Afrotaxonomy

A structured, file-based taxonomy for African music genres and subgenres.

Repository layout

• schema/
  • genre.schema.json
  • tags.schema.json
• data/
  • genres/ (source of truth, organized by region/country)
  • tags/ (controlled vocabularies)
  • mappings/ (optional external platform mappings)
  • relations.yaml (cross-genre edges)
• build/dist/ (compiled outputs)
• tools/ (build/validate/lint scripts)
• docs/ (editorial and taxonomy policy docs)
• tests/ (schema + integrity tests)
• .github/workflows/validate.yml (CI checks)

Genre file minimum

id: example_genre
name: Example Genre
parents: [african_pop]

Build and validation

python tools/lint.py
python tools/check_duplicates.py
python tools/validate.py
python tools/build.py
pytest -q

Subgenre rule

• Every subgenre is its own file and points to its parent via parents.