Mr. Pa Modou Bojang, General Manager of Yiriwa Development Radio Station in Brikama Town, Western Region, has lately returned from the UK where he attended the World of Music Arts and Dance Festival (WOMAD) held at the new site of the Founder Peter Gabriel in Charton Park few miles away from London from 27th to 29th July 2007.

The festival, which brought together over two million people including 40, 000 artistes across the globe, was geared towards bringing about cultural exchange through music, arts and dance. This year’s festival marked the difference as over million people were reportedly seen singing, dancing and drumming in the muddy sands of the newly -built Charton Park.

Speaking to Travel Talk, Mr. Bojang described his trip to the UK as a resounding success.  He said attending the WOMAD festival has given him the opportunity to meet and mingle with the movers and shakers of the UK society.  According to him, during his stay in the UK, he was invited to attend the Tribe of Doris Festival that took place at the Wellington Park in southwest England from 22nd to 28th August. “The Tribe of Doris is the intercultural summer school that began 17 years ago and that this year’s event attracted over 40,000 people including artists from all over the world.

“African artists were given prominence as African cultures were given more attention more than any other cultures. Many artists from the African continent including The Gambia, Senegal Zimbabwe, Nigeria and just to name a few performed at the festival,” he said.

The Yiriwa FM boss also revealed that while in the UK he attended a two-day workshop on globalization and cultural exchange at Bristol organized by Sul’art, a community-based organization that promotes cultures through providing entertainment to schools and prisons adding that forum was expertly coordinated by the Gambian sabarr teacher Modou Joof.

He further stated: “This trip has really accorded me ample opportunity to get access to partners in development for the future possible investment in this country.

“I was able to meet the BBC Bureau of International Development and Partnership where agreements were made on staff training and programme rebroadcasting. With this agreement there is a strong hope that every year one or two Yiriwa FM staff could benefit from the training package.
“I also met the Black Radio Organization in Bristol with whom so many things were discussed for the expansion o f Yiriwa Development Radio in Brikama.
“I was The Gambia goodwill ambassador to WOMAD and all these events because this is the first time that the Gambian media is being invited to these festivals.
I was able to present a paper on future investment in The Gambia at a forum organized by Gambians residing in the UK and their friends that took place in Liver Pool.

“At the investment forum I informed the gathering that The Gambia has lots of positive investment opportunities as well as an enabling investment climate and I have no doubt that if given chance not only Gambians residing in UK but many other business tycoons around the globe would invest in the country since The Gambia ranks among the most peaceful countries in the world.
“Also I attended the Northinghill carnival in London that brought together over one million people drawn over diverse societies in the UK.

“So I’m very thankful to the proprietor of Yiriwa FM Alhaji Basiru Darboe for paving the way for Yirwa’s participation and the organizers of WOMAD for inviting me to cover this year’s event. Equally I’m also very thankful to government of Gambia for the creation of a level playing field for us in the electronic media.
“My future plans include the setting up of a private television station in The Gambia that would be attached to Yiriwa Development Radio. This TV station would focus on airing programmes on environment, health, agriculture and education”.

As Groundbreaking Cultural Fiesta Opens

Kanilai, the birthplace of the Gambian leader, will be involved in a weekend celebration of culture as the much-hyped Kanilai International Cultural Festival kick-starts this evening in Kanilai, Foni Kansala District.

The event, which will run from 22nd June to 8th July 2007 under the distinguished chief patronage of His Excellency President Dr Alhaji Yahya Jammeh, is designed to revive, promote and develop our rich cultural heritage and showcase the diverse performance traditions of the different ethnic groups of the sub region.

Featuring cultural troupes from the nook and cranny of the Gambia and its neighbouring countries, the festival will be characterised by mystical displays, masquerade performance, music, dance and drama extravaganzas.  Renowned musical giants in the sub-region will also attend and participate in this show of exceptional African talent, which is increasingly gaining popularity.

African music is as vast and varied as the continent's many nations and ethnic groups, so a general description of African music is not possible. Although there is no distinctly pan-African music, there are shared forms of musical expression, and regional similarities between dissimilar groups.

The music and dance forms of the African diaspora (many Caribbean and Latin American music genres like rumba and salsa, as well as African American music) were founded to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken there by African slaves.

Some musical genres of Northern Africa, Northeast Africa and the islands off the East African coast share both traditional African and Middle Eastern features.

Rhythmic complexity
Sub-Saharan music has as its special feature a rhythmic music that has spread to other regions especially to the Americas. The unique way of African polyrhythm is the discernible coherence of the African rhythmic pattern.

Scales and Polyphony
Scale systems spread through regions, there are diatonic scales, but other forms pentatonic scales are also widespread. The music are mostly different from those found in European music.
Pitch polyphony exists in the form of two musics (generally thirds, fourths, and fifths), overlapping choral antiphony and solo-choral response, and usually different kinds of melodies.

Musical instruments
Besides using the voice, a wide array of musical instruments are used. African musical instruments include a wide array of drums, slit gongs, rattles, double balls as well as melodic instruments like string instruments (musical bows, different types of harps and harp-like instruments like the Kora as well as fiddles), many types of xylophone and lamellophone such as the mbira and different types of wind instrument like flutes and trumpets.

Drums used in African traditional music include tama talking drums, bougarabou and djembe in West Africa, water drums in Central and West Africa, and different types of drums are often called engoma or ngoma in Central and Southern Africa.

During colonial times, European instruments such as saxophones, trumpets, and guitars were adopted by many African musicians; their sounds were integrated into the traditional patterns and are widely used in African popular music.

Timbre
In many African music cultures, there is a preference for "noisy" timbres. For example, on the ennanga harp, scales of a kind of goana are fixed on the instrument in such a way that the vibrating strings will touch it. This gives a crackling timbre to the sound. Another example are membranes made from spider webs attached to the openings of calabash resonators in some types of xylophones. In singing, one can often also meet raspy or rough timbres very unlike the voice ideal of western music.

Relationship to language
Many African Languages are tonal languages. In many African cultures, this leads to a close connection between music and language. In singing, the tonal pattern or the text puts some constraints on the melodic patterns. On the other hand, in instrumental music, a native speaker of a language can often perceive a text or texts in the music. This effect also forms the basis of drum languages (talking drums).

Relationship to dance
The treatment of "music" and "dance" as separate art forms is an European idea. In many African languages there is no concept corresponding exactly to these terms. For example, in many Bantu languages, there is one concept that might be translated as "song" and another that covers both the semantic fields of the European concepts of "music" and "dance". So there is one word for both music and dance (the exact meaning of the concepts may differ from culture to culture).

For example, in Kiswahili, the word "ngoma" may be translated as "drum", "dance", "dance event", "dance celebration" or "music", depending on the context. Each of these translations is incomplete.
Therefore, from an intracultural point of view, African music and African dance must be viewed in very close connection. The classification of the phenomena of this area of culture into "music" and "dance" is foreign to many African cultures.

Traditional music
A lot of African traditional music is or was performed by professional musicians. Some of it is courtly music or sacral music. Therefore, the term "folk" music is not always appropriate. Nevertheless, both the terms "folk music" and "traditional music" can be found in the literature.

African folk music and traditional music is mostly functional in nature. There are, for example, many different kinds of work songs, ceremonial or religious music and courtly music performed at royal courts, but none of these are performed outside of their intended social context.

Music is highly functional in African ethnic life, accompanying birth, marriage, hunting, and even political activities. Similarities with other cultures, particularly Indian and Middle Eastern, can be ascribed primarily to the spread of Islam.