Reply To: Question about music from Africa and South America

[nafmeadmin]

Search on Spotify for “Samba Brazilian Batucada Band” – this is a type of Brazilian samba music usually played by percussion instruments (used a lot for Carnivale and other festivals). For African music, search for the group Adzido… you will come up with a few albums of traditional music from several African cultures. Some of it has call-and-response style singing (those are the ones I use w/my 3rd graders so they can hear call-response), but there are a few instrumental songs as well. I think Adzido is actually a British-African dance/drumming company, but they perform traditional songs in an authentic style… I’ve found that the recording quality of a lot of the traditional tribal music that’s recorded in Africa isn’t very good because they’re field recordings, so it makes it harder to use those for classroom activities. Anyway, you might be able to find something in there in a style you’d be able to use. Most of the African music I use for school has vocals on it, though.