Hindewhu

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hindewhu , also hindehu, ndewhoo, is a single-tone flute that is played by the Ba-Benzele, a traditionally nomadic people belonging to the pygmies , who mainly live in the southwest of the Central African Republic . A soloist sings or yodels individual meaningless syllables and blows the flute in rapid succession , resulting in a complex interlocking melody in the form of a hoquetus . Likewise, a group of flute players and singers produces a rapid sequence of notes from larger intervals , the top note of which is always the flute note. The extraordinary music and singing style of the Ba-Benzele was first published internationally on a phonogram in 1966. It is a form of polyphonic group singing practiced by the Ba-Benzele, Baka and Bambuti and which was added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.

Single-tone flutes are common in Africa between Ethiopia and South Africa, as well as in West Africa. Polyphonic, interlocking tone sequences are also played with other wind instruments and in many areas with xylophones or tuned drums. Conjectures about a common origin of Pygmies and San (Bushmen) are based, among other things, on similar musical forms of the two ethnic groups, which live geographically far apart. These comparisons include single-tone flute ensembles, which also existed among the San until the first half of the 20th century. From the 1960s, the music of the Ba-Benzele found its way into jazz , western pop music and new music , either as sound samples or as the basis for compositions.

Distribution of single-tone flutes

The habitat of the individual pygmy peoples extends over several tropical rainforest areas in Central Africa . From the Rwandan Batwa in the southeast to the neighboring Bangombo and Ba-Benzele to smaller groups in Cameroon and Gabon in the west, they show a great deal of similarity in their polyphonic singing, although recently there has not been any cultural exchange. The Ba-Benzele (Bambenzele, Bambenjele) are a subgroup of the Ba-Mbenga, which is native to the Central African prefecture of Mambéré-Kadéï and in the adjacent north of the Republic of Congo on the Sangha River . Hemispherical huts made of twigs and grass as well as a restriction of material possessions owed to the nomadic way of life belong to their old economy as hunter-gatherers . The choice of musical instruments for the Ba-Benzele is accordingly limited to the single-tone flute and idiophone ; there are other pygmy groups who also make several string instruments. The related baka include , for example, the mouth bow limbindi and the bow harps ngombi and ieta . By clapping ( liquindi ) a surface of water with their hands like water drums , Baka women can create polyrhythmic patterns. Large and heavy wooden tubular drums covered with antelope skin beat the Ba-Benzele to accompany dances. The drums, which are difficult to transport, do not fit the luggage of nomadic groups and are therefore likely to be taken over by the neighboring settled Bantu population. In the evenings around the campfire, the Ba-Benzele maintain an expressively spoken and sung storytelling tradition that draws on a repertoire of mythical traditions. The listeners answer the lecturer in chant.

Paul Schebesta described in the 1930s with the Bambuti Pygmies (Mbuti) in the district of Ituri in northeastern DRC a Baruma called panpipes , which consisted of up to twelve pipes. This is unusual because Bambuti do not have their own musical instruments and pygmies in general do not have pan flutes. Some pygmies have adopted drums from their Bantu-speaking neighbors. A similar cultural takeover is the pounding of cassava in a wooden mortar, in which three women move their wooden pestles in rhythmic alternation while another woman beats the beat on the edge of the mortar with a stick.

Flutes made of bones or plant stems are among the oldest musical instruments and their invention is attributed to the gods in the myths of many cultures. Most African flutes are blown lengthways and are often played by shepherds or to accompany dancing. Flutes are or were rarely found in Central Africa, such as the dilele (also umpindo ) of the Baluba men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with five finger holes and the odin of the Eton women in Cameroon without a finger hole. Both the musicians of the dilele and the odin can transmit spoken language by playing the flute. An Eton woman, whose music was recorded in 1967, added to the melody by singing the missing notes to the odin , which produces only four notes. As in the case of the Ba-Benzele with their hindewhu, this resulted in a uniform melody composed of notes sung and blown on the flute. Another flute without a finger hole, the keynote of which can be changed according to the odin by opening and closing the distal end with the index finger, is the ludaya of the Bagisu in eastern Uganda . Vessel flutes that consist of a fruit capsule, a calabash or clay and have one to five finger holes in addition to the blowing hole are also rare in Central Africa .

Some Khoisan groups in southern Africa had reed flute ensembles made up of several single-tone flutes. They were first mentioned by Vasco da Gama in 1497 and described repeatedly until the beginning of the 20th century. Each musician in the ensemble who accompanied the entertainment dances blew into a tuned single-tone flute and contributed to the creation of a melody with his tone. Percival Kirby compared the polyphonic flute songs of the Khoisan in the 1930s with the sound of an organ. Although pan flutes are also used in Africa (the enkwanzi or obulere in Uganda ), a single Khoisan musician has never played several bundled reed flutes. The reed flutes of the Khoisan and other single-tone flute ensembles represent a historically significant development of the pan flute.

The Chopin are a small ethnic group on the southern coast of Mozambique with an extraordinary, distinctive musical tradition, centered on the interaction of several, timbila called frame Xylophone (the north occurring valimba is similar). In 1955, Hugh Tracey took on three young Chopi girls who produced interlocking tone sequences from fruit pods with three-tone flutes , to which they occasionally added tones sung like yodels. A 1963 recording by Tracey shows a dance by eight boys with monotone flutes and rattles, which they usually performed at night away from the adults at the end of the harvest season.

In a similar way, ensembles with single-tone instruments achieve tone sequences over several octaves in the Sudanese-Ethiopian border area. The Berta there play an orchestra of twelve single -tone trumpets called waza , which are composed of several calabashes. In another orchestra the Berta play 16 longitudinal bamboo flutes ( bulhu ). In its place at the neighboring Gumuz there is an ensemble of ten wooden flutes ( kome ), which are accompanied by a large double-headed barrel drum. In the Ingessana , the music group uses five to seven bamboo flutes of different lengths ( bal ). The Maji in southwest Ethiopia use single-tone bamboo flutes - occasionally together with pan flutes - and imitate wind instruments by shaping their hands in front of their mouths accordingly. In connection with a yodel-like song, polyphonic music is created with a strong reference to the polyphony of the Central African pygmies.

The Sudanese-Ethiopian single-tone wind instrument ensembles correspond to the orchestra of the Dakpa, a subgroup of the Banda in the central African prefecture of Ouaka, consisting of 13 wooden trumpets ( mbaya ) . The single-tone trumpets, which are between 26 and 170 centimeters long, are blown lengthways and sometimes across. The trumpets are made according to ritual specifications and are culturally related to ancestor worship and initiation rites. The Mbre, another subgroup of the Banda, know an ensemble of six single-tone flutes ( Kerbflöte ngala ) and a pair of iron bells. This flute ensemble used to announce the course of military campaigns.

The general characteristics of polyphonic African ensembles with wind instruments and singing voices include: They are either only with flutes or only with trumpets, different types of wind instruments are rarely played together and in some cases drums or idiophones complement the rhythm. Most wind instruments only produce a single note. The pitch range of the entire orchestra is at least one octave and can include up to three octaves, with a usually pentatonic or heptatonic tone sequence. The wind instruments of the upper octaves follow the given melody line and do not form an independent melody. These ensembles differ not only musically but also in their social position from the ceremonial court orchestras with trumpets and cross horns, because they do not perform like those at the ruling houses. The court orchestras with long trumpets (such as the kakaki ) take on representative tasks for the ruler and have spread throughout the Islamic culture south of the Sahara. There were also similar African representative orchestras with ivory horns between West and East Africa. In the palace of the Christian Kabaka of Buganda in what is now Uganda, the flute ensemble ( abalere ba kabaka ) with six flutes ( endere ) of different sizes and four drums performed, the composition of which probably represented a takeover of the Muslim court orchestra.

The flute singing groups, on the other hand, tend to be found in societies with little hierarchical structure; its members do not necessarily belong to a class of professional musicians and they are mostly for entertainment. In areas with Christian or Islamic proselytizing, they have been pushed to the edge or have disappeared unless, as with the pygmies, they are re-valued as a cultural heritage to be preserved.

Design and style of play

The hindewhu is a blown edge-blown flat flute. It consists of a seven to eight centimeter long tube made from a leaf stem of a papaya tree. The lower end of the tube is closed by the natural knot of the stem. The player grips the flute with one hand and blows over the upper edge, which is cut off at right angles and serves as a blowing opening. To do this, he holds his lower lip near the upper edge of the tube and blows over it at an oblique angle. Even if this only results in an unchanging tone, according to Simha Arom (1966) the hindewhu was never used as a signal whistle, but always only as a musical instrument. The word hindewhu has an onomatopoeic origin; it actually does not designate the flute, but rather imitates the sound that arises from the sequence of flute tone and sung note.

A Baka woman with her children in the Congo. Every member of the community makes music and passes this tradition on.

The flute is one of the short-lived musical instruments of the Ba-Benzele, which are freshly cut with a knife if necessary and thrown away after use. Similarly, when hiking, they use a felled tree trunk lying on the ground, which they hit with sticks, as a simple form of a log drum . The hindewhu can be played solo or in a group with and without an accompanying choir. A single Ba-Benzele blows the hindewhu to communicate when he wants to communicate with another hunter or his clan in the camp as a hunter in the forest. For this purpose, agreed sequences of tones are available, through which the hunter announces, for example, that he has killed a particularly large animal with his arrow. When the hunter has successfully returned from the hunt, he blows the flute and tells the news to the women and old men left behind in the camp. The women respond with flute and song.

When making music with the flute and singing, the flute produces an upper drone that the sung melody approaches. The intervals between octaves , sixths , fifths and fourths are common in rapid alternation . The tones, which are superimposed to form a hoquetus , are sung and produced by yodelling, form independent melody lines with several flutes and a mixed choir, which combine to form a polyphonic overall sound. All singers and flute players perform their melody lines with their own starting and ending points.

Polyphonic singing with yodel occurs occasionally in some other areas of Africa in addition to Pygmies and San, for example in threshing songs that Hugh Tracey recorded with the Shona in Zimbabwe in the 1930s . Gerhard Kubik mentions his own sound recordings, which he made with the Wagogo in central Tanzania in 1962 . In their music, which differs significantly from that of the surrounding ethnic groups, a melodic harmony arises from the combination of the lamellophone ilimba with the spit fiddle izeze (similar to the goge , but mostly with two to four strings) through a so-called skipping process. The second voice omits one note and produces the next but one note of the first voice, resulting in a sequence of fourths and fifths . In certain songs of the Baka pygmies, four functionally different melody voices are identified: motangole contains a text, ngue wa lembo means “the mother of the song”, osese is a voice “below” and diyei means “yodel”.

The same flute is also known from the Bayaka pygmies (Babinga) in Lobaye Prefecture . In 1962, Charles Duvelle recorded two young men there in the forest near Mongoumba on the border with the Congo, with monotone flutes made from papaya stems, known as mombéké , who, accompanied by a third musician who played a bamboo nose flute, played a song about a successful one Elephant hunt.

Intercultural relationships

In the course of cultural studies , a relationship between Central African pygmies and the San (Bushmen) living in southern Africa was discussed from the beginning of the 20th century . Since then, theories based on different criteria have been expressed, according to which both ethnic groups belong to their own cultural areas or are culturally closely related. Ethnic musicologists have made musical forms of expression a stable cultural element that can be used to find out interethnic relationships. Around the middle of the 20th century, Africa was divided into different musical zones by some researchers, above all Alan P. Merriam ( African Music. Continuity and Change in African Cultures, 1959). Alan Lomax (1962) linked social structures with vocal forms in his comparative study of global vocal styles called Cantometrics and then sorted pygmies and San into the same musical area. The comparison of individual studies showed that music, which plays an important role in everyday life for both ethnic groups, is more varied among the pygmies. A polyphonic singing with short phrases and meaningless syllables, a steady flow of gradually varying tone sequences, approaches to harmonic melody formation and complex rhythm patterns are present in both. Pygmies and San also use falsetto , yodeling and forms of Hoquetus. An essential feature of the polyphonic singing of both ethnic groups is that the voices of all participants are equal (egalitarian), in contrast to the change between lead singer and choir - with an obvious analogy to the social systems, which were sometimes described in a romanticizing way. Both own or owned closed single-tone flutes, but no pan flutes and if so, then as a takeover of settled neighboring peoples. However, there never seems to have been a cultural exchange through actual encounters over the great geographical distance.

Regardless of the common musical forms of expression, according to Gerhard Kubik, polyphony among the Pygmies and the San developed on a completely different basis. The pygmies were probably inspired by singing techniques such as yodelling, while the San gathered knowledge of music theory with the musical bow . By dividing the string with a tuning loop, you initially received two basic tones and, through targeted amplification of partials with the oral cavity, a natural series of partial tones .

Victor Grauer (2006), who was involved in Alan Lomax's Cantometrics project in the 1960s , believes, based on genetic studies, the Pygmies and San are probably the original population of Africa and derives fundamental cultural similarities from this common root. The musical "Pygmy Bushman style" could therefore develop among the native African population around 77,000 to 102,000 years BC. u. Z. have developed. According to Grauer, many pygmies and San were killed by the later invading Bantu peoples, others assimilated and those who remained withdrew to remote areas where they preserved the core of their cultural identity.

As a representative of the Out-of-Africa theory, Grauer finds examples of purely vocal and purely instrumental Hoquetus-like forms outside of Africa, some of which show particularly strong resemblance to the flute singing style of the Ba-Benzele. This includes an ensemble of four pan flute players in Russia on the Ukrainian border (near the city of Brjansk ), which Olga Velitchkina recorded there in 1996. The style of this archaic pan flute kugikly with five pipes, played only by women, differs markedly from any other European folk music tradition, and Velitchkina compares it to the music of the Ba-Benzele.

A hoquetus-like pan flute playing is also known from the Pacific island of Malaita , which belongs to the Solomon Islands . The people of the 'Are'are who live on Malaita also cultivate a singing duet, the melody forms of which are similarly interlocked (English interlocking ). The hindewhu style with single flutes is mostly compared to a style of New Guinea music . The Huli in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea have as the African Pygmies a tonal language that can enter into a reciprocal relationship to tune instruments. As with the Ba-Benzele, a huli sings and alternately blows a reed flute. The Huli also practice collective yodelling.

Other researchers have contradicted Grauer's thesis that all Hoquetus-like instrumental and vocal forms in Africa developed monogenetically from the flute-singing ensemble of the pygmies. Peter Cooke refers to the numerous ensembles with drums throughout Africa that produce polyrhythmic and melodic patterns, such as the circle of 12 to 15 precisely tuned wooden drums ( entenga ) that were played at the court of the ruler of Buganda and impossibly on a vocal tradition to be attributed.

Influences on western music

The polyphonic singing of the Central African pygmies and in particular the Hindewhu style have served as a source of inspiration in jazz , pop music and minimal music since the 1970s . 1973 published Herbie Hancock , the piece Watermelon Man on his album Head Hunters in fusion style . In it, the percussionist Bill Summers imitates the tone of a hindewhu on a beer bottle and complements it with a yodel voice based on the model of the Ba-Benzele. Summers apparently followed the first track on the LP with Ba Benzele music recorded by Simha Arom and Taurelle Geneviève in 1966. Derived from this recording of Watermelon Man is the sample , alienated with Hall , which Madonna underlayed the track Sanctuary on the 1994 album Bedtime Stories .

Influenced by the yodelling of the pygmies is the composition The Peacocks by jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles from 1974, which became a jazz standard . The intervals of the three tones of the opening motif fifth , minor third and seventh are followed by a jumps in pentatonic tone series that comes close to the echo-like repeated yodel tones from Central Africa. On his album Sol Do Meio Dia , the guitarist and composer Egberto Gismonti brings together the sounds of the hindewhu music recorded by Arom and Taurelle with echo-like overlaying flutes of Xingu Indians in the Brazilian rainforest in order to create, according to his words on the album cover, the " To convey the sound of the jungle musically. A track called Ba-Benzélé is included on the LP Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics (1979) by Jon Hassell and Brian Eno . In this piece, the composer Hassell brings the same basic material of the Ba-Benzele together with the sounds of synthesizers to create an electronically sounding world music .

In contrast to the previously mentioned acquisitions, the group looked at Zap Mama , the hindewhu -Klänge not only as a raw material for use in their own songs, but as musical works. On their CD Adventures in Afropea (1993) they adapted a polyphonic song with vocals and flutes from the Arom Taurelle LP from 1966 for an eight-part choir. The Congo-born singer Marie Daulne, director of Zap Mama, studied music in Antwerp and later learned their singing technique from pygmies at her birthplace. The song Babanzélé on this CD is a careful adaptation of the multi-layered voices, flute tones and the background clapping of hands. A biographical background also enabled the Cameroon-born musician and writer Francis Bebey to gain a more precise understanding of hindewhu music, which he expressed in a work on African music that was first published in French in 1969 (English edition 1975: African Music: A Peoples Art ) . From the 1980s onwards, in addition to lamellophones, he also used bamboo replicas of the hindewhu in his music. The lamellophones sometimes obey similar compositional principles as the flutes, sometimes they simply contribute to the exotic sound of a pop song with electric bass and percussion.

Patrick Bebey (* 1964), the son of Francis Bebey, plays the piano, lamellophone and hindewhu . With the composition Timba for string quartet and hindewhu he was on a concert tour in Germany in 2010. Timba was recorded with three other compositions by Patrick Bebey of the GermanPops Orchestra under the conductor Bernd Ruf and is included on the CD African Symphony I - Teme (2010).

The Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti , a representative of minimal music is, since the 1980s, when he during his employment with the African music first long trumpet ensembles of Central African Banda Linda and later the Baka Pygmies met, especially for music slowly developing, complex rhythmic structures known. Ligeti wrote the foreword to Simha Arom's major work African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology (1991) and was also interested in African xylophone music.

Discography

  • The Music of the Ba-Benzélé Pygmies . Field photographs by Simha Arom and Geneviève Taurelle. Bärenreiter-Musicaphon BM 30 L 2303. Published in 1966 (first recording with hindewhu music from Ba-Benzele)

literature

  • Steven Feld: Pygmy POP. A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music , Vol. 28, 1996, pp. 1-35
  • Charlotte J. Frisbie: Anthropological and Ethnomusicological Implications of a Comparative Analysis of Bushmen and African Pygmy Music. In: Ethnology, Vol. 10, No. 3, July 1971, pp. 265-290
  • Jos Gansemans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger: Music history in pictures: Central Africa. (Volume 1: Musikethnologie. Delivery 9) German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1986
  • Victor A. Grauer: Echoes of our Forgotten Ancestors . In: The World of Music, Vol. 48, No. 2, (Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors) 2006, pp. 5-58

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Polyphonic singing of the Aka Pygmies of Central Africa. UNESCO
  2. ↑ Jos Gansemans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger, 1986, p. 180
  3. ^ Paul Schebesta: 78. Pygmy Music and Ceremonial . In: Man , Vol. 57, April 1957, pp. 62 f.
  4. ↑ Charlotte J. Frisbie, 1971, p. 279
  5. ↑ Victor A. Grauer, 2006, p. 21
  6. ↑ Jos Gansemans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger, 1986, p. 174
  7. ↑ Jos goose Emans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger, 1986, pp 152, 154
  8. ^ Percival R. Kirby: The Reed-Flute Ensembles of South Africa: A Study in South African Native Music. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 63, July - December 1933, pp. 313–388, here pp. 317, 384
  9. ^ Southern Mozambique. Portuguese East Africa, 1943 '49 '54 '55 '57 '63. Chopi, Gitonga, Ronga, Tswa, Tsonga, Sena Nyungwe, Ndau. Recordings by Hugh Tracey. SWP Records / International Library of African Music, 2003 (SWP 021), tracks 1, 2, 25
  10. ^ Sudan I - Music of the Blue Nile Province; The Gumuz Tribe. Produced by Robert Gottlieb. CD of the UNESCO Collection, Bärenreiter / Musicaphon BM 30 SL 2312, 1986
  11. ↑ Jos Gansemans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger, 1986, p. 172
  12. ^ Peter Cooke: East Africa: An Introduction. In: Ruth M. Stone: (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 1: Africa. Routledge, New York 1997, p. 601
  13. ^ Roger Blench: Reconstructing African music history: methods and results. 2004, pp. 6-11
  14. ↑ Hindewhu. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Macmillan Press, London 1984, Vol. 2, p. 222
  15. ^ Simha Arom , Geneviève Taurelle: Text accompanying the LP: The Music of the Ba-Benzélé Pygmies, 1966, based on: Steven Feld, 1996, p. 5
  16. ↑ Jos goose Emans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger, 1986, pp 176, 178
  17. ^ A b Gerhard Kubik :  Polyphony. B. Polyphony in Sub-Saharan Africa. III. The interdependence of African polyphonic forms and tone systems. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, subject part, volume 5 (Kassel - Meiningen). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1996, ISBN 3-7618-1106-3 , Sp. 1775–1779 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  18. ↑ Peter R. Cooke: Polyphony, § II, 4: Africa. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 20. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, pp. 81 f.
  19. ↑ First published in 1962 by Charles Duvelle as LP in Ocora Radio France; re-released as CD: Centralafrique. Pygmées Babinga - Bagandou - Bofi - Isongo. Prophet 08, 1999, title 2
  20. ↑ Charlotte J. Frisbie, 1971, p. 267
  21. ↑ Peter Cooke, Michelle Kisliuk: Pygmy Music. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 20. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, p. 638
  22. ↑ Charlotte J. Frisbie, 1971, p. 283 f.
  23. ↑ Victor A. Grauer, 2006, p. 9
  24. ^ Olga Velitchkina: The role of movement in Russian panpipe playing. EOL Ethnomusicology OnLine, 1996; Chapter: Introduction , there audio sample: Video 1
  25. ↑ Victor A. Grauer, 2006, pp. 19-21
  26. ^ Peter Cooke: Response to "Echoes of Our Forgotten Anchestors" . In: The World of Music, Vol. 48, No. 2, (Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors) 2006, p. 97
  27. ↑ Steven Feld, 1996, p. 4 f.
  28. ↑ Steven Feld, 1996, pp. 8 f., 17 f.
  29. ↑ Steven Feld, 1996, pp. 20-22
  30. ↑ Patrick Bebey. ( Memento from August 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) womad.org
  31. ↑ White Man Sleeps African Works for String Quartet. ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton, 2010
  32. ↑ Steven Andrew Taylor: Ligeti, Africa and Polyrhythm. In: The World of Music , 45 (2), 2003, pp. 83–94, here p. 83
  33. ↑ Kofi Agawu: The Challenge of African Art Music . In: Musiques Contemporaines , Vol. 21, N ° 2, 2011, pp. 49-64, here pp. 52 f.