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46unusual element of Tuareg culture). Interestingly, there is an important difference in thesinging style of men and women as well. Male singing style is close to the North Africansinging style (high register tense voice with lots of melodic ornaments), and womensinging style is much more relaxed (Wendt, 1998a:579-580). Generally, men follow theMuslim religion closer than women. Women are considered (and are very much revered)as the guardians of Tuareg traditional pre-Islamic culture (Wendt, 1998a:593).Very interesting are the camel festivals (tende) where singing plays an importantrole. In northern regions singing in accompanied by the women’s choral pedal drone, andin the southern regions it is ostinato that mostly (but not always) replaces the pedal drone(Wendt, 1998a:585). According to Tuareg belief, strong rhythms attract spirits, sorhythmically vigorous music with the drone or ostinato is performed to cure the“possessed” or “emotionally ill” person. Solo lead singer is joined by the wholecommunity (with clapping, shouting encouragements, or raspy grunts) at this veryimportant for Tuareg society ceremony. This ceremony may repeat for severalconsecutive nights.In Algerian Sahara flute playing by Tuaregs is often accompanied by the vocalsound, produced by the flute player (player is usually a herdsman). And again, like inTuareg vocal music, the vocal part represents the pedal drone (Wendt, 1998a:591-592).ConclusionsTo conclude this survey of African polyphonic traditions, we may say thatAfrican continent houses remarkable amount of live polyphonic traditions. Consideringthe vocal traditions, I suggest to distinguish three major regions in Africa: (1) sub-Saharan Africa, (2) North Africa, and (3) Sahara. Two out of these three major regionshave traditions of vocal polyphony (although based on different types of polyphony). Thebiggest, sub-Saharan region of Africa is traditionally divided further into four sub-regions(East, Central, South and West Africa).Let me briefly remind readers the basic facts about the vocal polyphony in Africa:‣ The whole Africa (except the northern Africa) is the largest and virtuallyuninterrupted region of the distribution of the traditions of vocalpolyphony in the world;‣ Based on the dynamics of the tone languages, the leading principle ofsub-Saharan African polyphony is parallelism;‣ East Africa is maybe the most typical region of African polyphony, withthe parallel movements of voices in parallel thirds and fourths;‣ Central African vocal polyphonic traditions are dominated by the uniquepolyphony of Pygmies, based on a wide use of yodel technique;‣ South African polyphony can be distinguished from the other Africanregion by the Khoisan polyphonic tradition;‣ There are few common elements between Pygmy and Khoisanpolyphony (most importantly, wide use of yodel);‣ West African region consist of two different types of musical cultures.The first type (connected to the savanna residents) shows the influenceof Moslem North African musical style, and the second type (connectedto the forest peoples of West Africa) shows similarity to the vocalpolyphony of other African regions;