African Tribe Culture

Traditional Tribes

When one thinks of the word “Africa,” for many the word congers images of tribes and their traditional cultures. African tribe culture is distinguished by its great diversity of social patterns. For example, you can still find what the anthropologists refer to as hunter-gatherer tribes, as well as more technologically advanced pastoralist and horticulturalist tribes. In addition, African tribe culture is characterized by a great diversity of religions, ranging from animism to monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Furthermore, African tribe culture has a great diversity of visual arts and music as well. For example, African masks are famous for their beauty and use in traditional African dances and ceremonies. African masks are known for their innovative use of form, texture and color to create works of art with cultural significance. With respect to African music, this is perhaps the most highly evolved form of music in the world, exhibiting complex patterns unknown to classical European music which is simplistic in comparison to the music patterns of African tribe culture. Moreover, African music is the source of many varieties of music worldwide, including samba, reggae, merengue, and American rock and roll. Another feature that characterizes African tribe culture is the great diversity of languages on the African continent. In comparison to European languages where essentially only one language family has survived (Indo-European), African has four major language families and over 2000 existing languages. The largest language family in Africa is Niger-Congo, with over 1400 languages which illustrate the great diversity of African tribe culture.