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44African populations played a crucial role in the development of national musical culturesof South, Central and North America.North AfricaNorth Africa is traditionally considered as a region stretching from theMediterranean Sea in the north to the Sahara Desert in the south. Regarding the traditionof vocal polyphony, I suggest to divide North Africa into two sub-regions: coastal line ofMediterranean Sea (with predominantly Arabic population with monophonic musicalculture) and the more isolated and inhospitable mountain and desert regions of Saharaand the adjacent territories, populated with Berber-Tuareg people with specificpolyphonic traditions. Therefore, musical traditions of Berber-Tuareg populations will bediscussed separately in the next section “Sahara”.North Africa can be considered as one of the most monophonic regions of theworld. Close links between the North African and the Middle Eastern musical traditionsare well established. Lomax united the huge region including North Africa through theMiddle East, Central and East Asia in a giant family of cultures under the name Old HighCultures. Relatively static demographics of the ancient North Africa (consisting of theindigenous Berbers and Phoenicians traders) started to change dramatically with the firstwaves of Arab invasions from A.D. 688 onwards. Contemporary musical culture of NorthAfrica is defined mostly by the musical traditions from the Islamic Middle East. “Musicoccupies an ambiguous role in Muslim life. Since the beginning of Islam, Muslimauthorities have disputed the question of whether music should be permitted in worship.Because music, especially instrumental music, was associated with pagan practices andsensual entertainment, early authorities declared the act of listening to music “unworthy”of a Muslim. The debate continues. To avoid secular associations, references to music areusually avoided in mention of calls to prayers, Koranic recitations, and other forms ofreligious expressions” (Anderson, 1971:146-147). In some communities, music makingof any kind – religious or secular – is discouraged in the name of Islam. A few forbidmusic altogether, as do members of the puritanical Mozabite sect of Algeria (Alport,1970:228, 234-235). Nevertheless, the sung praise of the Islamic deity is standardpractice in most of the region” (Wendt, 1998:536).Few familiar from the Middle East features are characteristic for the NorthAfrican musical cultures: prevalence of solo singing (or group unison singing), tense highregister vocal virtuoso performance, rich melodic ornamentation, sometimes metrorhythmicfreedom (non-regular and free rhythms), particular importance of professionalperformers and the musical instruments, and the presence of elaborate theoretical worksanalyzing the scale systems and melodic types of music.