Nyamnjoh, Francis B., and Jude Fokwang. “Entertaining Repression: Music and Politics in Postcolonial Cameroon.” African Affairs, 104, no. 415 (2005): 251–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518444.

This article examines the relationship between musicians and political power in Cameroon in order to make a case for understanding the dynamics of agency and identity politics among musicians. It argues that politicians in Cameroon have tended to appropriate musicians and their creative efforts as part of their drive for power. Some musicians have refused to be at the beck and call of politicians and have tended to criticize and ridicule those in power. Others have seen in such invitations an opportunity for greater recognition and respectability. Some have sought to straddle both worlds, serving politicians while also pursuing their art in the interest of other constituencies. Their different responses notwithstanding, there is evidence that the fortunes and statuses of musicians have been transformed with changing political regimes and notions of politics.

[Source: article abstract].

Noni, Dave. “The Politics of Silence: Music, Violence and Protest in Guinea”. Ethnomusicology, 58 (2014).1-29.

In this article, I consider the factors that lead musicians in Guinea to largely refrain from political critique and rarely express dissent. Representations in the popular and academic literature often emphasize music as a site for resistance, while young Guinean musicians speak of themselves as "warriors for peace." Their reactions to political violence in 2009, however, were muted and cautious. I argue that this stance stems from long-standing norms of silence and guardedness in Guinea, while musicians in the Guinean diaspora protest from a physical and cultural distance.

[Source: article abstract].

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Kidula, Jean Ngoya. "Ethnomusicology, the Music Canon, and African Music: Positions, Tensions, and Resolutions in the African Academy." Africa Today 52, no. 3 (Spring, 2006):98-113,134.

African music entered serious scholarship through disciplines such as ethnomusicology. While scholars in African music have contributed significantly to the development of theories and methods of culture, the music of Africa have been portrayed more as artifact than art, and African music scholars have been directed by European and other music practices. The resultant positions and tensions in the continent's academic music management are reflected in ethnomusicological discourse with African music. Drawing from Kenya, the paper examines the processes through which the African academy has grappled with the dynamics of ethnomusicology, African musicology, and the place of African music and musicians. An African musicology cognizant of the contributions of African musicians to the global-music canon while situating them in the historical development of African music is proposed.

[Source: article abstract as culled from Proquest.com].

Meneses, Maria Paula. “Singing Struggles, Affirming Politics: Mozambique’s Revolutionary Songs as Other Ways of Being (in) History”. In Mozambique on the Move: Challenges and Reflections edited by Sheila Khan, Maria Paula Meneses, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, 254–278. Brill 2019.

Music is a fundamental mode of political expression and a political enactment. In the early years of independent Mozambique, revolutionary songs, broadcasted by the leading nationalist force, FRELIMO, became a significant part of developing a new sense of belonging to an alternative political project, of becoming Mozambique.

[Source: Chapter abstract as culled from researchgate.net].

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Stone, Ruth M. The Garland Handbook of African Music. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008.

The Garland Handbook of African Music is comprised of essays from The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Volume 1, Africa, (1997). Revised and updated, the essays offer detailed, regional studies of the different musical cultures of Africa and examine the ways in which music helps to define the identity of this particular area. Part One provides an in-depth introduction to Africa. Part Two focuses on issues and processes, such as notation and oral tradition, dance in communal life, and intellectual property. Part Three focuses on the different regions, countries, and cultures of Africa with selected regional case studies. The second edition has been expanded to include exciting new scholarship that has been conducted since the first edition was published. Questions for Critical Thinking at the end of each major section guide and focus attention on what musical and cultural issues arise when one studies the music of Africa -- issues that might not occur in the study of other musics of the world. An accompanying audio compact disc offers musical examples of some of the music of Africa.

[Source: Book description by publisher culled from routtledge.com].

Plageman, Nate. Highlife Saturday Night: Popular Music and Social Change in Urban Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Highlife Saturday Night captures the vibrancy of Saturday nights in Ghana—when musicians took to the stage and dancers took to the floor—in this penetrating look at musical leisure during a time of social, political, and cultural change. Framing dance band "highlife" music as a central medium through which Ghanaians negotiated gendered and generational social relations, Nate Plageman shows how popular music was central to the rhythm of daily life in a West African nation. He traces the history of highlife in urban Ghana during much of the 20thcentury and documents a range of figures that fueled the music's emergence, evolution, and explosive popularity. This book is generously enhanced by audiovisual material on the Ethnomusicology Multimedia website.

[Source: Book description by publisher, Indiana University Press].