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of West Africa is a well-known and very important factor for the understanding of thecharacteristics of the musical culture of this region.Although group singing (and dancing) is present in most of the societies living insavanna regions of West Africa, polyphony mostly exists here in instrumental music. Invocal music polyphony is not as important as in other parts of Africa. For example, thereis a highly interesting tradition of instrumental ensemble performance among Kasenapeople. “Three to six flutes or horns, or a mixed ensemble of both, accompanied bydrums, play in a hocket style with polyphonic structures. The music is diatonic, andpolyphony derives from the third as a consonant interval. As final cadences, parts movingin parallel thirds resolve into unison (Nketia, 1980:331. Cited from DjeDje, 1998:456).Regarding the vocal forms of polyphony, it is very interesting that in musical culture ofso-called “western Sudanic cluster” there are elements of vocal drone (DjeDje,1998:446), unique for the rest of sub-Saharan African singing style. For understandingthe origins of vocal drone in Western Africa we need to take into account the presence ofdrone polyphony among the Tuaregs (see about this later), and the Tuareg influence inwestern Africa is well documented.Forest region, in contrast, shows much less external influences and has muchcloser links to the other regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The populations of the forestregions are also ethnically more diverse (more than 500 ethnic groups), more village thanurban and has much less centralized power (although historically one of strongest coastalkingdoms between 15 th -19 th centuries in West Africa were created by forest Yorubapeople). Forest cultures are also characterized by much stronger importance of traditionalAfrican religions (instead of Christianity and particularly Islam among savanna peoples),much less professionalism among musicians and more community oriented groupperformance. Musical cultures of the forest regions are also united by the biggerimportance of vocal forms (instead of instrumental forms popular among savannapeoples. DjeDje, 1998:458).Most importantly for our subject, forest peoples of the West Africa practicemostly similar to the other sub-Saharan forms of traditional vocal polyphony:responsorial singing between the call of the soloist and the group choral response, wideuse of thirds and fourths in part singing, parallel movement of vocal parts (connectedagain to the tonal character of the languages of western African forest peoples), presenceof different scales (from seven-tone heptatonic or diatonic, to five-tone pentatonic).All these traits are more or less present among the people of the forest regions ofthe West Africa: the Igbo, the Yoruba (particularly among the Yoruba living in the west),the Aja, the Ga, the Akan, the Dan, the Krelle, the Mende, the Temne, and some othergroups (DjeDje, 1998:459 – 469). To generalize, we may say that the tradition of vocalpolyphony becomes less prominent as we move westwards, towards the extreme westernparts of the West Africa.Of course, as always, the reality is more flexible than this rigid division of WestAfrican peoples on the “Islamic monophonic peoples of savanna regions” and the “non-Islamic polyphonic peoples of forest regions”. For example, C. Waterman stresses thestrong influence associated with Christianity (and particularly Islam) on the Yorubapopular music. “Though Islamic authorities do not officially approve of indulgence inmusic, the success of Islam among the Yoruba (as elsewhere in West Africa) hasdepended on its ability to adapt to local cultural values. Many traditional drummers are42