AFRICAN MUSIC: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE TRADITIONAL, POPULAR, ART, AND LITURGICAL MUSICS OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, by John Gray, Greenwood Press, New York, 1991, xii + 499pp, 3 appendixes, 4 indexes.

Objectives: Heart failure (HF) is an important cause of hospital admission in Nigeria. HF is increasingly prevalent because the population is aging and HF epidemiology is changing. We aimed at profiling the socio-demographic, clinical and echocardiographic (Echo) characteristics of patients admitted for acute HF. This is one of the largest cohorts of HF patients profiled in Nigeria so far. Methods: Cross sectional design. Socio-demographic, clinical and Echo data were collected from 455 patients admitted for AHF at University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, North central, Nigeria. Results: Mean age of patients was 58.9± 15.7years, (men were older than women, P= 0.006). 265(58.2%) were males, most patients were aged >60 years, 4.8% had pre-existing Type2 Diabetes mellitus. 53.2% of patients presented in New York Heart Association Stages III and IV. Median duration of admission was 11days (IQR, 6-17), intrahospital mortality- 11.6%. Hypertension was the commonest aetiological factor (62.4%), followed by dilated cardiomyopathy 17.6%, rheumatic heart disease (6.6%), Peripartum cardiomyopathy (5.3%), and others. Conclusion: AHF patients in our study are older than those in previous studies in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. Hypertension is main driver of AHF, and patients largely present with clinically advanced disease necessitating stronger public health education about risk factors and early presentation.

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CONTINENTAL MUSICOLOGY: DECOLONISING THE MYTH OF A SINGULAR “AFRICAN MUSIC”

African Music Journal of the International Library of African Music ◽

10.21504/amj.v10i4.2239 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 177-193

Author(s):

Thomas Mathew Pooley

Keyword(s):

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Power Dynamics ◽

Musical Structure ◽

African Music ◽

Popular Imagination ◽

Ideal Types ◽

Musical Identity ◽

The North ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

And Function

The musical identity of the African continent is sustained in the popular imagination by the idea of its unity. This identity emerges from a constellation of ideas about Africa’s distinctiveness constructed by generations of scholars who have diminished its diversity to substantiate the claim that shared principles of musical structure and function in sub-Saharan cultures can be read as ideal types for the continent as a whole. The idea of a singular “African music” is predicated on the notion that African “traditional” music of precolonial origin in sub-Saharan Africa possesses a set of distinctive features that are essential to its identity. Musical cultures as diverse as Aka, Ewe, Shona, Yoruba, and Zulu are subsumed within a singular frame of reference; others that do not possess these features are, by implication, excluded. To make sense of this myth of a singular “African music” we must reckon with the universalising impulse that sustains it. This means interrogating the discursive formations out of which it has been fashioned. Whose interests does it serve? Taking a decolonial perspective on the power dynamics that structure global south-north relations in the academy, this article points to the ways in which the north perpetuates its authority and dominance over the south by subsuming others within its cultural and intellectual ambit. Decolonising “African music” means dismantling the hegemony of “continental musicology” and the myth of a singular “African music” that is its creation.

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