O tonalismo como força colonizadora na África

Abstract

In the essay, Kofi Agawu addresses the relationship between tonality – understood as a “hierarchically organized system of pitch relations” – and African music. Based on different examples and in dialogue with contributions from the decolonial studies and the ethnomusicology, Agawu develops a critical interpretation that seeks to understand how aspects of African musical imagination came to deal with the colonial violence of an imposed foreign harmonic language. After three moments, in which the author seeks to expose (1) aspects of tonalism in African music today, (2) aspects of pre-colonial African tonal thought, and (3) compositional elaborations by African composers, Agawu concludes the essay by making considerations about aspects of tonality as a colonizing force, advocating a review of priorities in the academic study of the continent's music and honoring Africanoriginated resistance processes.

Keywords

• tonality
• tonal harmony
• african music
• colonialism