For the majority of Europeans, African music remains ‘jungle’ music, repetitive, boring and primitive. Christian missionaries did their best to stamp it out and the same uninformed and often racist views sadly still prevail today. In the same way, we have seen how western capital, in the form of music multinationals, has attempted to coopt or at least to profit from the current wave of popularity enjoyed by Africa’s electric guitar bands. To a lesser extent, we have seen how several western pop musicians have attempted to incorporate African rhythms and styles into their career development. While many observers consider these phenomena to be positive developments in the promotion of African music, we would beg to differ and instead argue that the efforts of Paul McCartney, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon are largely meaningless (and often selfish) in terms of the overall development of African music. We only have to consider the fact that over 90 per cent of Africans remain in close articulation to pre-capitalist economic and social
