F0 analysis of Ghanaian pop singing reveals progressive alignment with equal temperament over the past three decades: a case study

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Ghanaian pop singer Daddy Lumba's vocal pitch has progressively aligned with equal temperament over three decades, reflecting technological influence and cultural shifts in musical scales.

Contribution

It provides a case study demonstrating the gradual shift towards equal-tempered scales in Ghanaian pop singing using F0 analysis and Gaussian mixture modeling.

Findings

Pitch variance has decreased over time.

Alignment with equal temperament has increased in recent years.

Microtonal content in singing has lessened.

Abstract

Contemporary Ghanaian popular singing combines European and traditional Ghanaian influences. We hypothesize that access to technology embedded with equal temperament catalyzed a progressive alignment of Ghanaian singing with equal-tempered scales over time. To test this, we study the Ghanaian singer Daddy Lumba, whose work spans from the earliest Ghanaian electronic style in the late 1980s to the present. Studying a singular musician as a case study allows us to refine our analysis without over-interpreting the findings. We curated a collection of his songs, distributed between 1989 and 2016, to extract F0 values from isolated vocals. We used Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) to approximate each song's scale and found that the pitch variance has been decreasing over time. We also determined whether the GMM components follow the arithmetic relationships observed in equal-tempered scales, and observed that Daddy Lumba's singing better aligns with equal temperament in recent years. Together, results reveal the impact of exposure to equal-tempered scales, resulting in lessened microtonal content in Daddy Lumba's singing. Our study highlights a potential vulnerability of Ghanaian musical scales and implies a need for research that maps and archives singing styles.