Traditional music, including blues and folk, world music such as Indian raga, African drumming and Caribbean styles, their instruments, scales and rhythms, and the AQA strand of study based on the music of Paul Simon.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to know a range of traditional and world styles (folk, blues, Indian, African and Caribbean music), recognise their instruments, scales, rhythms and textures, and apply this to unfamiliar extracts and to the AQA strand of study based on the music of Paul Simon, including fusion. The exam tests this through Section A feature spotting and a Section B extended response, so you need precise names for instruments and devices and a clear understanding of what fusion means.

Folk and blues

Because folk is passed down aurally rather than from notation, it tends toward memorable, repeatable material: short verses sung to the same tune (strophic form), narrative lyrics, and modal scales (such as the Dorian or Mixolydian mode) rather than the major and minor of art music. A drone, a single sustained or repeated note, often underpins the melody, and textures are typically simple, with one tune accompanied by an acoustic instrument. These features make folk easy to recognise: listen for an unaccompanied or lightly accompanied singer, a modal flavour, and repeated verses.

Indian classical music

Indian classical music is built on a raga (a melodic framework of notes with its own mood and rules about how it rises and falls) and a tala (a repeating rhythmic cycle of a fixed number of beats). The sitar plays the melody, the tabla (a pair of hand drums) plays the tala, and the tanpura holds a constant drone on the tonic and dominant beneath everything. A performance often begins with a free, unmetred alap that introduces the raga slowly, before the tabla enters and the music becomes rhythmic and increasingly elaborate. The texture is heterophonic: the same melodic line decorated differently by different players. Almost everything above the fixed raga and tala is improvised, so no two performances are identical.

African and Caribbean music

African drumming features polyrhythms (several contrasting rhythms layered together so different patterns of accents sound at once), call and response (a leader plays or sings a phrase that the group answers), cross rhythms, and the djembe and other hand drums, often in a community or ceremonial setting. Caribbean styles include reggae (offbeat guitar or keyboard chops on the upbeats, a heavy bass line and a relaxed groove), calypso (lively syncopated songs with topical lyrics), and the steel pans of Trinidad, tuned drums made from oil barrels that play melody and harmony.

The AQA strand of study: Paul Simon

Paul Simon is the set artist for this area. His work, especially the album Graceland, is an example of fusion, blending American pop and folk with South African styles such as mbaqanga and isicathamiya, with layered close harmony backing vocals, prominent and melodic bass guitar lines, bright guitar riffs, and African rhythms and percussion underneath English language pop songs in verse and chorus form. The skill AQA tests is hearing both traditions at once and naming what each contributes.