hey, welcome to 12tone!
today we're gonna be looking at the internet's favorite song, Africa by Toto, which starts
with one of the most iconic riffs of all time: (bang) and if we ignore this bit here for
a second, we're basically just moving back and forth between two chords: A major and
C# minor.
these two chords have what's called a mediant relationship, which just means their roots
are a third apart and they share a lot in common.
in the grand scheme of things they're almost the same chord, which means moving back and
forth between them doesn't really give us much of a sense of motion.
this makes it hard to nail down the key, but in cases like this I tend to just assume the
first chord is the root if I don't have a good reason not to, and looking ahead, there's
some pretty good evidence that we're in the key of A.
so what about this G# minor then? that's not in the key of A, so what's it doing here?
well, here's the thing: we're not actually in A major.
we're in A lydian (bang) which is like the major scale but with a raised fourth degree.
this removes a lot of the tension the major scale has, giving us something that sounds
less like it's moving and more like it's just… floating.
as for why this specific chord is being used here, we could look at its harmonic implications,
but I tend to like to analyze riffs through more of a melodic lens, and there's a pretty
simple melodic device that explains what's going on here: the escape tone.
this is where your melody is about to move in one direction (bang) but before you do
you take a quick step the other way first, as a sort of fake-out.
(bang) it gives the melody a more interesting shape, and that's pretty much what's happening
here, just with chords.
but if it's basically just moving back and forth between two chords, why does it sound
so good?
well, that mostly comes down to the rhythm.
this is a great example of what's called syncopation, where instead of playing on the beats, you
play in between them.
here, most of the attacks are played a 16th note late, and if we move them all forward
(bang) it goes from being one of the most iconic intros of all time to sounding like
someone getting a B- on their Intro to Piano final.
that one little rhythmic adjustment changes everything.
but enough about the intro, let's look at the verse.
(bang) now, this is a bit weird, so I'm gonna analyze this two different ways, and you can
decide which one makes more sense to you.
first, it's possible that this is a key change, and we're playing in B major now.
if that's the case, we've got a pretty good example of what's called functional harmony,
which is basically the idea that different chords in a key have different functions,
or jobs to do.
we start on the I chord, move to the III minor, then to the VI minor.
these all have what's called tonic function, which means they're at rest.
there's not a lot of motion yet.
then the bass walks down and we end up on this A major chord.
this isn't in the key of B major, which makes it an example of what's called modal interchange,
which is where you borrow chords from another scale.
in this case, we've taken the bVII chord from B minor, which usually has subdominant function.
this introduces a bit of instability, helping take you away from the peaceful sound of the
tonic function chords before it.
next we see E major, the IV chord, which also has subdominant function.
the bass, though, is playing an F#, which isn't in the chord.
this adds a bit more color, and also alludes to the V chord of the key, which has dominant
function, pointing back to the root.
we never actually see that dominant, though, instead switching back to this G# minor.
this is still the VI chord, and it has tonic function again.
then we see the riff, which is A major to C# minor, which can be viewed as the bVII
and the II chords, encircling the root before we go back to B and start over.
viewed like this, we've got a floaty, dreamy progression that moves back and forth between
tonic and subdominant chords, adding in some occasional tension without ever building up
enough for a real resolution.
I don't really like this analysis, though, because it doesn't match what I hear when
I listen to the song.
the point that feels most resolved to me isn't the B at the beginning, it's the riff, where
we go back to A, and I don't think we ever really left that key, so let's try analyzing
it there instead.
viewed like that, the B major becomes the II chord, which has subdominant function.
normally the II chord is minor, but remember, we're in lydian, so II major isn't surprising.
what is surprising is this D# minor: that chord contains an A#, which as you might imagine
is rare in the key of A natural.
there's a couple ways to spin this, but I'm gonna dust off an analytical tool that I really
don't get to use often enough: secondary tonic function.
secondary functions are chords that function not relative to the actual key, but to, well,
a secondary one.
they're kinda like modal interchange, where we borrowed from another scale, except this
time we're borrowing from another key instead.
by far the most common of these is the secondary dominant, where we steal a V chord in order
to set up a resolution to somewhere other than the root, but in theory we can expand
this idea to cover other chord functions as well.
when we were analyzing this section in B, we said that these two chords were just extending
the restful, tonic sound of the I chord, and I think that's still what's happening here.
they're extending the function of the B, it's just that the B is subdominant now.
this gives these first two bars a sort of conflicted feel: it's at rest with itself,
but it rubs against the overall piece.
anyway, from there the rest is simple.
we have A, which has tonic function, E, which has dominant function, and then we step through
the G# minor to get back to the A in the riff.
before we move on, though, I want to address one last thing.
if you listen to this section, it kinda sounds like the riff jumps out at you from nowhere,
doesn't it?
well, that again comes down to the rhythm: the bar before it is cut in half.
most of the song is in 4/4, which means each bar is four quarter notes long, but the last
bar of the verse is in 2/4, meaning it's only two quarter notes long, so we're expecting
to hear one more chord but then boom, suddenly we're in the riff.
it's a nice trick.
anyway, the chorus is fairly straightforward: (bang) this is a variation on one of the most
famous progressions of all time, lovingly dubbed the four-chord song: (bang) the only
difference is that, instead of starting on the I chord, they start in the middle, with
the VI minor.
normally when I see this flipped-around version I like to analyze it as a minor variation,
like I did in our video on Otherside, but here, the melody makes it pretty clear we're
still in A by sitting on that note for, well, basically the whole time.
seriously, in the first line, only the words "from you" are sung on a different note.
they don't want to make the key ambiguous here.
which brings us to the last line of the chorus, which does something a little different: (bang)
here, where we'd expect to go to E major, we instead get C# minor.
this is reminiscent of the riff, but more importantly it disrupts the flow of the harmony.
E major is the V chord, which has dominant function, but C# minor, despite sharing most
of its notes, is generally considered tonic because it contains the 3rd degree of the
scale, which makes it a lot more stable.
this is just a brief interruption though: we still get our E major, and then we see
this: (bang) I could talk about functions here, but really this is just a walk-up: we're
going from the V chord back to the I and stopping at every other chord along the way. and, again,
the timing of the riff feels surprising.
this is partly because we added an extra bar to the end of the chorus progression, but
also because the last chord before it, G# minor, is syncopated, appearing a 16th note
later than you'd expect.
and that's pretty much it.
well, almost: one thing I didn't get to touch on much was the instrumentation.
it's got some really cool-sounding synths, as well as using a couple unusual percussion
instruments like congas and gongs, which help add another element to the song that wouldn't
be there with just a typical four-piece rock band.
so, yeah. that's Africa.
the song, anyway.
not the continent.
there's probably other videos out there if you're looking for that.
anyway, thanks for watching, and thanks to Patreon patron Gregory Schultz for suggesting
this song!
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