Lesson video

Hello everybody, and welcome to lesson 12 of the West African music unit.

Today we're going to be looking at Afrobeats and the music of Yemi Alade, we're going to be doing lots of listening and composing, so I hope you're ready for that, Without further ado let's get started.

In this lesson you will need a Pencil and a peace of paper to write notes with.

You will also need your body to make some body percussion sounds.

This lesson is better with head phones but they're not required.

If you can, find a quiet space to do this lesson in, as you will be doing lots of listening and playing.

If you need to pause the video now to prepare for the lesson, please do so and click resume when you're ready.

So our first task is to answer the question "Why is this fusion music?" You will hear an extract of a song that I hope you have heard before, and I want you to think about why it might be fusion music, have a think about what the word fusion means and then what you can hear in the music.

I'm going to take my video off before I get told off to dancing but, hope you enjoy the track.

🎶 I'm a ride till' I can't no more, I got the horses in the back, horse tack is attached, hat is matte black, got the boots in black to m.

So yes that was Old Town Road.

One of the reasons it's called fusion music is because it fuses two different genres.

Can you write down what 2 genres you think it is fusing? Let's hear it one more time.

That's right, we have country and we have hip hop.

What features from each of these genres can you hear in the music? Pause the video and take some time to write at least three.

So on-screen now I have put three features from each genre but there are more, from the country genre we have the use of a guitar, and the vocals in the country style and we have the accent as well.

And then there were slide in the vocal melody.

From hip hop we have a classic hip hop bass line, drum pattern, and also the use of samples.

Let's hear it one more time just because I love the song and let's listen now for these six points specifically.

Fusion music describes what happens when musical styles are combines together to create a new musical style.

Do you guys ever think about why fusion music might exist? Wright two sentences down on your piece of paper.

Pause the video and click resume when you're ready to go.

Travel, heritage, internat, and maybe modernising or traditional music might be some of the answers that you got for that question.

We're going to listen to another piece of music now and it is another example of fusion music.

What two styles can you hear in this example? Afrobeat.

It started with Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, who listened to styles of West African music like high life from Ghana and songs and rhythms from Fabte and Yorba culture.

Kuti combined his music with funk and jazz sounds he heard when he travelled to America, as well as strong political messages encouraged by civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

This new style afrobeat didn't sound like either traditional West African sound that came before it or a copy of the sound in the US.

It was a powerful fusion that created something totally new.

Musical features of afrobeat.

Let's listen to Water got no enemy by Fela Kuti again.

And write down two features from each style that you can hear in the clip.

Listen out the sonorities, rhythms and textures that you can hear.

You will hear the extract for a second time.

Some of the features from each of the genres are on screen now.

So from a West African Highlife we have decent call and response, West African percussion, syncopation and complex rhythms, and guitars and horns.

And from American jazz and funk we have the horn riff, extended cords on the piano, repeating rhythms, syncopation, and guitars and horns as well.

So you can see that there are some crossovers we have some of the instruments that are the same from both of the genres, and also these of syncopated rhythms. Green pen your answers give yourself a tick if you got it right and add any to your table that you didn't get this time.

Let's listen to the piece one more time, taking particular attention to these points on each genre.

We're going to now compare afrobeat to Afrobeats Afrobeat is the genre that we've just heard and Afrobeats With an s is is a fusion of West African music with R&B, American pop music and dance hall.

Like its predecessor afrobeat.

It is drum heavy and created with the purpose to get you dancing.

Drums and gongs feature prominently.

They are also heavy on local slang and pidgin English.

Afrobeats artists include Wizkid, Davido, and Twia savage.

The music has also generated popular new dance styles.

Moves such as azonto which originated from Ghana.

These viral dances have helped with the popularity of the genre afrobeats.

Yemi Alade.

Yemi Alada is a ver popular Afropop artist also of Nigerian decent, her music is considered pan- african as it is played and celebrated across the continent.

Yemi Alade is known for breaking down barriers between African nation by performing with artists outside of Nigeria and by using different languages in her songs.

In her music videos, West African traditions are celebrated.

She showcases the landscape, traditional clothes and dances.

Listening activity: we are going to listen to three songs by Yemi Alade.

What I would like you to do is list all the musical features that you can hear from each genre.

The genres being: West African traditional music, and pop music.

Next up Shekere.

And finally Na Gode.

Composing a fusion piece.

The fist thing that we need to do when composing a fusion piece is pick two styles to fuse.

For example, West African drumming and hip hop.

I will then need to think of the musical features for each of those styles.

So for the West African drumming I might say well we have the West African percussion, poly ryhythms, call and response, and improvisation.

And for hip hop use of samples, loops, rap, bass, and drum beats.

Then I will need to chose the features that I want to include I'm my own fusion piece.

So perhaps from hip hop I pick a hip hop drum beat and a hip hop baseline, and from the West African tradition I can pick call and response and improvisation.

Okay, so the following video is going to be a demonstration of me making a hip hop beat using an online drum machine, this is the first step that I took in making my fusion piece, as the hip hop drum beat is going to be the foundations of the fusion composition, after that I will then show you how I fused it to the West African rhythms using the Jenbe that I have at home but of course you can use body percussion sounds.

So enjoy the next 2 minutes of me making a hip hop beat and playing the jenbe over it.

Okay, so I've made my way over to a virtual drum machine and this is going to help me to create a sort of hip hop beat, you can see I've got my kick drum and my snare, so I will start making my beat, I always start with a high hat first and I just go on every other square like that.

And then we'll do tsk tsk so we'll go and that how about that.

That's pretty hip hop enough, the thing is in hip hop there is also a rapping usually, and I don't want to start rapping on oak academy just so you all can sit at home sit and laugh at me oh wait I already started and I already regret it maybe we can move on and just forget it, Mr. Chappa please stop, I hear ya say, okay you're right, okay.

That's my hip hop beat I'm not going to rap again ever, so what we need to do now is try and fuse this with something from West Africa, so I'm going to save this and put it in the slide and then we can play some jenbe over the top.

Okay so I got my beat playing and I have my jenbe with me here, I'm going to do a call and improvised response for my fusion piece.

Call once.

So another way to get started is to play along to an existing song or track.

So this is a different fusion now, this would be fusing a West African music with classical music, so watch as I play rhythms from kuku along with Pachelbel's Canon in D.

So what you could do is try taking the drum beat from one song that you know and playing it with the cords or the melody to another song.

Now I do have my jembe here, so if you wonder where the sound of a jembe was going to come from.

So let's start by playing the Canon.

compose and perform a West African fusion piece.

Write a fusion table with two styles.

One must be West African music Decide which features you would want to fuse with West African music, and experiment with playing to an along to an existing song with a different style, you may use body percussions, instruments, or online instruments to perform your fusion piece.

You can try this exercise with a family member.

You play one style and they play the other.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you are finished.

Share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask you parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.