About A Keelie Makolay…
A map of Africa with Ghana highlighted in yellow
A Keelie Makolay is a westernised version of a song from Ghana in West Africa. It has been adapted to be performed by choirs and music ensembles from non-African cultures and Orchestras for All have made this orchestral arrangement.
A Keelie Makolay is based on call and response. Call and response is a stylistic feature of traditional African music where vocal music will be characterised by a vocal ‘leader’ who makes a ‘call’, then is followed by a group of singers who make a ‘response’.
Call and response influences the structure (how the piece is built in sections) and the texture (which is the layering of different parts). It has two main sections: Section A and Section B. Each section is eight bars long and includes repetition, so each section is more like four bars times two. They have some similarities but you will also notice some differences in the music parts.
A key musical element in this song is that the melody lines follow a call and response pattern. In the A Section the call is the first two bars of the melody and the ‘response’ is the next two bars. In the B section the call is four bars and the response is four bars.
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