Africa is the world’s second largest continent

“….geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures fill their graps, And o’er unhabitable downs Place elephans for want of towns.”

These word were written by Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels. He wrote them more than 200 years ago. Swift was pointing out how little the Europeans of his day knew about Africa. It was a “dark continent” to them – huge and vast and un known. It remained so for centuries.

Africa is the world’s second largest continent. Only Asia is larger. Africa is larger enough to hold nearly four continents the size of Australia.

The giant continent straddles the equator, stretching both north and south about 35 degrees. But because of Africa’s shape, the bulk of its land lies beetwen the Tropic of cancer and the Tropic of Capicorn. This means that most of Africa is in the tropics. Indeed, Africa is the most tropical of the continent.

Every time you turn on oyur radio or listen to television or a juke box, these is a good chance that the music you hear will be at least partly African in origin. This is because the music of Europe and America. It began when black Africans were transportedto America as slaves, taking their songs and dances with them. Gradually, as they became accustomed to their new home, they combined their own music with the folk music and Amreican Indian music they heard in the New World. The result was a new and original American folk music. Largely out of this grew jazz, one of the most popular forms of music today.


African music is considered primitive because it comes from people who do not have a written language; song are passed on by word of mouth rather than by the use of written notes. Yet it does not seem right to call this music primitive, since some of it is more highly developed than the folk music of Europe and America