Kofi Agawu, Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (New

York and London: Routledge, 2003),

ISBN 0415943892 (hb); 01415943906 (pb)

Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions is a gathering of

ruminations, articles and presentations that examine different processes by which discourses
on African music have been constructed, disseminated and circulated over the past century.
The central contention of the book is that discourses on African music have been founded
on an intellectual tradition based on difference. Agawu argues that such an interpretative
proclivity is constitutive of a broader process of othering, setting apart, distancing. It is thus
suggestive of the broader political strategy advanced by colonialism in Africa where
difference was used as a means of control. The implication herein is that discourses on
African music are rooted in ideologies of power rather than corroborated by musical fact.
Agawu has written the book as an ‘intellectual-activist impulse’. His claim is that despite
ethnomusicology’s endeavour to critically examine music in relation to its broader social
context, the geographically dispersed context in which research on African music has
developed has not contributed towards the creation of a self-critical practice. Discourses
about African music have been produced by non-African scholars for a non-African
intellectual community. Archives, sound recordings, publications and other significant
scholarly resources are generally inaccessible to African scholars. Modes of knowledge
production and representation remain informed by metropolitan analytical constructs and
mediated by foreign languages. Agawu thus sets out to lay bare what he considers to be a
profound disjuncture between the practice of African music and its scholarly representation.
His aim is to promote greater self-awareness of the restrictions that have been put on
interpretations of African music, and to reclaim intellectual space by encouraging African

Twentieth Century Mu PAGE: 11 SESS: 7 OUTPUT: Fri Sep 2 10:02:05 2005

/hling/journals/cup/170/00022

and Africa-based scholars in particular, to enter more vigorously into the broader debate
about the music of their continent.

Agawu’s essays are located within postcolonial theory, a theory whose discriminating
attentiveness to the play of power in shaping discourses provides the essence of his critique.
Postcolonial theory, he suggests ‘. . . encourages a new self-awareness, rewards the eagerness

1
to lay bare the situatedness and preciousness of various frames of knowledge construction,
and takes particular pleasure in relativizing and decentering European intellectual
hegemony’ (xvii). The relevance of postcolonialism to these deliberations lies also in the way
it acknowledges contradiction, inconsistency, and hybridity as central to contemporary
African experience, thus rendering normal the incoherence of lived experience. This
emphasis on variance, multiplicity and inconclusiveness stands in contrast to the tendency
on the part of many scholars to cast African musical practices into typologies and governing
principles, thus reducing musical diversity to essentializing description.

As a preparation of his critique Agawu commences chapter 1 with a brief discussion about
the political history of colonialism in Africa, focusing on the impact of the 500 years of
Western influence that preceded and included formal rule by the British, French, German,
Portuguese and Belgian governments. He then tracks the complex creative and interpretative
paths that were created during this period, examining, amongst other issues, the musical
impact of the Christian Church within this frame. He suggests that the introduction of brass
instruments, tonal harmonies and I–IV-V chord progressions was constitutive of the broader
colonizing force. In spite of the pervasive influences of Christianity, however, he suggests
that Africa’s absorption of foreign cultural systems has not been one of passive reception, but
rather a process of opportunistic pragmatism. Africa’s use of functional harmony, he argues,
has not been purely imitative, but a strategic creative integration of European and African
expressions that have given rise to a range of popular musical formations and a vital tradition
of African art music: ‘What can be ‘‘disastrous’’ about the pervasiveness of functional
harmony in Africa? Is not such a resource akin to a foreign or foreign-derived language (like
English or French) that can serve as a convenient medium of communication, contributing
a unifying effect in a linguistically heterogeneous population?’ (9).

Chapter 2 focuses on the African ‘archive’ and examines select repositories of information
that have influenced how knowledge about African music has been constructed, ordered and
reproduced. Agawu focuses on the text-based and oral archive, sound archives,
bibliographies of African music scholarship and select music encyclopedias. He argues that
the Euro-American reliance on text as a means to represent oral traditions has contributed
towards an intellectual distance between practice and discourse. Oral sources are those
‘pedagogical schemes, repertoires, and critical discourses that reside in the memories of
individuals and collectives and are recalled, invoked, reinvented, or simply constructed as
occasions demand’ (24). He suggests that greater emphasis on the oral portion of the archive

2
would be one way to ensure a more authoritative contribution by knowledgeable indigenous
Africans to the broader discourse about their music. In contrast to the archive’s tendency to
classify Africa as a single culture area, Agawu applauds the 1980 edition of the New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians as the first

Twentieth Century Mu PAGE: 12 SESS: 7 OUTPUT: Fri Sep 2 10:02:05 2005

/hling/journals/cup/170/00022

major publication to acknowledge the musical diversity of Africa, and thus a significant
‘metropolitan affirmation of Africa’s musicological existence’ (27). Despite such progressive
moves, however, he suggests that the African archive ‘. . . exists in the hands of others, not
Africans’(35). Publications such as the New Grove are financially prohibitive for the average
African scholar, and internationally-housed collections, archives and academic conferences
remain inaccessible to most music researchers from Africa: ‘However gifted, knowledgeable,
or hardworking, our Africa-based colleague simply cannot participate meaningfully in our
self-styled ‘‘global’’ conversation about African music’ (33).

He adds to his critique of the archive a section in which he expresses grave reservations
about contemporary modes of knowledge production. He questions, amongst other
issues, the authority of music documentation and interpretation that is mediated by
foreign languages; the application of inappropriate or unethical fieldwork methodologies;
experimentation with alternative textual strategies (such as the autobiographical mode), and
the use of gratuitously complex notational systems (which is further elaborated in chapter 8).
He argues that these modes of knowledge production are merely strategies applied by
‘outsiders’ to claim authority, and suggests that greater effort be made to enable ‘postcolonial
African subjects’ to represent themselves in musical documentation and interpretation, or at
very least, to insist on the participation of an insider voice.

Chapter 3, entitled ‘Invention of ‘‘African Rhythm’’ ’, focuses on those technical features

of African music that Agawu believes to have been most sensationalized by non-African
scholars (xx). In his opinion, rhythm is the parameter which has been most imaginatively
elaborated as a way to differentiate Africa from the west. He argues that rhythm has been
subjected to persistent thematization in Euro-American discourse giving rise to a complex
set of terms and explanations (the subject of chapter 4), thus authorizing a particular
analytical frame that has shaped both Euro-American and African scholarship on African

3
music. The preoccupation with rhythm in African music has relegated other musical
features such as harmony and melody to the privileged ranks of Western music, a
simplistic binarism which Agawu firmly rejects: ‘ ‘‘African rhythm’’ . . . is an invention,
a construction, a fiction, a myth, ultimately a lie’ (61). Its invention is symptomatic of a
political and psychological position taken by the metropolitan community to validate its
assertion that Africans are essentially different. To support his argument, he cites a number
of Western compositions that are built upon complex rhythmic configurations, and, by
contrast, examines select African compositions that reveal intricate melodic lines and
harmonic textures.

Agawu further elaborates this point by arguing that the application of restrictive
definitions is similarly constitutive of a strategy to ‘other’. He examines the texts of von
Hornsbostel, A.M. Jones and Blacking, amongst others, and suggests that their use of
totalizing descriptions such as ‘them’, ‘Africans’ and ‘the Venda’ respectively is dedicated to
the construction of difference: ‘These orders are not just logical or epistemological
but political, practical, pragmatic, and ideological. And although there is a danger of
overpoliticizing scholarly procedures, the greater danger lies in denying that politics plays a
role in the construction of knowledge about African music’ (64).

Twentieth Century Mu PAGE: 13 SESS: 7 OUTPUT: Fri Sep 2 10:02:05 2005

/hling/journals/cup/170/00022

In chapter 5, Agawu explores solutions to invention by suggesting that African music be

framed as text. The notion of ‘text’ frees analysis from the fixedness of content and an
overemphasis on taxonomy, and suggests rather that music is made, negotiated, contested,
and remade with each performance. Extending the metaphor of text, he suggests that music
be conceived as a language or as an interpreting system (107). Such a perspective, he claims,
would open new windows for interpretation and has the potential to break down the
prevailing dichotomy of Africa versus the West.

Agawu, in the next chapter, focuses on popular music in Africa. He bemoans the lack of
recognition by African scholars of the interpretative and musical significance of popular
music, and criticizes the continued use of Adorno’s 1941 critique of popular music as the
basis for its exclusion as a valid scholarly subject.1 Popular music represents to Agawu the
ultimate postcolonial act: it is an exceedingly dynamic, hybridized music that defies fixed

4
categorization. He offers a close reading of three Ghanaian highlife songs, focusing on
language, poetic intention and compositional structure as a way to demonstrate their
analytical depth and complexity.

In chapter 7, entitled Contesting Difference, Agawu builds upon the Hobsbawmian

assertion that difference is a fictional construct that has at times been deployed at others’
expense. He focuses on four foundational themes: First, he scrutinizes the basis of difference
in ethnomusicology. He then highlights the thematization of difference in Africanist
ethnomusicology more specifically. Third, he questions whether difference is real, and
finally, he encourages a political resistance to difference (152).

In this book, Agawu invites the reader to reflect upon a range of issues, angling his critique
from a combination of political, musical and interpretative perspectives. At times, however,
breadth of subject privileges elaborated discussion, and there are instances when Agawu fails
to balance his criticisms with alternative approaches or methods of research/analysis. For
instance, he is resolute in his opinion that the inclusion of the autobiographical mode of
representation is an unnecessary indulgence. However, he makes no offer of less
self-gratifying, more effective textual strategies to account for the interpretative positioning
of the researcher. Rather than commenting on autobiography as a methodological strategy,
he simply states that it is an attempt on the part of the non-African researcher to claim
authority. Ironically, I believe that Agawu – himself a ‘post-colonial subject’ whose
intellectual, linguistic and cultural experiences embrace Western and African worlds in a very
particular way – would have added valuable context to his critique had he provided the reader
with greater insight into the nature of his personal intellectual journey.

It is unfortunate that in appraising prevailing discourses in African music, Agawu draws

predominantly on dated scholarship. For instance, while the theories and methods presented
by authors such as A.M. Jones are undoubtedly associated with foundational discourses in
African music, they have by no means remained uncontested over the past half century.
Similarly, one could argue that A.M. Jones, von Hornbostel, Hugh Tracey and many others

1 Theodor Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’, in Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert, trans.
Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press,
2002), 437–69.
Twentieth Century Mu PAGE: 14 SESS: 7 OUTPUT: Fri Sep 2 10:02:05 2005
/hling/journals/cup/170/00022

5
mentioned, are generally recognized as representing the very embodiment of colonial
Africanist ethnomusicology.

Within the broader debate, theories such as postmodernism, post-structuralism and

postcolonialism have stimulated a range of politically-charged debates on knowledge
construction and the ethics of representation. Indeed, much of the work of the past decade has
been invigorated by critical interpretative moves made by the likes of Said, Hobsbawm,
Appiah, and Mudimbe. These, and others cited by Agawu as significant contributors of
postcolonial thought, have without doubt stimulated self-critical practice in Africanist
ethnomusicology, and are evident in the texts of Meintjes, Erlmann, Waterman, and
Ballantine, amongst others. While this by no means invalidates the basis of Agawu’s
contention, I do believe that his argument would have been all the more powerful had he
scrutinized a wider range of contemporary research and writings on African music.
Despite this, Agawu presents in this book a judicious reconsideration of knowledge
construction in African music. It is a powerful text that will undoubtedly stimulate vigorous
debate across a range of academic disciplines. It is a forceful and incisive reminder of the
subtle yet insidious ways in which particular kinds of knowledge are constructed in particular
political moments, and how they may continue to shape our disciplinary perspectives if not
boldly, persistently, and self-critically examined.

ANGELA IMPEY

twentieth-century music 00/0, 000–000 © 2005 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S1478572205240227 Printed in the United Kingdom