- published: 04 Nov 2013
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Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions.
The music and dance forms of the African diaspora include African-American music and many Caribbean genres, such as soca, calypso and zouk. Latin American music genres such as the flamenco, samba, rumba, salsa, and other clave (rhythm)-based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of enslaved Africans, and have in turn influenced African popular music.
With these may be grouped the music of Sudan and of the Horn of Africa, including the music of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia.
The ethnomusicological pioneer Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) observed that the shared rhythmic principles of Sub-Saharan African music traditions constitute one main system. Similarly, master drummer and scholar C.K. Ladzekpo affirms the profound homogeneity of sub-Saharan African rhythmic principles.