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Contemporary African Music in World Perspectives N. N. Kofie. Accra: Ghana Universities P, 1994. 156 pp
Studies on African music(s) in the past twenty years have made substantial gains, especially in the manner in which they relate the musical practices to the influential sociocultural milieu (e.g., Charles Keil's Tiv Song, John Chernoff's African Rhythm and African Sensibility, David Coplan's In Township Tonight!: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre, Ruth Stone's Let the Inside Be Sweet: The Interpretation of Music Events among the Kpelle of Liberia, and Meki Nzewi's Musical Practice and Creativity: An African Traditional Perspective). In addition, scholars are moving away from making quick generalizations (which have marred the earlier scholarship) to more focused research formulations (for reviews of research in African music see, for example, Nketia, "African Music and Western Praxis: A Review of Western Perspectives on African Musicology" and "Perspectives on African Musicology" as well as Agawu, "Representing African Music"). Indigenous scholars in the field of academic publishing on African music are also influencing the quantity and quality of analytical schemes or viewpoints available on the subject.
Contemporary African Music in World Perspectives by N. N. Kofie presents many challenges, problems, and possibilities that could advance the course of research in African music if they are received and pursued with determination and theoretical consistency and are limited to a well-defined object of critical inquiry. The book has seven chapters: "Western Epistemology and Musical Perception in African Cultures"; "Social Organization and Sound"; "Anthropological Perspectives in African Music"; "Time, Rhythm and Tempo"; "Towards a Theory for Aesthetics in African Music"; and "Music Education as an Aspect of
Acculturation." As acknowledged by the author, the book is partly based on his German (University of Hamburg) dissertation, AuBrmusikalische Bedeutungen afrikanischer Musik. The goals and tasks of the book are better presented in the author's own words:
This book is not a textbook on methodology; it is rather a study in systematic musicology. Its primary concern is to examine musicological questions or problems which are vital to a better understanding of African music .... This is an attempt to use some of the methods of a discipline to solve African problems.... [T]he book is also an attempt to assemble relevant facts which are otherwise scattered in...