Sub-Saharan African music traditions
African music traditions exhibit so many common features that they may in some respects be thought of as constituting a single musical system. While some African music is contemporary-popular music and some is art-music, still a great deal is communal and orally transmitted while still qualifying as a religious or courtly genre. In many parts of Africa the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work and for religious ceremonies of birth, rites of passage and funerals; the beats and sounds of the drum are used in communication as well as in cultural expression. African dances are participatory: there are traditionally no barriers between dancers and onlookers except with regard to spiritual and initiation dances. Ritual dances have a time when spectators participate. Dances help people work, praise or criticize members of the community, celebrate festivals and funerals, recite history and poetry and encounter gods.
They inculcate social values. Many dances are performed by only females. Dances are segregated by gender, reinforcing gender roles in children. Community structures such as kinship and status are often reinforced. To share rhythm is to form a group consciousness, to entrain with one another, to be part of the collective rhythm of life to which all are invited to contribute. Yoruba dancers and drummers, for instance, express communal desires and collective creativity; the drumming represents an underlying linguistic text that guides the dancing performance, allowing linguistic meaning to be expressed non-verbally. The spontaneity of these performances should not be confused with an improvisation that emphasizes the individual ego; the drummer's primary duty is to preserve the community. Master dancers and drummers are particular about the learning of the dance as taught. Children must learn the dance as taught without variation. Improvisation or a new variation comes only after mastering the dance and receiving the appreciation of spectators and the sanction of village elders.
The music of the Luo, for another example, is functional, used for ceremonial, political or incidental purposes, during funerals to praise the departed, to console the bereaved, to keep people awake at night, to express pain and agony and during cleansing and chasing away of spirits, during beer parties, welcoming back the warriors from a war, during a wrestling match, during courtship, in rain making and during divination and healing. Work songs are performed both during communal work like building, etc. and individual work like pounding of cereals, winnowing. Alan P. Merriam divided Africa into seven regions for ethnomusicological purposes, observing current political frontiers, this article follows this division as far as possible in surveying the music of ethnic groups in Africa. Music of the northern region of Africa, including that of the Horn of Africa, is treated separately under Middle Eastern and North African music traditions. West African music includes the music of Senegal and the Gambia, of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Liberia, of the inland plains of Mali and Burkina Faso and the coastal nations of Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo as well as the islands of Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe.
Central African Music includes the music of Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. The Eastern region includes the music of Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe as well as the islands of Madagascar, the Seychelles, Réunion and Comoros; the eastern region has received south Asian and Austronesian influences via the Indian Ocean. The Southern region includes the music of South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana and Angola; the music of Sudan indicates the difficulty of dividing music traditions according to state frontiers. The musicology of Sudan involves some 133 language communities; that speak over 400 dialects, Afro-Asian and Niger–Congo. Sudan takes its name from that of the sub-Saharan savanna which makes, with the Nile, a great cross-roads of the region. South of the Sahara the Sahel forms a bio-geographic zone of transition between the desert and the Sudanian Savannas, stretching between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea; the Nilotic peoples prominent in southern Sudan, Uganda and northern Tanzania, include the Luo, Dinka and Maasai.
Many of these have been included in the Eastern region. The Dinka are a agro-pastoral people inhabiting the Bahr el Ghazal region of the Nile basin and parts of southern Kordufan and Upper Nile regions, they number about 10 % of the population. Of Sudan; the Arabian rebab has found a home among the Nuba peoples. The Senegambian Fula have migrated as far as Sudan at various times speaking Arabic as well as their own language; the Hausa people, who speak a language related to Ancient Egyptian and Biblical Hebrew, have moved in the opposite direction. Further west the Berber music of the Tuareg has penetrated to Sub-Saharan countries; these are included in the Western region, but the music of Sub-Saharan herders and nomads is heard from west to east. These remaining four regions are most associated with Sub-Saharan African music: familiar African musical elements such as th
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Catholic church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. The equivalent word in German for such a church is Dom. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Anglican and some Lutheran and Methodist churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches and episcopal residences. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the English word "cathedral" translates as katholikon, meaning "assembly", but this title is applied to monastic and other major churches without episcopal responsibilities; when the church at which an archbishop or "metropolitan" presides is intended, the term kathedrikós naós is used.
Following the Protestant Reformation, the Christian church in several parts of Western Europe, such as Scotland, the Netherlands, certain Swiss Cantons and parts of Germany, adopted a Presbyterian polity that did away with bishops altogether. Where ancient cathedral buildings in these lands are still in use for congregational worship, they retain the title and dignity of "cathedral", maintaining and developing distinct cathedral functions, but void of hierarchical supremacy. From the 16th century onwards, but since the 19th century, churches originating in Western Europe have undertaken vigorous programmes of missionary activity, leading to the founding of large numbers of new dioceses with associated cathedral establishments of varying forms in Asia, Australasia and the Americas. In addition, both the Catholic Church and Orthodox churches have formed new dioceses within Protestant lands for converts and migrant co-religionists, it is not uncommon to find Christians in a single city being served by three or more cathedrals of differing denominations.
In the Catholic or Roman Catholic tradition, the term "cathedral" applies only to a church that houses the seat of the bishop of a diocese. The abbey church of a territorial abbacy does not acquire the title. In any other jurisdiction canonically equivalent to a diocese but not canonically erected as such, the church that serves this function is called the "principal church" of the respective entity—though some have coopted the term "cathedral" anyway; the Catholic Church uses the following terms. A pro-cathedral is a parish or other church used temporarily as a cathedral while the cathedral of a diocese is under construction, renovation, or repair; this designation applies. A co-cathedral is a second cathedral in a diocese; this situation can arise in various ways such as a merger of two former dioceses, preparation to split a diocese, or perceived need to perform cathedral functions in a second location due to the expanse of the diocesan territory. A proto-cathedral is the former cathedral of a transferred.
The cathedral church of a metropolitan bishop is called a metropolitan cathedral. The term "cathedral" carries no implication as to the size or ornateness of the building. Most cathedrals are impressive edifices. Thus, the term "cathedral" is applied colloquially to any large and impressive church, regardless of whether it functions as a cathedral, such as the Crystal Cathedral in California or the Arctic Cathedral in Tromsø, Norway. Although the builders of Crystal Cathedral never intended the building to be a true cathedral, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange purchased the building and the surrounding campus in February 2012 for use as a new cathedral church; the building is now under renovation and restoration for solemn dedication under the title "Christ Cathedral" in 2019. The word "cathedral" is derived from the French cathédrale, from the Latin cathedra, from the Greek καθέδρα kathédra, "seat, bench", from κατά kata "down" and ἕδρα hedra "seat, chair." The word refers to the presence and prominence of the bishop's or archbishop's chair or throne, raised above both clergy and laity, located facing the congregation from behind the High Altar.
In the ancient world, the chair, on a raised dais, was the distinctive mark of a teacher or rhetor and thus symbolises the bishop's role as teacher. A raised throne within a basilican hall was definitive for a Late Antique presiding magistrate; the episcopal throne embodies the principle that only a bishop makes a cathedral, this still applies in those churches that no longer have bishops, but retain cathedral dignity and functions in ancient churches over which bishops presided. But the throne can embody the principle that a cathedral makes a bishop.
Ilhéu das Cabras
Ilhéu das Cabras is an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Guinea. It is one of the smaller islands of São Príncipe; the islet is located about 2 km off the northeast coast of the island of São Tomé, 8 km north of the city centre of São Tomé. The islet consists of two hills, about 90 metres high. There is a lighthouse on the northeastern summit, built in 1890; the islet was mentioned as "Mooro Caebres" in the 1665 map by Johannes Vingboons. Media related to Ilhéu das Cabras at Wikimedia Commons
Príncipe Airport
Príncipe Airport is an airport on the island of Príncipe, located 3 kilometres north of Santo António, the island's capital. It is one of the three airports serving São Tomé and Príncipe, it was built in 1968 during Portuguese colonial rule. The only commercial flights available are to São Tomé International Airport in the capital, but private and charter flights are available. East of the airport is the settlement of Aeroporto named after the airport. In 2012, the Portuguese construction firm Mota-Engil was hired to modernize the airport; the main focus was lengthening the runway to allow it to accommodate mid-size jets. Although regional President José Cardoso Cassandra announced the work would be completed in 17 months, it was not finished until October 2015; the renovations were funded by a $18 million investment by a South African firm, which involved the construction of a five-star eco-tourism hotel on the island. The airport resides at an elevation of 591 feet above mean sea level, it has 1 runway designated 18/36 with an asphalt surface.
Prior to the 2012 renovations, it measured 1,320 by 30 metres, but it has since been lengthened to 1,750 metres. Unlike the airport in São Tomé, the airport in Príncipe is not certified for Instrument Flight Rules; the airport does have customs facilities, but there are no commercial international flights into Príncipe, so the facilities are only for passengers arriving on charter and private flights. Accident history for PCP at Aviation Safety Network
Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo was a kingdom located in west central Africa in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo as well as the southernmost part of Gabon. At its greatest extent it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south; the kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the Manikongo, the Portuguese version of the Kongo title Mwene Kongo, meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Loango and Matamba, the last two located in what is Angola today. From c. 1390 to 1857 it was an independent state. From 1857 to 1914 it functioned as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1914, following the Portuguese suppression of a Kongo revolt, Portugal abolished the titular monarchy; the remaining territories of the kingdom were assimilated into the colony of Angola and the Protectorate of Cabinda respectively.
The modern-day Bundu dia Kongo sect favors reviving the kingdom through secession from Angola, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon. Verbal traditions about the early history of the country were set in writing for the first time in the late 16th century, the most comprehensive were recorded in the mid-17th century, including those written by the Italian Capuchin missionary Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo. More detailed research in modern oral traditions conducted in the early 20th century by Redemptorist missionaries like Jean Cuvelier and Joseph de Munck do not appear to relate to the early period. According to Kongo tradition, the kingdom's origin lies in the large and not rich country of Mpemba Kasi located just south of modern-day Matadi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A dynasty of rulers from this small polity built up its rule along the Kwilu valley, its members are buried in Nsi Kwilu, its capital. Traditions from the 17th century allude to this sacred burial ground.
According to the missionary Girolamo da Montesarchio, an Italian Capuchin who visited the area from 1650 to 1652, the site was so holy that looking upon it was deadly. Seventeenth-century subjects of Mpemba Kasi called their country "Mother of the King of Kongo" in respect of the territory's antiquity. At some point around 1375, Nimi a Nzima, ruler of Mpemba Kasi, made an alliance with Nsaku Lau, the ruler of the neighbouring Mbata Kingdom; this alliance guaranteed that each of the two allies would help ensure the succession of their ally's lineage in the other's territory. The first king of the Kingdom of Kongo Dya Ntotila was Lukeni lua Nimi; the name Nimi a Lukeni appeared in oral traditions and some modern historians, notably Jean Cuvelier, popularized it. Lukeni lua Nimi, or Nimi a Lukeni, became the founder of Kongo when he conquered the kingdom of the Mwene Kabunga, which lay on a mountain to his south, he transferred his rule to this mountain, the Mongo dia Kongo or "mountain of Kongo", made Mbanza Kongo, the town there, his capital.
Two centuries the Mwene Kabunga's descendants still symbolically challenged the conquest in an annual celebration. The rulers that followed Lukeni all claimed some form of relation to his kanda, or lineage and were known as the Kilukeni; the Kilukeni kanda or "house" as it was recorded in Portuguese documents, ruled Kongo unopposed until 1567. After the death of Nimi a Lukeni, his brother, Mbokani Mavinga, took over the throne and ruled until 1467, he had nine children. His rule saw an expansion of the Kingdom of Kongo to include the neighbouring state the Kingdom of Loango and other areas now encompassed by the current Republic of Congo; the Mwene Kongos gave the governorships to members of their family or its clients. As this centralization increased, the allied provinces lost influence until their powers were only symbolic, manifested in Mbata, once a co-kingdom, but by 1620 known by the title "Grandfather of the King of Kongo"; the high concentration of population around Mbanza Kongo and its outskirts played a critical role in the centralization of Kongo.
The capital was a densely settled area in an otherwise sparsely populated region where rural population densities did not exceed 5 persons per km2. Early Portuguese travelers described Mbanza Kongo as a large city, the size of the Portuguese town of Évora as it was in 1491. By the end of the sixteenth century, Kongo's population was close to half a million people in a core region of some 130,000 square kilometers. By the early seventeenth century the city and its hinterland had a population of around 100,000, or one out of every five inhabitants in the Kingdom; this concentration allowed resources and surplus foodstuffs to be available at the request of the king. This made the king overwhelmingly powerful and caused the kingdom to become centralized. By the time of the first recorded contact with the Europeans, the Kingdom of Kongo was a developed state at the center of an extensive trading network. Apart from natural resources and ivory, the country manufactured and traded copperware, ferrous metal goods, raffia cloth, pottery.
The Kongo people spoke in the Kikongo language. The eastern regions that part known as the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, were famous for the production of cloth. In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão sailed up the uncharted Congo River, finding Kongo v
Cape Verde
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country spanning an archipelago of 10 volcanic islands in the central Atlantic Ocean. It forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, Canary Islands and the Savage Isles. In ancient times these islands were referred to as "the Islands of the Blessed" or the "Fortunate Isles". Located 570 kilometres west of the Cape Verde Peninsula off the coast of Northwest Africa, the islands cover a combined area of over 4,000 square kilometres; the Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants and pirates; the end of slavery in the 19th century led to economic emigration. Cape Verde recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes.
Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, peacefully achieved in 1975. Since the early 1990s, Cape Verde has been a stable representative democracy, remains one of the most developed and democratic countries in Africa. Lacking natural resources, its developing economy is service-oriented, with a growing focus on tourism and foreign investment, its population of around 540,000 is of mixed European, Moorish and African heritage, predominantly Roman Catholic, reflecting the legacy of Portuguese rule. A sizeable diaspora community exists across the world outnumbering inhabitants on the islands; the name "Cape Verde" has been used in English for the archipelago and, since independence in 1975, for the country. In 2013, the Cape Verdean government determined that the Portuguese designation Cabo Verde would henceforth be used for official purposes, such as at the United Nations in English contexts. Cape Verde is a member of the African Union.
The name of the country stems on the Senegalese coast. In 1444, Portuguese explorers had named that landmark as Cabo Verde, a few years before they discovered the islands. On 24 October 2013, the country's delegation announced at the United Nations that the official name should no longer be translated into other languages. Instead of "Cape Verde", the designation "Republic of Cabo Verde" is to be used. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited; the islands of the Cape Verde archipelago were discovered by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456. According to Portuguese official records, the first discoveries were made by Genoa-born António de Noli, afterwards appointed governor of Cape Verde by Portuguese King Afonso V. Other navigators mentioned as contributing to discoveries in the Cape Verde archipelago are Diogo Gomes, Diogo Dias, Diogo Afonso and the Italian Alvise Cadamosto. In 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded a settlement they called Ribeira Grande.
Ribeira Grande was the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. In the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the Atlantic slave trade. Pirates attacked the Portuguese settlements. Francis Drake, an English privateer, twice sacked the capital Ribeira Grande in 1585 when it was a part of the Iberian Union. After a French attack in 1712, the town declined in importance relative to nearby Praia, which became the capital in 1770. Decline in the slave trade in the 19th century resulted in an economic crisis. Cape Verde's early prosperity vanished. However, the islands' position astride mid-Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for re-supplying ships; because of its excellent harbour, the city of Mindelo, located on the island of São Vicente, became an important commercial centre during the 19th century. Diplomat Edmund Roberts visited Cape Verde in 1832. With few natural resources and inadequate sustainable investment from the Portuguese, the citizens grew discontented with the colonial masters, who refused to provide the local authorities with more autonomy.
In 1951, Portugal changed Cape Verde's status from a colony to an overseas province in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral and a group of fellow Cape Verdeans and Guineans organised the clandestine African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, it demanded improvement in economic and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations' independence movement. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion against Portugal in 1961. Acts of sabotage grew into a war in Portuguese Guinea that pitted 10,000 Soviet Bloc-supported PAIGC soldiers against 35,000 Portuguese and African troops. By 1972, the PAIGC controlled much of Portuguese Guinea despite the presence of the Portuguese troops, but the organization did not attempt to disrupt Portuguese control in Cape Verde. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974. A budding independence movement — led by Amílcar Cabral, assassinated in 1973 — passed on to his half-brother Luís Cabral and culminated in independence for the archipelago in
Portuguese people
Portuguese people are a Romance ethnic group indigenous to Portugal that share a common Portuguese culture and speak Portuguese. Their predominant religion is Christianity Roman Catholicism, though vast segments of the population the younger generations, have no religious affiliation; the Portuguese people's heritage includes the pre-Celts and Celts. A number of Portuguese descend from converted Jewish and North Africans as a result of the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula; the Romans, Scandinavians, migratory Germanic tribes like the Suebi, Vandals and Buri who settled in what is today's Portugal The Roman Republic conquered the Iberian Peninsula during the 2nd and 1st centuries B. C. from the extensive maritime empire of Carthage during the series of Punic Wars. As a result of Roman colonization, the majority of local languages stem from the Vulgar Latin. Due to the large historical extent from the 16th century of the Portuguese Empire and the subsequent colonization of territories in Asia and the Americas, as well as historical and recent emigration, Portuguese communities can be found in many diverse regions around the globe, a large Portuguese diaspora exists.
Portuguese people began and led the Age of Exploration which started in 1415 with the conquest of Ceuta and culminated in an empire with territories that are now part of over 50 countries. The Portuguese Empire lasted nearly 600 years, seeing its end when Macau was returned to China in 1999; the discovery of several lands unknown to the Europeans in the Americas, Africa and Oceania, helped pave the way for modern globalization and domination of Western civilization. The Portuguese are a Southwestern European population, with origins predominantly from Southern and Western Europe; the earliest modern humans inhabiting Portugal are believed to have been Paleolithic peoples that may have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula as early as 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. Current interpretation of Y-chromosome and mtDNA data suggests that modern-day Portuguese trace a significant amount of these lineages to the paleolithic peoples who began settling the European continent between the end of the last glaciation around 45,000 years ago.
Northern Iberia is believed to have been a major Ice-age refuge from which Paleolithic humans colonized Europe. Migrations from what is now Northern Iberia during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic, links modern Iberians to the populations of much of Western Europe and the British Isles and Atlantic Europe. Recent books published by geneticists Bryan Sykes, Stephen Oppenheimer and Spencer Wells have emphasized the large Paleolithic and Mesolithic Iberian influence in the modern day Irish and Scottish gene-pool as well as parts of the English. Indeed, Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b is the most common haplogroup in all of the Iberian peninsula and western Europe. Within the R1b haplogroup there are modal haplotypes. One of the best-characterized of these haplotypes is the Atlantic Modal Haplotype; this haplotype reaches the highest frequencies in the British Isles. In Portugal it reckons 65% in the South summing 87% northwards, in some regions 96%; the Neolithic colonization of Europe from Western Asia and the Middle East beginning around 10,000 years ago reached Iberia, as most of the rest of the continent although, according to the demic diffusion model, its impact was most in the southern and eastern regions of the European continent.
Starting in the 3rd millennium BC as well as in the Bronze Age, the first wave of migrations into Iberia of speakers of Indo-European languages occurred. These were followed by others that can be identified as Celts. Urban cultures developed in southeastern Iberia, such as Tartessos, influenced by the Phoenician colonization of coastal Mediterranean Iberia, which shifted to Greek colonization. There is little or no evidence of settlements in Portugal by either Greeks or Phoenicians despite some statements to the contrary; these two processes defined Iberia's, Portugal's, cultural landscape—Continental in the northwest and Mediterranean towards the southeast, as historian José Mattoso describes it. Given the origins from Paleolithic and Neolithic settlers as well as Indo-European migrations, one can say that the Portuguese ethnic origin is a mixture of pre-Roman, pre-Indo-Europeans, pre-Celtics or para-Celts such as the Lusitanians of Lusitania, Celtic peoples such as Calaicians or Gallaeci of Gallaecia, the Celtici and the Cynetes of the Alentejo and the Algarve.
The Romans were an important influence on Portuguese culture. Other minor influences included the Phoenicians/Carthaginians, the Vandals and the Sarmatian Alans, the Visigoths and Suebi; the ruled from 711 until the Reconquista of the Algarve in 1249. In the 9th and 10th centuries small Viking settlements were established in the North coastal regions of Douro and Minho. For the Y-chromosome and MtDNA lineages of the Portuguese and other peoples see this map and this one. Portuguese have maintained a certain degree of ethnic and cultural specific characteristics-ratio with the Basques, since ancient times; the results of the present HLA stu
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Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Luanda, Angola
Libreville, Gabon
Accra, Ghana
Lisbon, Portugal[6][7]
District capitals of São Tomé and Príncipe
