Ennanga

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The ennanga ( luganda , also nnanga ) is an eight-string bow harp from Baganda in southern Uganda . The musician of the instrument, which is mainly played as a soloist to accompany his own singing, assumed a prominent position at the royal court of the Buganda Empire . The songs had mythical stories and current events as their content, they entertained the ruler ( Kabaka ) and at the same time informed him about what was happening outside in the country. With the dissolution of the kingdoms in 1966, the old courtly music-making tradition was interrupted; today the ennanga game has almost died out.

Origin and Distribution

Spread of the bow harps

The oldest harps in Africa are in their basic form as bow harps, which consist of a single stick, on wall paintings in burial chambers from the ancient Egyptian 4th dynasty around 2500 BC. To see. From the 16th century BC In the Middle Kingdom, the angular harp, which had been known for a long time in Mesopotamia, was added. A wooden stick is connected to the resonance body at a certain angle , which means that the number of strings in the triangular area between them can be increased compared to the bow harp. Instead of a resonance body, the rods can be hollowed out and serve as a sound reinforcement. In the Arabic music angle harps (were ǧank ) to the 16th century used in sub-Saharan Africa, they were the exception. A rare example is the kondi of the Bwaka in the northwest of the Congo . In West Africa, the singular, Mauritanian ardin can be traced back to ancient Egyptian models. Regardless of its design, it has no relation to the other harps, because on the one hand it is only played by women and on the other hand, like the Arabic and Persian harps, it is the only one to be played with the neck close to the body. An African harpist holds his instrument with his neck away from his body.

The worldwide distribution focus for the bow harps are Uganda and the Central African Republic . Twelve ethnic groups in Uganda have their own harp tradition. This is where the instrument probably came in the 1st millennium via Nubia up the Nile ; possibly even before the destruction of the Meroe Empire in the 4th century, the spread to the south began. Outside of Africa, the only surviving ancient Indian bow harps are the saung gauk in Myanmar and the remainder of the four to five-string waji in northeastern Afghanistan. In East Africa, the areas for the different lyres occurring there are usually separate from those of the harps, only in exceptional cases are lyres and harps played at the same time, as is the case with the Baganda in southern Uganda. Besides the ennanga , the ax-stringed lyre endongo is known there.

The African bow harps are divided into three shape variants according to the different ways of connecting the neck rod to the body. They allow conclusions to be drawn about the distribution channels of the instruments.

  • In the “spoon in a cup” group, the slightly curved neck lies diagonally on the edge of the bowl-shaped body, its end reaching roughly to the middle of the base. The construction is kept stable by the tensioned strings alone. Such bow harps, to which the ennanga of the Baganda belongs, are known north of Lake Victoria by the Acholi and Labwor in northeast Uganda (north of Soroti ). The Bagwere (in the east around Mbale ) play the six-string tongoli , the Langi in the central north the adungu .
  • The image of the “cork in a bottle” describes a mostly elongated body with a neck-like extension on the front side into which the stick is inserted. The connection is much tighter than with the first type. This includes the Kundi of the Azande . The main area of ​​distribution is in the Central African Republic and ranges from North Cameroon in the west to South Sudan in the east to North Congo in the south.
  • A similarly firm connection is obtained when the lower neck section is tied to an extension of the body base. This form occurs from West Africa to Gabon .

According to Klaus Wachsmann, a pioneer of African music ethnology , who lived in Uganda from 1937 to 1957, the “spoon-in-the-cup” harp belongs to the Nile culture or to peoples who were under its influence. The peoples of the intermediate lake area must have been in contact with the Nile valley for a long time.

History of the Ennanga

Blind ennanga player, 1911

According to the tradition of the Baganda, Kabaka Nakibinge went to the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria in the 15th or 16th century when he was at war with the neighboring kingdom of Bunyoro , following a prophecy , where he hoped to find a wise man to be Could save the people from attacks by the enemy. There he met Kibuuka Kyobe Omumbaale, a young man who had a birthmark on his shoulder. He was playing the harp and agreed to follow the ruler to Buganda. The following battle ended in favor of Buganda, but first Kibuuka and towards the end of the battle also Nakibinge were killed. Kibuuka's harp, which went by the name of Tannalabankondwe , was cherished on the island, along with other objects reminiscent of Kibuuka, until the house in which it was located was destroyed in 1893. The objects also included two pumpkin rattles, which were used on special occasions with the harp and a drum. Such an ensemble still existed in 1945. The musician Evaristo Muyinda sang the song Kansimbe omuggo around the middle of the 20th century , which contains the line of verse: kansimbe omuggo awali Kibuuka, "let me go there with the stick and step in front of Kibuuka". The song is reminiscent of the historical mythical encounter.

In search of the source of the Nile, the British Africa explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant came to Buganda in 1862, where they were received by Mutesa I (r. 1856-1884). Less than a kilometer from the ruler's seat of the Kabaka was the court of the Queen Mother, where the two travelers met a blind harpist near the regent when they were received. She was often in the close company of a harpist. The scene is also depicted in Speke's travelogue Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863). Only the harpists had access to the king's wives, but in order not to be able to see them, they are said to have lost their sight.

In 1879 the Buganda Kabaka sent three envoys to London to visit Queen Victoria . They had harps with them. In the 19th century the bow harp spread from Buganda to the Buhaya region in northwestern Tanzania. In the second half of the 19th century, the ntongooli vellum came from Busoga on the eastern bank of the Nile to the court of the Kabaka. The Basoga players formed their own group of musicians, their instrument was now called endongo , but kept the explanatory addition eya Soga ("from the Basoga"). Around 1900 the importance of the harp declined and the endongo took its place, as well as the endingidi , the only string instrument of the Baganda.

In the rituals at court ( lubiri ), music was of great importance. The royal musicians at the court of Mutesa II. (R. 1939–1966) were divided into three categories according to their reputation: The harpists belonged to the first group, who lived permanently on the palace grounds. The second group (players of the pipe spit violin endingidi , the lyre endongo , the xylophone and drummers) was only temporarily accommodated there on special occasions and the other musicians who were not part of the actual palace orchestra stayed overnight outside.

The personal harpist of the Kabaka was entitled mulanga (derived from the verb okulanga , "to announce"). In addition to entertaining with his soft nudges, the mulanga , who was granted prophetic gifts, had the task of informing the ruler of current events in his country and of warning him of possible dangers. The mulanga could also give citizens a voice who were not allowed to bring their concerns directly to the ruler. By presenting the citizens ' complaints in song form, the mulanga acted as an influential mediator between the kabaka and its subjects.

The most famous harp player at the beginning of the 20th century was James Mayanja, whose student Temusewo Mukasa is considered the last great ennanga player from Buganda, from whom Evaristo Muyinda learned to play the harp in the 1940s. This happened at the suggestion of Klaus Wachsmann, who in 1948, as curator of the Uganda Museum, engaged Muyinda to set up a museum orchestra. This revival of traditional music came to an end in 1966 when Milton Obote, who had come to power through a coup d'état, ruled the politically troubled country with emergency laws, forced Kabaka Mutesa II to flee the country and dissolved the kingdoms.

In the Acholi region in the north and in the Ankole region in the extreme southwest, a trog zither is called ennanga . The women of the Haya in Buhaya used to play a mouth bow of the same name . The fact that the European violin was later also referred to as ennanga speaks for the special importance of the harp.

Design

The ennanga consists of a flat wooden bowl and a slightly curved neck rod, the lower radius of which corresponds approximately to the shape of the bowl. The membrane blanket made of cowhide is braced against a piece of skin on the underside of the body by tight lacing. The two-tone cords pulled up and down completely cover the wood and create an alternating dark brown and beige stripe pattern, occasionally with red as the third color. The strings are attached at the lower end to a wooden strip that runs along the middle under the skin. A special feature of the ennanga is that both ends of the tailpiece bar protrude from the skin. The lower end rests on the edge of the body, the upper section, which touches the neck stem, is precisely sharpened and is called eddimi , "thick tongue".

The ceiling has a circular hole a few centimeters in diameter at one point. Eight strings run through a hole in the skin and the wooden strip up to the neck, where they are stretched with lateral wooden twists . To wind up a new string, it is pointed and pushed from above through the ceiling into the interior, fished out of the hole with a hook or similar object, tied around a small piece of skin at the end, pulled back and finally attached to the peg with the free end . The string is traditionally made of goat skin; Wire and nylon have become fashionable.

To make the strings, the goat skin is left to dry in the sun for a week, the remains of meat are scraped off and tightened. The skin is cut into strips as evenly as possible, the remaining hair was removed in the past with a piece of glass and now with sandpaper. After the strips of skin have swelled in the water for one to one and a half hours, they are nailed to one end and twisted tightly around a string to the desired diameter.

Below the vertebrae, rings of banana plant fibers wrapped in lizard skin are tied around the neck. In each of them there is a small wooden stick. The musician brings this into position close to the string before playing, which creates a rattling sound when the string is torn, increases the volume and lengthens the sound duration. Instead of the wooden sticks, metal strips or bells are occasionally attached.

Style of play

The seated player, always male in traditional court music, holds the body in his lap, the neck bar protrudes diagonally upwards, facing away from the body. As with almost all African harps, no pick is used. The singer accompanies himself by tearing the strings with his thumb and forefinger of both hands in an interlocking manner. With his right hand he plays the musical part okunaga (“start to strike”) and thus creates a basic series of notes. The left hand produces a bisecting, contrasting row in between, called okwawula (“divide, differentiate”). In harmony, the result is an overall row at double the speed.

After the courtly music-making practice, the songs were first composed for harp and voice and then transferred to louder-sounding instruments such as the spar xylophone amadinda or the ensemble of tuned ducka drums. In the amadinda with twelve sound plates, two musicians sit opposite each other and hit ten of the plates, a third ( omukoonezi ) sits on one side and only plays the two highest sound plates (he doubles the notes of the other two two octaves higher). The part of the harpist's right hand on the xylophone falls to the omunazi , his counterpart is called omuwazi , and he plays the harpist's left-handed melody.

As in the rest of traditional music in southern Uganda, the strings are tuned in approximately equi- pentatonic intervals (the octave is divided into five roughly equal pitches). In Buganda's instrumental styles, there are no chords apart from approximate octave parallels, which, in addition to ennanga music, are characteristic of the amadinda, the larger xylophones embaire and akadinda and the lamellophone kadongo . With the limited number of strings, only three tones of the pentatonic tuning can be considered for playing in octaves. Singing voice ( okuyimba ) and harp follow each other at octave intervals.

When transferring from the harp to the xylophone, the singing voice is lost, but this is not a loss for the local, experienced listener, as he can imagine the singing according to the principle of parallel octaves. The musical structure is the same for both instruments, but it makes a big difference whether the tone sequence to be heard is produced by one person by alternately plucking the strings with two fingers of both hands, or by two players hitting records with both hands. The enormous speed is technically demanding for the harpist. In addition, there is a different sound pattern of the two instruments: Due to the snoring effect of the wooden sticks, the harp strings sound longer than the xylophone records, there are stronger consonances , although - apart from octaves - all notes are played one after the other and not at the same time.

The thesis is speculative that some of the rhythmic patterns ( inherent patterns ) created by superimposition could be structurally identical to the standard patterns that Arthur Morris Jones found in the Ewe drum music of West Africa for the double bell gankogui . Accordingly, a development would have taken place from the resulting rhythms in Buganda to segmented rhythm formulas (standard patterns) in Ghana. Gerhard Kubik compares the inherent pattern and the octave parallels in Buganda's court music with the way the lamellophone timbrh is played in central Cameroon .

One of Buganda's most famous old harp songs is called Plutalo olw'e Nsini lwatta abantu (“The Battle of Nsini Killed People”), and its text is believed to come from the reign of the rulers Jjunju and Semakokiro (around 1764 - around 1794). The song is about the battle in which Jjunju conquered the Buddo area (near the city of Masaka ) from Bunyoro and the feud between him and his brother Semakokiro, in which Jjunju was killed. The story is passed on orally to this day and is the content of other songs for harp and xylophone.

literature

  • Peter Cooke: Music in a Ugandan Court. In: Early Music, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Early Music from Around the World) August 1996, pp. 439-452
  • Gerhard Kubik : Ennanga Music. In: African Music. Vol. 4, No. 1, 1966/67, pp. 21-24
  • Gerhard Kubik: East Africa. Music history in pictures. Volume 1: Ethnic Music. Delivery 10. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1982, p. 78f
  • Gerhard Kubik: Theory of African Music. Volume 1. University of Chicago Press, London 1994
  • Klaus P. Wachsmann : Migration of Nations and African Harps. In Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Music cultures in Africa. Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin 1987, pp. 246–251
  • Klaus P. Wachsmann: Musical Instruments in Kiganda Tradition and Their Place in the East African Scene. In the S. (Ed.): Essays on Music and History in Africa. Northwestern University Press, Evanstone 1971, pp. 112-114
  • Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. (New episode 41. Department of Ethnic Music V.) Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin 1984, pp. 160–174

Discography

  • Herbert Bagesikagi ( ennanga ), Margaret Kabahindi ( ennanga ) u. a .: Ennanga. Epic Songs from Uganda. Joop Veuger and Michael Oneka (text). Pan Records, Ethnic Series, PAN 2057CD, 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roger Blench: Reconstructing African music history: methods and results. (PDF; 2.3 MB) Safa Conference, Tucson, May 17-21, 2002, Chapter: The arched harp and its history , pp. 2–6
  2. ^ Klaus P. Wachsmann: Harp Songs from Uganda. Journal of the International Folk Music Council, Vol. 8, 1956, p. 23
  3. ↑ Wachsmann, pp. 246-248
  4. ↑ Wachsmann, 1971, p. 113
  5. ↑ Wegner, p. 163
  6. ^ Kubik 1982, p. 72; Kubik 1994, p. 51
  7. ↑ Wegner, p. 174
  8. ^ Peter Cooke: Uganda, § III, 1: Buganda: Instruments. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 26. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, p. 40
  9. ↑ Damascus Kafumbe: The Kabaka's Royal Musicians of Buganda-Uganda: Their Role and Significance During Ssesekaba Sir Edward Frederick Muteesa II's Reign (1939-1966). Florida State University 2006, pp. 26f
  10. ↑ Dick Kawooya: Traditional Musician-Centered Perspectives on Ownership of Creative Expressions. (PhD Diss.) University of Tennessee, 2010, p. 217; Kafumbe, p. 30
  11. ^ Peter Cooke: Music of Uganda. ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Photo by Temusewo Mukasa and ennanga - song example; PDF; 527 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.commonwealthresounds.com
  12. ^ Klaus Wachsmann: Musical Instruments in Kiganda Tradition and Their Place in the East African Scene. In: Klaus Wachsmann (Ed.): Essays on Music and History in Africa. Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1971, p. 112
  13. ↑ Kubik 1982, p. 78f
  14. ↑ Kubik 1994, pp. 81f, 274
  15. ↑ Kubik 1994, p. 82
  16. ^ Gerhard Kubik: African Space / Time Concepts and the Tusona Ideographs in Luchazi Culture. In: Journal of International Library of African Music, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1987, pp. 53-89, here p. 86
  17. ↑ Kubik 1982, p. 72