2000 Volume 65 Issue 1 Pages 62-77
As cases of local varieties of the Islamic sound culture, those of the Mande and Hausa societies of West Africa have been selected, because among the societies of Sub-Saharan Africa, they were two of the most anciently and strongly influenced by Islamized North African cultures. Despite many basic socio-cultural traits shared in common by these two societies, in terms of their sound culture, they show quite contrastive characteristics. Mande sound culture is characterized by the abundance of plucked string instruments suitable to accompany vocal narrative performances, and of heptatonic xylophones; Hausa sound culture, by rich varieties of elaborated aerophones, of hour-glass shaped drums with tuning thongs and the monocorde bowed luth. In each of the two sound cultures, the above cited sound instruments of the other sound culture are totaly absent or extremely poor.
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