ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses music mediated by a complex corporate network comprising companies that record, manage, advertise, publish, and broadcast mass-produced music. The introduction of gramophone records presented African musicians with a new spectrum of imported styles. All African pop embodies creative interaction between foreign values and local styles. Modern political boundaries in West Africa do not systematically reflect ethnic or linguistic groups. Mali stands apart from other West African countries in that a large proportion of Malian popular artists are women. Benin lies at a musical crossroads between West, Central, and North Africa, its soundscape colored by Cameroonian makossa, Congolese rumba, and North African Arabic rai. Central and East Africa are musically interconnected by the guitar, which Portuguese traders imported into the D.R.C. in the 1800s. In East Africa, the manufacture and distribution of music has a long history.
