Abiani Western African Music Simply at it's Best

Now we come to the West African (Ivory Coast) vocal music. The song I chose to analyze from the Ivory Coast is called Abiani that means “People”. Unlike the Western choral music, a guitar and various other percussion instruments like maracas accompany Abiani. In fact the song starts with and introduction with just guitar, maracas and bongos. The instruments play at mezzo piano with lots of ornamentation and accenting the first beat of the bar. The piece is conjunct and is in ¾ time.

Eight seconds later, in section A, the solo vocalist comes in at a mezzo forte, with the vocalists singing harmony coming in two seconds later. The tesatura of the singers is about an octave. The lyrics in this section are saying, “come and take a seat”, inviting the villagers to join them and listen to what they have to say. The harmony throughout adds consonance and the piece is in a major key.

In Part B the solo vocalist continues with the simple melody, accompanied by the guitar and percussion. There are plenty of syncopated rhythms thrown around in this section caused by dotted rhythms and eighth beat rests. The vocalists have an ostinato rhythm of two eighth notes followed by a half note.

Now we come to part C. Here the melody, sung by the group of vocalists, is a vocal ostinato that is four bars long and repeated three times. As you can probably already tell, ostinatos are very common in West African music. The soloist is singing embellishments overtop of the ostinato melody. The guitar and vocalists are in contrary motion here.

The next bit (section D) is a shorter section. The group of singers is still the melody with an improvised solo above it. The solo adds interest to the otherwise simple melody. Everything here is syllabic.

E – This section is very different from the others because there are no vocals, it’s a monophonic guitar bridge. The guitar plays a sequence that goes down a tone each time. The sequence is played twice. The rhythm for the sequence is rz e. re rz tr.

Section F is also very short. The guitar plays three chords and then the vocal ostinato comes in. There is not very much to this section because it is another transition section to the last bit of the piece.

Part G has a syncopated vocal melody, sung by the soloist, with an ostinato underneath. The ostinato and melody act as a call and response. The solo melody is the call.

Section G is repeated twice more, now acting as a stretto. The last time it’s repeated it fades out.

The song Abiani is a plea to the people of Africa to be positive in the face of death. The women are all pleading together for positivity. The song is set to a fairly upbeat and bright tune meant to bring happiness. The main message of the song is “Our time will come, so let’s live and make the best of every single moment”.