On the applicability of advanced information retrieval techniques for a database of African music

Music information retrieval from an archive of audio recordings of African music poses many challenges for research. Apart from audio feature extraction and audio content description, there is a need for techniques that allow flexible database querying. These techniques have to be developed in relation to a careful cultural, social and economical analysis of the user profile and the general content of the music information retrieval task. In this paper, some general considerations on the problem will be introduced and the use of different techniques for flexible database querying will be presented.