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41polyphonic traditions of southern Africa). It is based on so-called “Principle of harmonicequivalence”: according to this principle the tones, that can substitute each other (or canbe performed simultaneously in vertical harmony), must belong to the same harmonicseries (we have mentioned this principle in connection with San polyphony, firstdescribed by Blacking).Christian religious hymns with European harmony found a good basis inpolyphonic singing traditions of the local populations. African Methodist EpiscopalChurch, based in Philadelphia, sent missionaries in South Africa, where they set upschools and churches, and most importantly, taught the local populations American blackspirituals. Tours of black American choirs started from the 1880s and the 1990s, and hada tremendous impact on southern African musicians. The word “choir” gave the birth ofsouthern African term for a specific musical style makwaya. Makwaya uses jazz elementswith the traditional responsorial forms of polyphonic singing, accompanied bydrumming, dancing, marching and special costumes (Kaemmer, 1998:718). SouthAfrican Native Choir had an extensive repertoire of makwaya songs (Coplan, 1998:765).Few native composers became very popular with their choral compositions: Reuben T.Caluza (from Natal), Benjamin Tuamzashe (Xhosa), Joshua Mohapeloa (Basotho). It iswidely acknowledged, that “the old traditions of choral dance music, continuing toflourish in performances among black South Africans, played an important role in themobilization of the antiapartheid movement” (Coplan, 1998:780).West AfricaThis region comprises large number of countries from Cameroon and southernhalf of Chad to Senegal. Out of the whole sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa shows themost signs of external influence (mostly from North Africa). Two geographic regions: (1)savanna and (2) forest are distinguished here (see DjeDje, 1998: 443). Savanna isgeographically in between the arid northern regions and the forest costal regions of WestAfrica.Polyphonic traditions, showing obvious similarities to the rest of the sub-SaharanAfrica is mostly present in the forest region. On the contrary, monophony plays theprominent role in Savanna region. Savanna region can be also characterized by the wholeset of distinctive (from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa) features: great importance of fulltimeprofessional and semi-professional musicians, high pitched and tense singing stylewith specific melodic embellishments, and the importance of instrumental and vocalinstrumentalgenres. Other non-musical characteristics of savanna region are a higherproportion of urban settlements, dominance of Islam religion, and historically earlyestablishment of states and social stratification.Long tradition of trade with North Africa brought most of these unusual for thesub-Saharan Africa elements of social and musical life to the savanna regions of WestAfrica. It is important to take into account, that the actual influence, coming from theNorth Africa, was not homogenous, as it was connected at least to two different ethnicand cultural element: (1) Berber-Tuaregs, the indigenous populations of North Africa,and (2) Arabs, who spread in North Africa from the end of the 7 th century and pushedBerber-Tuaregs towards the southern regions across the inhospitable Sahara desert.Presence of both Berber and Arab ethnic elements from North Africa in the populations