多声演唱
多声演唱和和声概念是许多非洲音乐传统的基本特征，自最早接触以来，西方旅行者就已经注意到它们。与以前的观点相反，非洲音乐中的“和谐”现在被认为不是文化的结果，而是非洲大陆许多地方的土著。中非和南部非洲的史前猎人几乎肯定会使用和弦歌唱风格。在San族中，发现使用狩猎弓作为乐器，并发现拉长的弦的谐音，构成了一系列可能相互依赖的特征。在19世纪和20世纪初，关于狩猎弓或音乐弓是最早发明的，这与南部非洲史前猎人的文化毫无关系。
非洲音乐中的多声演唱包含两种完全不同的方法，即谐音和复音，这些词的定义适用于非洲文化。
谐音人声风格
在谐音样式中，所有旋律线，尽管音高不同，但在节奏上都是相同的，并且它们一起开始和结束。单个歌手所构想的语音线（都带有相同的文本）在原则上是相同的，仅在不同级别上演唱。男人“大声”唱歌（即低声），妇女和儿童“小声”唱歌（即高声）。他们的声音可能相距三分之一，四分之一，五分之一或八度，但被认为会唱相同的音调。但是，实际上，不仅会发生平行运动而且还会发生倾斜和相反的运动。允许后者的程度取决于特定语言的语调范围内的容忍度。例如，在安哥拉东部，反运动是正常的做法。在其他文化中，运动在相关音调系统的结构中严格平行。
Homophonic multipart singing is found in particular concentration along the Guinea Coast. It is also found throughout western central Africa, among most peoples of Angola, Zambia, and Malawi, and in many parts of East Africa. In northern central Africa it is found among the Zande and related peoples. In southwestern parts of the Central African Republic there is three-part harmonic singing with vocal parts shifting chromatically between two roots one semitone apart. Homophonic vocal styles are often linked to a call-and-response (leader-chorus) form.
Polyphonic vocal styles
In polyphonic styles the complementary individual lines differ in their rhythm and phrasing and carry different texts or syllables. They may be of different length, and their starting and ending points do not coincide. Such styles are more restricted geographically. The vocal music of the San communities in southwestern Africa is predominantly polyphonic, as are the vocal styles of Bambuti in the Ituri Forest and the Pygmy groups of the upper Sangha River area of the Congo and the Central African Republic. (The San and Pygmy peoples, whose polyphonic styles and tone systems are based on different principles, have often mistakenly been lumped together in evolutionist theories.) In other parts of Africa, isolated islands of polyphonic singing occur among or between largely homophonic communities. Thus, the otherwise homophonic Gogo people employ polyphonic techniques in their saigwa and msunyunho songs, and Nyakyusa children of southwestern Tanzania use yodel and polyphony in a song type called kibota.
A distinct style of polyphonic singing is found in much of the music of the peoples of the lower Zambezi valley, in parts of Mozambique, and also in Zimbabwe, as exemplified by the Karanga-Shona threshing song shown here:
This is a diagrammatic transcription showing the relationships between the five male voice parts (here transposed one octave and five semitones higher). In actual performance the voices enter consecutively, each starting from the double bar in his particular line and then repeatedly backtracking to the beginning of the line. The entry point for voices 2 and 3 is one pulse after the commencement of the last note of voice 1. When voice 1 repeats his line, his second syllable signals the entry point for voices 4 and 5. The cycle (which is continually repeated) is 18 pulses long. The harmonic scheme comprises a sequence of bichords in fourths and fifths, characteristic of much Shona music. The roots of these bichords, E A C / E G C, are shown above the top staff. The tone system here is hexatonic.
Polyphony is also prevalent in South Africa and Swaziland. In the dance-songs of the Nguni people (including the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele), two or more voice parts, commencing at different points in the cycle, often overlap extensively. At least two parts, solo and chorus, are always regarded as essential. In fact, a solo vocalist singing the entire song usually does not complete a single voice part but instead shifts from one part to another when he arrives at the entry point of each part.
The Zulu bow song transcribed below begins with the bow phrase, which simulates a chorus part. During repetitions of this ostinato, the voices (sung in this transcription by Zulu princess Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, her son Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, and several of his young children) enter in turn, each beginning at its double bar: first, voice 1, then, in subsequent repetitions of the 16-pulse cycle, voices 2 and 3. The lines shown below the song may be rendered by additional singers or by voices 2 and 3 as occasional variants.
This song sounds very different indeed from the previous Shona example, mainly on account of its tone system, which has two semitone intervals. A pentatonic variant of the Zulu hexatonic system cited above, it is based on two instrumental roots a semitone apart. The melodic line produced on the ugubhu gourd bow employs harmonic partials 3 and 4 of the two fundamentals B and C, these harmonics being selectively resonated by moving the open end of the gourd resonator closer to or farther from the player’s chest.
Despite the marked tonal dissimilarity between the Shona and Zulu songs, they clearly share an almost identical underlying formal structure, based on the principle of deliberately nonaligned, overlapping voice parts that retain the same relationship to one another through all successive repetitions of the song. The relationships of their parts can be demonstrated by concentric circles, in which clockwise rotation represents a cycle, or strophe, of the song, which is continually repeated.
All the vocal music considered above has as its basis some kind of tone system. Among the Zulu and other Nguni peoples, however, certain non-melodic forms of chanting coexist alongside melodic styles of performance—even among items that fit the same category of “dance-song”—just as some English nursery rhymes are sung while others are recited or chanted. In such cases, fixed musical pitches are absent, and a singsong form of rhythmical recitation is used instead. The close affinity of such pieces with melodic songs is confirmed by their sharing of the same circular, multipart formal structure.
There is indeed evidence from many different parts of Africa of the use of intermediate vocal styles, falling somewhere between the extremes of speech and song. In many African cultures the boundary between the two does not tally exactly with the Western, demonstrating that definitions of music and song are culture-specific.
