Leone/)