DIASPORA
I specified over time, though. This relates in part to connections within the African Diaspora: the cultural survivals in the Americas. Ghana/Akan retentions in Jamaica, Congo retentions in Cuba, Brazil, Jamaica, and elsewhere, Yoruba retentions in Cuba and Trinidad, Senegambia-Guinea retentions in the US, Fon Ewe/Benin retentions in Haiti, etcetera etcetera.. All this of course living on in Black music genres like Blues, Funk, Reggae, Salsa, Samba, Calypso, Kompa, Merengue, Cumbia, and more.
In reality, in all these former colonies, slaves from different parts of Africa ended up, albeit with different percentages or emphasis.
Apart from the idea of cultural “survival” amid oppression and enslavement/dehumanization, I also liked the resulting cultural expressions that arose in the Caribbean, such as the music, but even beyond that: wider culture, language influences, food, and even spiritual movements, ranging from “nature-, dance-, and spirit-based” – like Vodou, Santería, Kumina – to Christian-based, yet Afro-centric reinterpretations (like Rastafari).
PERCUSSION
Strengthened by my later percussion activities, and by liking Afro-American music genres, I naturally began to study their “roots” in Africa, in Yoruba music, Igbo music, Congo music.. all places where many enslaved Africans in the West came from, leaving thus legacies to differing degrees.
I found that “Diaspora” connection interesting, triggering my interest. Through the Reggae and Rastafari connection, also Ethiopia and its music began to intrigue me, including the fact that big drums there are played usually within the churches.
I kept my mind open, because as a musical artist (as I see myself), I find all music in principle interesting, especially when “real”.. “Real” means here “from the folk”.
Most of my attention (in Africa), though, received “Forest Africa” (incl. Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Congo a.o.), as anthropologist Robert Farris-Thompson described it, historically sources for many slaves, and less influenced by Islam than “Sahel” areas North of it.. more purely African, one can say, strongly percussive, and rhythmically intertwined like – indeed – a forest or jungle, and drums being important. I love that.
Yet.. the whole continent of Africa consists of more, and whether and how it differs also interested me more and more.
NORTH AFRICA
Over time, my interest for North Africa increased, but notably the Berber or (better) Imazigh people, whose culture seemed “pleasantly mysterious”, also as survival amid Arab invasions and dominance. The “Sahara desert setting” also attracted me, for some reason (contrast with “humid” and well-organized Netherlands?).
I heard snippets of Imazigh music, here and there, e.g. among Moroccans in the Netherlands, but the intriguing band Tinariwen, a band of Tuaregs from the Algeria/Mali Sahara dessert, mixing Imazigh music “nuff funky” with modern Western influences, or other African influences, really made me more interested in Tuareg and other Imazigh music. As a percussionist I was also interested in traditional musical instruments.
As the Imazigh mainly remain in Northern Africa, more North West (Morocco, Algeria), but with historical presence also in what is now Egypt, an interesting “other” part of Africa – music-wise – would be totally on the other side: namely the far South East of Africa.
ZULU MUSIC
The Zulu people are a Bantu-speaking people of about 12 million people, being the largest ethnicity in especially Eastern parts of the Republic of South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal).
My interest for them began with the anti-Aparthei d struggle in my teens, but especially (when I was older) with the Paul Simon album Graceland. I was then already a Reggae fan, but still liked that Paul Simon album, with its groovy mix of US folk and country “feels” with South African musical vibes. Turns out that the musical influences on the album Graceland were mostly from Zulu music.
Still later, active in percussion, I began to wonder what type of percussion and drums were used in Zulu music. They same thing I asked myself about Imazigh music.
Now it’s time to compare these two extreme ends of Africa: “Zulu land” and “Imazigh land”..
Despite obvious differences while on the same continent, are there similarities, thus connecting truly the entire African continent musically?
IMAZIGH MUSIC
The Imazigh are mostly light(er)-skinned, speaking an Afro-Asiatic (Hamitic) language, and mostly Islamicized and Arab-influenced, but with an own pride and desire for cultural survival.
Fun fact: genetic, DNA research on me (and my mother) showed that most probably about 10% of my DNA (and even more of my Spanish mother’s) connect with Imazigh and even Tuareg (!) people in North Africa. Spain’s history is long and varied, with Mediterranean variety, and including nearby Northern Africa, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Hannibal, and the Moors (many of whom were “Berbers”), besides less documented earlier strait crossings. There is thus even a personal connection in part of my DNA. There is another around 10% “Semitic” DNA in me - this study showed -, it seems too (also explainable). The rest (and most) of my DNA points more predictably at European-based pre-historic peoples like Basques, Veneti/Dinaric (from my NE Italian father’s side), and Celts, but still: I am also originally partly Imazigh/North African, DNA-wise.
This increased my interest, but I had to search a bit, to find specifics on what is Imazigh music (unmixed) really like?, what characterizes it? What percussion do they use?, for instance.
INSTRUMENTS
I soon found out that the Darbuka and Dumbek drums, also known in Northern Africa, are more associated with the Arab and Middle Eastern world. The Bendir frame drum, however, can be associated more with Amazigh culture. The Bendir drum – like a large tambourine without bells, but usually with a string attached to its back -, giving it its resonance – is regularly used as rhythmic time keeper among the various Imazigh groups, despite further differences among them.
Less known, though not absent, are drums of the other kind, like barrel-, goblet-, or bowl-shaped hand drums. The travelling Tuareg people know the Tendé or Tinde drums, made from mortar, with goatskin, interestingly played exclusively by women. Also interesting: it imitates the camel sound, or follow its walking cadence in part.
(see also: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-63684118)
Men play other types of drum too among the Tuareg, though in part borrowed from elsewhere in Africa (the Mande-region “Djembe”, notably).
While speaking an Imazigh (Hamitic) language, the Tuareg over time mixed with Black Africans more to the South, originally slaves and serfs, also influencing of course culture.
On the “upper”, invading side – on the other hand – also the Arab and Islamic Darbuka/Darbuka drums – known to be used in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt - began being used by Imazigh and incorporated.
However, as indicated, the Imazigh – Tuareg and others – have own drums historically. They are less made of wood than in sub-Saharan Africa, due to the desert, Sahara surroundings, and more often of earthenware or mortar.. The goatskin is however a commonality with many other African drums.
A tambourine with bells is also often used in Imazigh music, or in some regions, as are a type of metal castanets, known from Gnawa culture in Southern Morocco. The Gnawa minority descend from (once enslaved) more Southern, dark-skinned Africans, but were influenced by Imazigh/Berbers and Arabs over time. The name “Gnawa” is said to derive from the word for “blacks” in the local Imazigh language (Southern Morocco).
The metal castanets thus can be a Imazigh influence, or – just as probable – a welcome borrowing by Imazigh from the more “polyrhythmic” Gnawa culture.
Crucially, string instruments like a lute, a single-string bow – the latter also played by women -, flutes among some Imazigh groups, and local variations. The northern Kabyle Berbers in Algeria – known as relatively more often “blonde” or European-looking – have a type of mandolin as another string instrument.
CHARACTERISTICS
Don’t let the blonde(r) appearance of some of those Algerian Kabyle Imazigh fool you, though. Kabyle music tends to use several types of drums, besides the “driving” Bendir frame drum and tambourine, and often hand clapping, adding to the syncopation and even aspects of “polyrhythm”. Singing and vocal styles – moreover – often includes typically African call-and-response patterns.
In comparison - after all - to Arab music -, Imazigh music is more polyrhythmic, but differing per region and genre, sometimes being more monorhythmic like Arab/Middle Eastern music.
Whether this is “originally” Imazigh is a bit harder to discern. Especially with nomadic peoples like the Tuareg, and some other more nomadic Imazigh, it was hard to carry along - as nomads - large musical instruments, therefore having to borrow elsewhere, from other cultures, as they travelled along. This is comparable to the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”) in Europe, adopting e.g. the Spanish guitar, or Hungarian fiddle.
Some sub-Saharan African influence on Imazigh musical structures is however certainly proven, in a general sense. Tuareg - and generally Imazigh - more to the South, often mixed racially with sub-Saharan (“Black”) Africans, creating subgroups. Yet, even in Northern Algeria there were once African slaves, and not just – as the Right-wing exaggeration goes – European/Christian ones, though these were there too.. there were even Asian captives as well on the Barbary Coast, as the Algerian Coast was called then. Geographically quite close to Spain.
The best-known European captive in that part of Algeria was by the way a Spaniard: Miguel de Cervantes, who later wrote the famous, innovative Don Quixot novel, and who worked as a slave for a few years in Algeria for a local. Recently (speaking September, 2025) a historical study appeared of this period in Cervantes’ life, in a multiracial environment then (NW Algeria region). Interesting, but I digress from this post’s theme..
Anyway, even Kabyle music in the far North of Algeria (and Africa!) thus could have received sub-Saharan influences.
ZULU MUSIC
Zulu music places large drums more in the forefront, notably the Ngoma (a common Bantu word, also known in e.g. Uganda for drum), being large double-sided drums, and a common one-sided smaller drum (called Isighubu), interrelating with it. This already shows the polyrhythmic intention and structures.
There are further several single-string, musical bows among the Zulu, tending to have semi-melodic functions, such as accompanying storytelling.
Musical bows – with one string - are very common in Southern Africa, also in Angola, as the roots of the Brazilian Berimbau bow. Some assume a deeper origin among the original San/Bushmen population of South Africa, known for their small stature, and languages with “clicks”. Bantus mixed with them, resulting in the Xhosa and Zulu cultures. These Bushmen indeed lived as hunters-gatherers, as many now know because of the “international hit movie ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’.
Vocal and singing patterns in Zulu music are often complex, with interlocking call-and-response but also harmony, adding to a polyrhythmic complexity.
Further, flute and other reed instruments, and later guitars are used in Zulu traditional music. Typically, nonetheless, the drum leads the music, if it’s not only vocal, as in some Zulu genres, with nicely interlocking harmony and polyrhythm, even without instruments. We know that from Paul Simon’s collab with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the song Homeless.
DANCE
Depending on folk music’s function in both culture, but largely the traditional music of Imazigh and Zulus alike are dance-oriented. As in fact most folk music of the world.
The driving (Bendir-led or otherwise) rhythms in a lot of traditional Imazigh music, - with syncopatic elements, reminding of the “swing” idea – makes a more African, hypnotizing,and natural way of dancing more easy when compared to e.g. Arab music, or a part of European folk music. Dances comparable to belly dancing, and even hip swaying and rotations, are common at Imazigh dances, despite the Islamic inhibitions regarding “suggestive female movements”.
In the Arab world – by the way – belly dancing occurred, but that was done by female slaves, for their owner/master, often also sex slaves. Islam’s sex segregation directive caused that partly.
The more polyrhythmic nature of traditional Zulu music, make even more complex, acrobatic dance patterns, more the norm among the Zulu.
A noteworthy cultural difference – increasing over time – is the gender separation in North Africa, influenced by Islam, even on “dance” events. In Zulu culture (as in most other Bantu cultures) genders mix on many occasions, creating in addition room for vocal variation in male and female voices. Some Imazigh music and singing has this too, but it decreased over time, due to Islamic cultural norms, as mentioned, sex/gender segregation in social spheres. This became over time generally upheld even in “looser” Islamic countries like Morocco and Algeria, though with differing degrees of strictness.
BACK TO DIASPORA AFRICA
Returning mentally to the parts of Africa I have studied the music already of before (Central and West Africa, “forest Africa”) more extensively, I should be able to note parallels and make (hopefully sensible) comparisons.
Feeling the grooves in Imazigh music reminded me of the “swing” aspect in music from the Sahel area: “Griot Africa”, as Robert Farris-Thompson describes it, often Mande-speaking: Senegambia, Guinea, Southern Mali, Northern Ivory Coast, and Northern Ghana.
Indeed also regions that were partly Islamized, and with historical connections with Imazigh people. In parts of Northern Mali the Tuareg Imazigh tend to live and roam, while South Mali is Black African, Mande-speaking, with a rich “Djembe” (and Kora) culture, for instance.
In several parts of Mali, often at marketplaces, there is interaction between different groups of Malinese from North and South, with people like Tuareg (or “men in blue”) and e.g. Bambara people interrelating.
SWING
The “swing” aspect in Mande/Guinea music, stemming from string-instrument like the Kora, mixed with rhythmic notions of syncope, has clearly echoes in Imazigh music.
Also “string-based”, as even without e.g. a lute, the string at the back of the Bendir frame drum – I have one , by the way – has a “stringy”, humming resonance, adding a “swing”, or shuffle, feel, even when the rest is monorhythmic or straight.
When several drums, percussion instruments, or clapping become involved, Imazigh music even becomes to a degree “polyrhythmic”, closer to sub-Saharan African traditions, but with an own accent, and less “multiple independent rhythms” as in “pure” polyrhythm, but hinting at it with strong syncopation.
INTERLOCKING
Predictably, maybe, Zulu traditional music has much similarity with Bantu music, especially in the Southern half of the African continent, tending strongly toward polyrhythm and rhythmic interrelations shaping the movements, “straighter” interlocking rhythms – with a layered groove - and less a string-based “gliding” feel that mostly characterize Imazigh rhythms. The latter nonetheless knows some rhythmic interplay toward syncope, and “swing”, or even flirting with polyrhythm in some genres.
What I found most interesting to conclude from all this, is that Imazigh music is far more “African” than Arab music, despite the Imazigh lighter skin when compared to sub-Saharan Africans -, and even the occurrence of reddish and blond(ish) hair among some Northern Berbers in parts of Algeria and Morocco, though Imazigh/”Berber” genetics (DNA) are mostly non-European. In turn, this Imazigh DNA ended up in parts of Spain, Portugal, and even in parts of Sardinia and Sicily.. and as I already mentioned, also in my South Spanish mother’s DNA, thus also mine.
Perhaps due to long, historical cohabitation on the African continent with Black Africans, adaptation to the natural environment, or perhaps the retention of “free, dance-focused culture” from pre-Islamic times, there are similarities between Imazigh and Zulu musical cultures. Despite the long distance between them.
Call-and-response is used in singing (and instrumentation) by both Amazigh and Zulu (more complex among the latter), and rhythm drives the music, with some “layers”, making percussion and drums crucial in the music, and adding syncopation to monorhythms. This is originally absent from monorhythmic, string-based Arab music, for instance. In some European folk music, something like “syncope” (around the main beats) is present in some folk genres (parts of Flamenco, some Celtic folk genres, parts of Balkan), but “polyrhythm” as such (independent, simultaneous rhythms interlocking), as well as “call-and-response” in the strict sense, are originally absent in European folk music, or in Arab music. That's African.
MAIN CONCLUSION
This I can conclude from this comparison between musical cultures of two indigenous people on extreme ends of Africa (NW Africa/Maghreb, and Eastern South Africa)..
Imazigh are much more culturally African than Arabs, which shows in the music, as well as in the greater role of women in their societies, though this was limited with increased Islamic strictness. The Imazigh identity is, however, still upheld among especially many Moroccans and Algerians as counterpoint to the dominant Arabs (having mixed also with Imazigh) risking a second-class position for the after all original inhabitants the Imazigh, even in (originally) “Imazigh” countries Morocco and Algeria. Many mix that resistance and asserted Imazigh identity, somewhat uneasy with a simultaneous Islamic identity as faith.
That spirit or resistance through identity is also shared with the Zulu in South Africa, after all having been also colonized by Europeans, and later also made second-class citizens and even near-dehumanized in their own country, during the White Apartheid regime (up to 1990).
That spirit gives both their music more “soul”. It also seemed to continue in the more modern “pop” styles that developed later in both areas: Raï in Algeria (Oran) – that received Imazigh influences -, and e.g. the Zulu-influenced Maskandi genre in South Africa, and in the work of several current artists.