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2283 results in Ethnomusicology

Page 48 of 115

  • 1 - Echoes of Colonialism: Bagpipes in the Himalayas

  • Andrew Alter, Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Book:
    Mountainous Sound Spaces
    Published by:
    Foundation Books
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    12 May 2014, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    Bazaars in most towns throughout Uttarakhand offer the usual merchandise one would expect to find in a North Indian urban market. Street vendors compete for space in front of more permanent shops as crowds of pedestrians, motorcycles, cars and buses squeeze through the narrow streets. Most of the goods are brought up from the plains while some local merchandise may be found scattered among the imported items. Distribution networks of a capitalist economy ensure employment for wholesalers as well as truck drivers responsible for moving goods between markets and distribution points. Hill potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, beans and apples make an appearance in market displays beside spinach from Punjab, oranges from Nagpur, Guavas and Mangoes from UP and eggplants from Haryana. In other shops, household goods and readymade clothing arrive from production centres in the plains. Metalware shops display the standard steel plates, tumblers, cutlery and kitchen utensils that one would expect, while brass and copper banṭhās (water containers) are added for local residents wanting to purchase something from their own region. In the back of these same shops there might also be a brass barrel-shaped ḍhol or a copper bhaṅkorā (trumpet).

    Frequently in these towns there is also a vendor selling compact discs, VCDs and DVDs. These have largely replaced the audio cassettes and VHS tapes that were once the dominant analogue formats of the 1980s and 1990s. Music vendors target a clientele who want to hear the most recent popular hits of the film industry or see the most recent compilation of dance ‘item numbers’ from Mumbai. Nonetheless, as with items for sale in other shops, Uttarakhandi products find space, albeit a more marginal space, next to the imports. Big name local singers provide a Garhwali nuance to the commodified sounds and VCDs on offer. Garhwali regional films use the voices of these stars as playback singers to express a local identity within a style clearly influenced by Mumbai’s dominant aesthetic.

  • 9 - The Legacy of Garhwali Cassettes: Remembering the Pre-digital Age of Music Commodification

  • Andrew Alter, Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Book:
    Mountainous Sound Spaces
    Published by:
    Foundation Books
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    12 May 2014, pp 127-150

  • Summary

    The invention of the analog audio cassette was a critical moment in the history of music industries worldwide. Introduced in the mid-1960s, the technology spread rapidly in the 1970s until it was the dominant format for music sales throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before it was replaced by the compact disk. As Manuel (1993) has documented, cassette technology was adopted in India somewhat later than in the rest of the world, but once it arrived, it had an overwhelming impact on the consumption and production of popular music. Similarly, the replacement of cassettes by compact disks occurred later in India than elsewhere. In regional music traditions, the arrival of digital formats and music downloads via the internet has now created a complex new environment for sales quite unlike the uniformity of the cassette industry.

    Manuel traces the boom in cassette production throughout India to the mid-1980s:

    The years 1983-85 were the period of most dramatic expansion, when regional cottage cassette companies sprang up throughout the subcontinent, millions of rural consumers came to own indigenous or imported ‘two-in-ones,’ [radio-cassette players] and all manner of regional genres and subgenres started appearing on cassette. By 1991 regional-music cassettes were estimated to account for 40 to 60 percent of the entire recording market in India

    (Manuel 1993: 156).

    Coincidentally the Garhwali film industry was also founded at this time. The first Garhwali language film, Jagwāl [The Vigil] was produced by Parasar Gaur in 1983. This was followed by three other Garhwali films during the decade: Kavī Sukh Kavī Dukh (1984), Ghar Jawaiṅ (1986) and Kauthīg (1987) (Uttarkhand Cinema). Meghā Ā was the first Kumauni film produced by S. S. Bisht in 1987 and this too contributed to a growing Uttarakhandi film industry. The two most popular Garhwali films were undoubtedly Ghar Jawaiṅ and Kauthīg, both of which featured the music and voice of Narendra Singh Negi.

  • 6 - Drum Strokes, Syllables and Rhythmic Patterns

  • Andrew Alter, Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Book:
    Mountainous Sound Spaces
    Published by:
    Foundation Books
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    12 May 2014, pp 80-96

  • Summary

    The previous three chapters examined the epic repertoire of Uttarakhand in order to provide details of indoor musical practice. In addition, the stories that were discussed provided texts and themes that could be fruitfully mined for perspectives on caste hierarchy and ideologies associated with instruments. The huṙkī drum and the voice of the performer were the primary components of the aural phenomenon of story singing. An overarching framework for the discussion of the stories, as well as the creative practices undertaken in their construction, was appropriately provided by theories of oral tradition.

    In contrast, this chapter shifts focus away from the huṙkī, and moves to a consideration of outdoor drums; namely the ḍhol and the damauṅ. Nonetheless, the discussion remains concerned with practices of oral tradition, particularly related to how ‘drum knowledge’ is vocalized in particular ways. Consequently, I seek to focus on the way drummers use syllabic recitation as a means to signify repertoire items and thereby oralize a practice of drumming. The implications of this oralization are considered within the broader context of drumming in other areas of South Asian practice.

    I have always been somewhat uncomfortable in describing and notating the drum syllables used by village drummers in Garhwal. On the one hand, when I became aware that some drummers used syllables to describe repertoire, it appeared logical to use these syllables in some way to notate and visually represent the drum patterns that I was listening to. On the other hand – though syllables represented an emic approach to drum stroke conceptualization – they never quite provided the direct link between sound and physical action that I was looking and listening for. Identifying particular vocalized syllables in relation to specific striking points on the drumheads was always more problematic than I had imagined it should be.

  • 2 - Echoes of a Royal Heritage: Vestiges of Naubat

  • Andrew Alter, Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Book:
    Mountainous Sound Spaces
    Published by:
    Foundation Books
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    12 May 2014, pp 17-28

  • Summary

    In an old book on the history of Garhwal written by Harikrishna Raturi, the author presents extensive lists of the various caste names of families in Garhwal. The book was originally published in 1928 during the days of the Garhwali Raja and would seem to present a first-hand account of practices from that time. Within his list of untouchable castes, Raturi (1988 [1928]: 90) lists ‘aṭpahariyā’ and describes these as: ‘nakarāchīs [players of the naqqara drums] who used to sound out the eight times of day on the naubat in the naubatkhānā of the court', Very few present-day musicians play these kinds of drums though drummers regularly refer back to a shared memory of court drumming. Raturi's statement is significant because it is one of the few sources from the time that mentions musical activity in the Garhwali rājā's court.

    As the previous chapter illustrates, musical instruments as well as their combinations within specific ensembles are frequently associated with political power and military conquest. While instruments may hold a variety of symbolic meanings in different contexts, their use as sonic expressions of power may be heard in numerous musical traditions throughout the world. The adoption of the bagpipe into village-level musical practice as well as that of the Garhwal and Gorkha Regiments of the Indian Army enmeshes a complex history of imperial power within local sonic expressions of regional identity.

  • 3 - Possession and Performance: Sounding Out the Epic Worlds of Heroes and Gods

  • Andrew Alter, Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Book:
    Mountainous Sound Spaces
    Published by:
    Foundation Books
    Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    12 May 2014, pp 29-47

  • Summary

    Praise to Narsingh!

    Praise to the five named deities!

    Praise to Nirankar!

    The first king of the Kanturis was Raja Ajaybitha, then Gajebitha, then king Sujana Deb, then Amar Deb, then King Pithaura, then King Prithipal. King Pithima Deb was the father of Dhama Deb whose mother was Muladeyi.

    With these words, Bhag Chand, a huṙkiyā (drummer) from the village of Naugaon in Pauri district of Uttarakhand, began to sing the pawāṙā (heroic epic) of ‘Bijula Naik’. I had organized a performance of this specific story in April of 2004 at my own house and a small group of about five people had joined us for the occasion. This chapter explores the dynamics of that performance by focusing on the story of Bijula Naik as well as the performative elements of Bhag Chand's singing and drumming. The sonic realm of a pawāṙā draws one into the world of the characters and transports one regularly between the natural world of the event and the supernatural world of the story.

    Bijula Naik is the illicit son of Dhama Deb and Chhamuna Patra, he being the king of the Kanturis, and she being a low caste dancer. Though the story does not provide the details of the illicit affair, the disparity between their castes as well as Chhamuna Patra’s status as a dancer in the king’s court provides an underlying tension that continues throughout the story. To begin the story’s performance, it was essential for Bhag Chand to acknowledge the presence of the world of gods through naming them in advance of his story. His skills as a ritual specialist would be essential in controlling any devtās (deities) who might join us for the performance.

The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
  • Percival Kirby
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013
  • Percival Kirby was a musician and ethnomusicologist and for many years head of the music department at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Between 1923 and 1933 he undertook more than nine expeditions as well as many shorter excursions around South Africa. He was hosted by local chiefs and taught to play the instruments he encountered. He managed to purchase many of them, and this collection, now known as the Kirby Collection, is housed at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town. First published as Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa in 1934, the book was the culmination of research trips undertaken by Percival Kirby. It became the standard reference on indigenous South African musical instruments. The bulk of the material is concerned with detailed information on the making and playing of each instrument, and is accompanied by a large number of musical examples. This third edition contains an introduction by Mike Nixon, Head of the Ethnomusicology and African Music at the South African College of Music, and new reproductions of the valuable historic photographs, but leaves Kirby’s original text unchanged.

  • 4 - Bull-Roarers and Spinning-Disks

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 98-103

  • Summary

    THE bull-roarer, or whizzing-stick, is found all over South Africa. There are to-day, so far as I can discover, no rituals in which the instrument is used, and no taboos regarding its employment. For the most part it is nowadays looked upon as a child's toy; and, owing to the fact that it is of no importance in the eyes of adults, information about it is very difficult to obtain.

    Among the Bushmen, however, the bull-roarer was in comparatively recent times used by adults. The usual form of the instrument may be judged by the two examples shown in Figure 4.2, Nos. 2 and 3. These were made by Qung Bushmen, about 1878, for Dr. Bleek, and were given to me by Miss Dorothea Bleek. The blade of the slenderer example, a drawing of which appeared in Bleek and Lloyd's Bushman Folklore, is 127/8 inches long and 11/4 inches broad at the widest point. It is attached by a cord to a stick, by which it may be whirled through the air, when it yields a powerful sound.

    Bleek and Lloyd's work contains an interesting note, in the vernacular, on the use of the instrument, which was known as the !goiŋ!goiŋ. ‘The people beat the !goiŋ!goiŋ in order that the bees may become abundant for the people, in order that the bees may go into the other people's places, that the people may eat honey. Therefore, the people beat the !goiŋ!goiŋ when they desire that the people's bees may go into the other people's places, so that the people may cut honey, that they may put honey away into bags.’ Here we see a practical use made of the bullroarer, doubtless on account of the analogy of its sound with that of swarming bees.

    Two other examples of this form of the instrument as made by the Red Dunes Bushmen of the western Kalahari, are shown in Figure 4.2, Nos. 6 and 8; and two examples of a different (spinning-disk) type made by the same people in Figure 4.3, Nos. 1 and 3. These people also make a kind of bull-roarer with a feather in place of the blade of wood. An example is preserved in the Hannemann collection at Leipzig, and the instrument has been described and illustrated by Passarge. A specimen from my own collection will be seen in Figure 4.2, No. 10.

  • Preface to Second Edition

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp xix-xxii

  • Summary

    WHILE writing this book, the original edition of which was published in 1934, I found it necessary to make several very important decisions regarding it.

    In the first place I had to decide whether to arrange my material tribally, or to deal with each type of musical instrument separately from the technological and historical points of view, allowing the tribal aspects to emerge incidentally. I chose the second of these alternatives, my chief reason for doing so being that I wished the work to be, as far as was possible, a complete and comparative study of one particular aspect of the life of our aborigines.

    In the second place I had to determine what was the most suitable manner of classifying the various musical instruments. I was, of course, well aware that no universally accepted ‘taxonomy’ of musical instruments existed, though two excellent systems had been evolved in recent years.

    But these systems, respectively devised by Gevaert and Mahillon of Brussels (1877) and by Hornbostel and Sachs of Berlin (1914), although eminently scientific, ‘seemed to belong’, as my friend the late Canon Francis W. Galpin put it, ‘rather to natural science than to human artifacts’. For this reason I preferred to retain the age-old simple classification of musical instruments into the three main groups of percussion, wind, and string.

    But for the use of those who may wish to relate the instruments described in the present volume to the more scientific system of classification, I quote here the five main ‘Divisions’ as set out by Canon Galpin in the simplest possible terms. They are:

  • Autophonic, or self-vibrating instruments (rattles, xylophones, etc.).

  • Membranophonic, or skin-vibrating instruments (drums, etc.).

  • Chordophonic, or string-vibrating instruments (musical bows, etc.).

  • Aerophonic, or wind-vibrating instruments (whistles, flutes, etc.).

  • Electrophonic, or electrically vibrating instruments (‘Hammond’ organ, etc.).

    • It will be seen at once that no musical instrument belonging to Division 5 has ever been made or used by aborigines of South Africa. On the other hand those described in Chapters I and III of this book belong to Division 1, those in Chapter II to Division 2, those in Chapters IV, V, VI, and VII to Division 4, and those in Chapters VIII, IX, and X, to Division 3.

  • Preface to First Edition

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp xv-xviii

  • Summary

    THIS study of the Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa has been made possible by a generous grant received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, through the Research Grant Board of the Union of South Africa. Without such assistance it would have been impossible for me to cover so large a field, for in the course of my investigations I have had to travel many thousands of miles. I undertook no fewer than nine special expeditions to distant native areas, as well as many shorter excursions. On these expeditions I frequently lived in native kraals, and participated in the musical performances of the people, the only way, in my opinion, for a European observer to learn and understand the principles underlying native music.

    In this book my chief aim has been to attempt to supply specific and detailed information, and to correlate to some extent the earlier and often rather vague generalizations on the subject which have appeared in the works of travellers. South Africa, by which I mean that portion of the Continent which lies south of latitude 22°, or, roughly, south of the River Limpopo, has been, from the point of view of the ethnologist, in a very fortunate position. For hundreds of years little was known of it except those portions near the coast, which from the fifteenth century were regularly visited and described by travellers from many lands. The interior, on the other hand, remained practically unknown until the nineteenth century, when the driving force of European colonization opened it up rapidly, revealing a strangely chaotic mixture of races whose past history is only now being brought to light. Further, those non-African peoples who from time to time have visited the east coast of Africa, and even penetrated far inland, have had singularly little influence upon the peoples dwelling south of the Limpopo, and such influence may, I think, be readily recognized. In other words, the native races which have inhabited large areas of South Africa for the last five centuries or so have retained much of their original culture, although they have naturally exchanged many ideas and adopted not a few. There remains, it would seem, in spite of inter-tribal wars and their inevitable consequences, much that is ancient and individual among the various native peoples of South Africa.

  • 1 - Rattles and Clappers

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 1-17

  • Summary

    DANCING is a most important feature of the social life of all the native peoples of South Africa, and, as an adjunct to the dance, rattles of different kinds are almost invariably used.

    The Bushmen had two or three varieties. Pride of place must be given to the dainty ankle-rattles which their women fashioned from the ears of the springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis). They were observed by Burchell (1812), who described them as worn by a Bushman. ‘Round each ankle he wore a sort of rattle, made (in this instance) of four ears of the springbuck, sewed up and containing a quantity of small pieces of ostrich-egg shell, which at every motion of the foot produced a sound that was not unpleasant or harsh, but greatly aided the general effect of the performances.’ Burchell gave a drawing of the rattle on the leg of a dancer, and he actually obtained the instruments used by the performer. They are preserved in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, where I examined them through the courtesy of the curator, Mr. Henry Balfour. They are black with age and shrivelled up. Two pairs, however, may be seen in South Africa, one in the McGregor Museum, Kimberley, and the other in my collection, given to me by the late Miss D. F. Bleek. Both sets were used by Cape Bushmen, and were made by a Bushwoman near Prieska. They were obtained in 1910. One rattle from the former pair is shown in Figure 1.1. It consists of five ears, beautifully sewn with sinew.

    In Bleek and Lloyd's Bushman Folklore3 there is a quaint account, in the vernacular, of how these dancing-rattles, which were called /keriten, were made by the Qung Bushmen. Miss Lloyd translates it thus:

    A woman takes off the skin [i.e. the hairy skin] of the springbok's ear; and then, she sews the inner skin of the springbok's ear, when she has laid aside the (hairy) skin of the springbok's ear; for it is the inner skin of its ear which she sews. And she sews it, and she scoops up with her hand, putting soft earth into it. And they dig, lading in earth, because they wish that the springbok ears may dry; that they may put in //kerri berries when they have taken out the earth.

  • 9 - Stringed Instruments

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 258-331

  • Summary

    THERE are eleven types of stringed instruments used by the native peoples of South Africa. At least two were deliberately copied from European prototypes, and I shall consider them separately. The remaining nine will here be dealt with, not according to the relative simplicity of their construction, but according to the relative complexity of the sound produced from them.

    These stringed instruments would appear to have originated, directly or indirectly, from the bow of the hunter, and it is interesting to find in this country clear evidence of such development at different stages. As Balfour has pointed out ‘writers of all ages have drawn attention to the musical note emitted by the bowstring when released in shooting, and dwell upon the delight which it afforded to the archer's ear’, and there can be no doubt that such delight was shared by those of the South African peoples who used the bow. A further stage in the realization of the musical possibilities of the hunting-bow would be achieved when it occurred to the hunter to tap his bow-string with an arrow, thus applying a new method of sound-production to the string. This practice has been observed among the Kalahari Bushmen. A hunter, after having made a kill, would, to pass the time while waiting for his companions to come up to him, lightly tap his bow-string with an arrow. But there exists evidence of an extension of this practice which is of considerable importance to musical history. A ‘Bushman’ rock-painting was discovered by Stow in the Maluti Mountains of Basutoland. He made a copy of it, but did not publish it, and it was not made available for general study until 1930, when it appeared in the collection of Stow's copies of rock-paintings, published by the Oxford University Press under the editorship of Miss Dorothea Bleek. Miss Bleek made an extensive tour of South Africa in order to check Stow's drawings from the originals, but unfortunately was unable to find this particular one. We must therefore rely on Stow's accuracy until the original comes to light, if it has not been destroyed.

  • 11 - Some European Instruments Played By Natives

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 349-353

  • Summary

    I HAVE already mentioned the fact that cheap European musical instruments tend, in some cases, to supplant the natives’ own. The chief varieties to be met with in trading stores are Jew's harps, mouth-harmonicas, ‘German’ concertinas, guitars, and autoharps. It should be pointed out that, of these instruments, the first can produce only the partials of the harmonic series over a drone (the note of the tongue), while the others are diatonic, and can produce either melody, harmony, or both together. But it is a curious fact that the kraal native who buys one of these instruments never performs European music upon it; further, since instruments of these kinds are popular with ‘pagan’ tribesmen, Christian natives are seldom seen with them.

    The native who buys a guitar or an autoharp generally contents himself with a rhythmical strumming of two, or perhaps three, of the ‘primary’ chords. In the case of the guitar he must learn some elementary fingering to do this; in that of the autoharp the automatic chord-bars do it for him. This practice, however, is merely a continuation of that which has been regularly used by natives in the case of the ramkie, and which has so often been observed and commented upon by travellers (vide pp. 337–46). Whenever possible the native owner of an autoharp has his instrument tuned by a European; this in itself is significant enough.

    Upon the ‘German’ concertina, which is a diatonic instrument, one can, as I have said, execute both melody and harmony, since the valves on the two fingerboards are so arranged that diatonic melodies may be readily executed together with simple tonic and dominant harmonies. The native, however, uses the European instrument for the production of music designed according to his own principles (vide pp. 323-4), executing typically Bantu melodies which are harmonized with ‘perfect’ concords. The deliberate omission of the third is noteworthy.

  • 8 - The ‘Gora’, A Stringed-Wind Instrument

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 232-257

  • Summary

    THE unique character of the musical instrument known as the gora has for years attracted the attention of travellers in South Africa. It stands alone as an example of a stringed-wind instrument, and it is peculiar to this country.

    In its original form the gora consisted of a slender bow of wood about three feet six inches long, tapering at its extremities in exactly the same way as the Hottentot or Bushman bow was tapered. A thin string of twisted sinew was prepared and one end of it was run through a tiny hole made in the slit and flattened barrel end of the quill of a feather, which had been cut into a roughly spatulate shape, and secured in that position. The shaft of the feather, from which the barbs had been removed, was lashed to one end of the stave of the bow by means of a piece of thin riem. The string was then drawn taut and fastened to the other end of the stave by being wound round it in such a way that the string might be tightened or loosened at will, and thus raised or lowered in pitch. The instrument thus constructed was held in such a manner that the quill lay between the lips of the player, though it did not touch them. By breathing in and out with force, the quill, and through it the string, was set in vibration, and yielded several of the partials of the harmonic series appropriate to the note to which the string had been tuned.

    The first serious historical study of the gora was that of Balfour (1902), who collected and commented upon some fifteen references to its use, dealing chiefly with the instrument as found among the Bushmen and Hottentots, although adding some descriptions of its appearance among Chwana and Sotho. I myself went over the field afresh, taking advantage of the extremely comprehensive Gubbins’ Collection of Africana, and found extracts from twenty-three other authorities, including many which describe Bantu successors of the original Hottentot gora, and giving in detail the method of making and playing upon the instrument. In these two papers all the extracts referred to appeared in full. Since then I have obtained fresh information as to its use.

  • 5 - Horns and Trumpets

  • Percival Kirby
  • Book:
    The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2013, pp 104-125

  • Summary

    MUSICAL instruments made from the horns of animals and occasionally from other materials and sounded, as European ‘brass’ instruments are sounded, by causing the vibrating lips to make the air-column in the tube vibrate, are, or have been, common among the Bantu peoples of South Africa, but not among the Bushmen or Hottentots. With two exceptions, all these instruments are blown through an embouchure made in the side of the tube, not at the tip. Side-blown horns are characteristic of Africa, so it is not surprising to find that the two exceptional instruments, which will be considered later, have been adopted from other cultures. Apart from these, there are two main varieties of horns used by South African natives. The first are of large size, being made from the horns of the larger antelopes, or, when these have become scarce, from substitute materials, and the second of smaller size, being made from the horns of smaller antelopes, or from substitute materials.

    The favourite horns used for the first type are those of the sable antelope (Hippotragus niger) and koodoo (Tragelaphus strepsiceros). The horn of the gemsbok (Oryx gazella) is less frequently used. In some areas, where game is no longer available, ox-horns are pressed into service. Such horns were observed in use among the Macaranga (Karanga) by the Portuguese priest Fr. João dos Santos,1 when he visited south-eastern Africa in 1586. In Book I, Chapter 10, of his Eastern Ethiopia, he wrote: ‘These Kaffirs have many other instruments which they call musical, but which I call ear-splitting. Such are the large horns of certain wild animals which they call paraparas, and therefore these horns are called parapandas, and they have a terrible and frightful sound like that of a bastard trumpet.’ The name, it will be seen, is, in spite of its spelling, the equivalent of mpalampala, or phalaphala, the name by which the instrument is generally known at the present time.

    The phalaphala of the Venda is a typical example. The name of the instrument applies particularly to the sable antelope type, and it is also used for that instrument (allowing for linguistic variation) by the Chwana, Sotho, Swazi, Thonga, and, more rarely, by the Zulu. Among the Venda the phalaphala is a very important instrument, being put to all kinds of ceremonial uses.

Page 48 of 115