Apr 02, 2008

Zulu Musical Instruments, Essential To Develop Musical Traditions In Africa

Posted by : Hershey Felder

African music is the music of Africans who live in a large region of 50 nations, each with a special culture, history and language, South of Sahara. Zulu musical instruments are part of this multilingual culture. African music has some distinct characteristics: the use of repetition is one of them. Another important characteristic is the polyphony; this is the combination of different musical parts played simultaneously.

The history is marked by the awesome military strategies of the Zulu King Shaka. The King?s and his warriors? campaign of expansion is well known in world history. Zulu rich traditional culture includes songs, dances and colorful rituals, Zulu musical instruments are spectacular and original. A variety of Zulu musical instruments are well known, s well as the traditional Mine dance; Zulus have longtime used their music as a cry for freedom.

African music is really rich in modes of expression: drum ensembles are using Zulu musical instruments from the percussion family. Each drummer uses special methods to produce sounds to distinguish his drum from the others. Iron bells are very popular Zulu musical instruments; they are used to produce a repeated sound to help the drummers to play at the correct time.

Zulu musical instruments, rare and very special The akadinda is a king of xylophone; two groups of African musicians are playing simultaneously. The first group is playing repeatedly the same pattern; the second group plays to fill in the missing sounds. Groups of Zulu musicians play also using flutes, trumpets or xylophones. Each player plays a single note in a strange rotation with the other players. The result is a polyphonic piece, characteristic to African music.

Musical practices of South African people were observed from many years; Zulu musical instruments are obsolete. Venda mbila is an old Zulu musical instrument; it is not used anymore. Reed flutes, contrary, are still very popular. The influence of foreign cultures and civilizations causes many of old Zulu musical instruments to become obsolete.

Musical instruments such as tsonga ? a horn, ingungu ? a friction drum, nkoka ? a drum, pedi ? a flute, venda ? musical bow and stick, deze and demba ? thumb piano and resonatos, umfece ? ankle rattles are almost obsolete.

To preserve this awesome heritage of Zulu musical instruments, the necessary information was entered into a database; each Zulu musical instrument was digitally photographed to preserve all information about it.

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Jan 21, 2008

Hershey Felder, Musical Instruments For Children

Posted by : Hershey Felder
People of all ages can be fascinated by music. However, it is not easy to learn music as it is to hear it. Learning music requires a strong desire on part of the person to gain complete knowledge of all nuances of music. Whatever reason he might want to learn music for, he must have the perseverance and grit to come out successful after facing all the challenges that he counters while learning music. Same is the case with a child.

A child may get attracted towards a music instrument or become happy while listening to it. However, that does not mean he is enthusiastic about learning it. So it is important for the parents to find out about their child?s musical instruments and decide if he is brash enough to learn playing an instrument perfectly. They should firstly find out whether the child is interested to learn music or whether they are forcing it on him.

Secondly, the parents should find out if the child has any innate musical talents within him. Some children possess hereditary musical talents. In such cases, it is just enough to fine tune the talents. These children will be able to learn all the fine distinctions of music very quickly. There is also another type of children who do not have any inherent music talents within them. These children find it difficult to increase their aptitude in music even after going through a highly rigorous training. However, there is no reason to believe that these children are not capable of learning music properly. If they had a solid aspiration to learn music, they can achieve it at any cost.

It is important that you choose quality over cost when buying a musical instrument of your child. Quality items are usually known to last longer. So, good quality musical instruments are able to withstand wear and rear more effectively even when they are used by children in a rough manner. They also sound better than the other cheap instruments.

It is also important that you let the child learn his instrument at his own pace. You should not goad him too much as he might lose interest in music completely with this step. Even singing can be encouraged if your child loves to do so. In that case you can get a good music teacher for him to teach him sing and play his instrument.

 

Linda Polansky writes about , Musicains Hut Promotions and Guitar Center Products.

 

 

 

 

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