This chapter situates the current volume as a study of African music as “urbatext” in selected West African and black diasporan regions and times. Drawing from multiple genres of African music, including Cap Verdian Zouk, Cabo, and Mais Kizomba, Senegalese ngoyaan and Sufi music, as well as Tuareg oral poetry and guitar performances, the chapter contextualizes the monograph as an exploration of diverse musical traditions spanning from Senegal to Niger and, sometimes, crossing into the wider black diaspora. The traditions and areas that are examined in this book include Senegambian and African American blues, French hip-hop, Malian balafon music, songs of Ghanaian highlife and hiplife music, as well as those of the Church of Pentecost (CoP) of Ghana. This variety of music reflects the richness of non-European and usually non-Anglophone rhythmic and phonic traditions in which the song or the word echoes a specific mentality or a distinct culture with unique or cosmopolitan values dependent on a community’s identity. With such an expansive scope and diversity, this chapter situates the book as an array of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary explorations of African music that convey several social, political, cultural, economic, religious, and ideological meanings. The book demonstrates how African music, like black diasporan music, goes beyond its local contexts. Both kinds of music transcend cultural and national boundaries as they develop in multiple world regions, even though their roots stem from either Africa or its wide diaspora.