African Classical Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Music: Classical

Music: World: Africa

Cellist and master kora player Tunde Jegede celebrates the classical musics of Africa.

Cellist and master kora player Tunde Jegede celebrates African classical traditions on their own terms, picking out musical details and offering connections and contrasts.

African Classical Music: Chamber Music and Instrumental Legacies

Chamber Music and Instrumental Legacies

BBC Radio 3 - African Classical Music, Chamber Music and Instrumental Legacies

Musician and composer Tunde Jegede celebrates the classical musics of Africa, featuring the Griot traditions of Mali and The Gambia plus thumb piano polyphony from Zimbabwe.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Tunde Jegede grew up inside two musical traditions: the Western Classical music of his cello studies and schooling in London; and the kora repertoire of The Gambia, where he spent his school holidays as a young mentee of the griot musician Amadu Bansang Jobarteh. As his musicianship in the UK developed, Jegede began to find it strange how the music of western composers was so easily considered to be art music worthy of the title “Classical”, while African pieces were often talked about as culturally-confined curiosities, regardless of how complex or canonical they are. In this series, Jegede sets out to celebrate a variety of African Classical traditions on their own terms, picking out musical details and offering connections and contrasts.

In this first episode, he explores the instrumental legacies of West African Griot music as well as thumb piano polyphony from Zimbabwe. Plus there's the opportunity to consider the work of African composers operating within Western Classical Music who incorporate into their solo studies and chamber works the sounds, structures and approaches of their own African classical traditions.

Produced by Phil Smith
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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