Baganda Music

Baganda music is a music culture developed by the people of Uganda with many features that distinguish African music from other world music traditions. Parts of this musical tradition have been extensively researched and well-documented, with textbooks documenting this research. Therefore, the culture is a useful illustration of general African music.

In addition to voice, a range of instruments are used, including the Amadinda, the Akadinda xylophones, the Ennanga harp, the Etongoli lyre, drums, and the Kadongo (plural "budongo") lamellophone.

Amadinda, akadinda, ennanga, and entongoli, as well as several types of drums, are used in the courtly music of the Kabaka, the king of Buganda. The kadongo, on the other hand, was more recently introduced to Baganda music, dating to the early 20th century. For this reason, budongo music is not part of the traditional court music.

Baganda music is based on an approximately equidistant pentatonic scale. Therefore, the octave (mwànjo, plural myanjo) is divided into five intervals of approximately 240 cents (2.4 semitones). There is some variation in the interval length between instruments, and it even might vary in one (tunable) instrument during a performance. This means that in an emic description, the scale can be called an equipentatonic scale while on an etic level of description, there might be different variations of implementing that conceptual scale.

Because this music is not harmony-based, chords are not used and only the octaves are consonant.

In Baganda culture, like in many African cultures, the musical scale is not perceived as pointing from "low" to "high" tones but the other way around, from "small" to "large" or "big" tones. Despite this, the notation (created by European ethnomusicologists) used for the music denotes the deepest tone as "1" and the highest as "5".

As in many African cultures, there is a preference in Baganda music for "noisy" timbres. In the Kadongo lamellophone, metal rings are put around the lamellas to create a buzzing sound. In the ennanga harp, scales of a kind of goana are fixed on the instrument in such a way that the vibrating strings will touch it. This gives a crackling timbre to the sound. In tuning the instruments (including the xylophones), the octave is often deliberately not tuned exactly, resulting in an intended acoustic beat effect. In singing, "coarse" timbres are often used.

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