In deze rubriek vind je...

In deze rubriek vind je alles over de muziek in Afrika: de meesters, de roots, het dansen...

Africa is a land shrouded in mystery and poetry, the rational mind venturing there finds itself puzzled and inefficient in negotiating its environment.  Its inhabitants know their own history largely through oral tradition; interpretations, myths, legends, songs and stories, not through objective documentation.  Some of the retold history was doubted by Western scholars who had to recant themselves faced with the historical evidence of its truth.

Anthropologists look for ethnic and cultural differences…musicians for rhythmic and melodic patterns…and everyone trying to write a book about it… document it, categorize it…define it.  But Africa never yields its true nature that way because the real understanding doesn’t lie in rational thought but in poetic thought.  It is a land dominated by magic, where humans accept the irrational forces that guide them in this world as a fact of life and integrate their intuitive knowledge to the pursuit of their lives. Until one abandons a few of one’s Western notations about reality and surrenders to a different perspective, the rational mind keeps one in a state of confusion and bewilderment.