Du verbe instrumental dans la musique subsaharienne

Abstract

Sub-Saharan music results from the spoken language/instrumental language relation, directed by an oral culture. In this culture, these languages transmit – beyond their singularities – messages thanks to either a coded signal known by the linguistic community or previously defined among a group of individuals, or is used as a true meta-language copied on the articulated and usual language used every day. Here, an instrumental musical speech can then imitate and reproduce the tonal inflexions of the language to make its matter understandable. This fact is the natural result of a strong interaction and interrelation between the spoken language and the music as well as the conception that the Africans of South Sahara have of it. This concept underlying the very tight link between the musical fact and the Word, the musical act then carries a communicative importance equal to the one in a spoken language. What concept rules such a language? What treatment is language subjected to in the affectation of its components in the musical discourse of to the instrumental Word and vice versa? What are the technical, contextual and expressive parameters that underlie, determine and contribute to the distinctive goals of the speech? These are some of the major questions to which I the author try to bring elements of answers to clear up this subject.