Inanga
Inanga, also Enanga, ikivuvu, indimbagazo, is a fingerboard loose trough zither or shell zither, the strings of a boat-shaped timber corpus be tensioned. It is the most famous musical instrument of Burundi and is also widespread in the surrounding areas - in Rwanda , in the Kivu region in eastern Congo and in the south of Lake Victoria on the island of Ukerewe . A unique musical genre is called “whispered inanga ”: the musician whispers a text in a rhythm that corresponds to the repetitive melodic motif of the inanga . For the listener, the whispered text and the melody played complement each other to form a uniform vocal performance.
Design
With a zither, the strings run parallel to the string carrier and with some over a fingerboard, with a harp they usually extend vertically from it. A pre-form of both instruments, which comes closest to the inanga construction principle , is the medieval European psaltery . The inanga belongs to the trough or shell zithers; a type of instrument that is only found in the East African region of the Great Lakes . Like the European box zithers, trough zithers have a string carrier that also functions as a resonance body . In contrast to board and box zithers, the strings of trough zithers do not run over a bridge . Board zithers such as the six-string kipango in southwest Tanzania produce a softer sound . The seven to 14-string board zither bangwe in Malawi is therefore put into a cut-open tin canister or a calabash bowl to reinforce the resonance when playing .
The body of the inanga is carved from a long rectangular block of wood and shaped into a thin-walled boat shape. The outer dimension is 75 to 115 centimeters in length and 25 to 30 centimeters in width. The opening of the bowl is somewhat smaller due to the wide, inwardly bulging edges on the two narrow sides. Up to twelve holes each are drilled through these narrow sides at equal intervals. A single string, made of gut or vegetable fibers, is pulled lengthways across the instrument through the holes and tied at the ends to wooden pegs so that several parallel strings result, which can be tuned by adjusting the tension. There are trough zithers with six and twelve strings, the most common being eight strings. Inanga are decorated with burnt- in geometric motifs on the sides and cross-shaped incisions in the middle of the base. Traditionally, inanga and other musical instruments are made by the Twa .
distribution
In the west of Lake Victoria , in the area of the earlier empires Ankole and Buhaya, several similar shell zithers are known, which are called enanga mpima (among the Hima ) or enanga ziba (among the Haya ) according to the respective ethnic group . In the east of the Congo the eight-string trog zither is called lulanga by the Bashi on Lake Kiwu and lunanga by the Bahavu people who live immediately to the north . In Tanzania, the instrument is also known in the basic form of the word as nanga . The Bantu-speaking stemming -nanga , originally probably generally stood for "stringed instrument", hereinafter referred Lakes region except shell zithers and bow harps like the achtsaitige ennanga the Baganda in southern Uganda.
The instrument type of the plucked bowl zither is only known in East Africa. Another form with a long, narrow shell as a string carrier is the ligombo in central Tanzania (for the typology of shell zithers, see there).
Style of play
When playing, the instrument rests with one long edge on the floor and the musician sitting behind it holds it upright or puts it over his knees. The strings are plucked with the fingertips of both hands. It is not usual to shorten the strings, so only one tone per string is achieved. Overtones can be generated by lightly touching the appropriate places with a finger of the other hand . A rhythm can be added by drumming your fingernails on the body.
Inanga are almost exclusively played by men to accompany songs that they perform for themselves or for entertainment in front of an audience for pleasure. The instrument can be played by all population groups and classes, only Twa is rarely used. The inanga is not played in an orchestra with other instruments . Their music was originally cultivated at the royal court.
Only together with the inanga is there the special musical form of the whispered inanga in Burundi , in which the texts are sung or whispered very softly as an acoustic adjustment to the instrument. The Kirundi spoken in Burundi and the Kinyarwanda of Rwanda are tonal languages in which the meaning of a word depends on the pitch. In the vocal music of both countries, the linguistic pitch is almost always expressed in the melody with which a text is sung. This applies to a cappella singing and to songs accompanied by instruments. When whisper is spoken without an audible pitch, so necessary for the understanding tonal differences are missing and the singer can not follow the melody course of his musical instrument. In the music genre "whispered inanga ", the inanga provides the pitch movements of the text to the whispering voice, which the voice cannot express, and even shows the distinction between short and long vowels with great precision. On the linguistic level of meaning, there is a close relationship of dependence on voice and instrument. To the familiar listener it sounds as if the musician is “singing” to the melody of the inanga , although he is actually not producing any pitches. The listener creates the illusion of speech being presented in pitches. Without this perception phenomenon the singer would speak the language incorrectly or incomprehensibly according to the impression of the audience. The result recognized by the listener in the form of a melody-enriched whisper is based on a complex perception pattern of two elements that can be seen alternately as a figure or background in the pictorial representation . The tones of the inanga stand for the figure that has come to the fore with its outline, while the rather diffuse whisper provides the background of perception. The resulting illusion is regularly interrupted by instrumental interludes in which the inanga is perceived completely differently than when whispering together.
The stories presented are about historical events, praise a past hero or living benefactor, and are often moralizing. A certain King Yuhi III. Mazimpaka (ruled 1642–1675) is described as an important poet and composer of Inanga songs, which deal with the emergence of the Tutsi empire and his own heroic deeds. The same themes appear in songs that in Rwanda and Burundi are accompanied, sung (not whispered) by the lamellophone ikembe or a musical bow with a calabash as a resonator ( umuduri ). The second national musical instrument in Burundi, besides the inanga, is the drum ngoma .
Ritual meaning
Just as characteristic of the region as some of the musical instruments is the belief in powerful spirits that are unique in their own way and that are worshiped in an ancestral cult . The spirits have magical abilities that are used to explain the unusual deeds they committed during their lifetime. They include Biheko, a princess who miraculously survived the murder of her entire family, the legendary Queen Nyabingi and Ryangombe. The latter is a Hutu spirit of the dead , a warrior who died under special circumstances. A buffalo killed him by throwing his horn against a special tree. Citizens can ask questions of the mind through a traditional mediator (mugirwa) who goes into a trance and becomes possessed by the mind. The inanga is considered to be the ideal instrument for attracting the mind's attention through its music.
The idea that the inanga “speaks” ( inanga ivuga ) was made use of by the Burundian Pierre Bashahu, who in 1947 established a cult around a healing ritual until the cult was banned in 1962 and around 30 members of this group were hanged. The charges were cannibalism, ritual sex practices and the use of toxic substances. Little is known about the cult practices; they are classified as the cult of possession and their followers as a syncretic sect. The cult founder took his own life in 1955. Previously he was called Nangayivuza . The word is composed of inanga and yivuza , derived from kuvuza ("that makes itself speak"). The cult members were called abananga , "the people of the inanga ". Bashahu was famous as an inanga player and used the musical instrument in part in his healing rituals. He played a melody on the inanga and spoke - allegedly he let the inanga speak: “Be healed, be healed. God wants it that way. ”After his death, the inanga is said to have continued speaking . This belief is probably related to a custom according to which the dying person must be given a particularly familiar object by his relatives, who is then given permission to die. Bashaga was given his inanga . In general, the "speaking inanga " has humanized features and contains a magical power that was otherwise only used in the revered royal drums. When they hear the name Nangayivuza, schoolchildren fear a child who wants to eat them. Musicians associate Nangayivuza with the ideal of an inanga , which is so powerful that it practically makes music and speaks out of itself.
literature
- Cornelia Fales: Acoustic Intuition of Complex Auditory Phenomena by “Whispered inanga” Musicians of Burundi. In: The World of Music. Journal of the International Institute for Traditional Music (IITM). Volume 37 (3), 1995
- Cornelia Fales: Issues of Timbre: The Inanga Chuchotée. In: Ruth M. Stone (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 1, Routledge, New York 1997, pp. 164-207
- Charlotte M. Hartwig: Music in Kerebe Culture . In: Anthropos , Volume 67, Issue 3/4, 1972, pp. 449-464
- Josh Rosenfeld: Some Physics of Whispered Inanga. Cornell University, 2002, pp. 1-7
- Curt Sachs : Inanga, Ikivuvu. In: Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments. At the same time a polyglossary for the entire instrument area. Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 195 f (reprint: Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1972, ISBN 3-487-00205-1 )
Web links
- Jos Gansemans: Inanga. music.africamuseum.be
- R. Raine-Reusch: Inanga. World Instrument Gallery
- RUKARA by Nsengiyumva. Youtube video
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jos Gansemans: Enanga. music.africamuseum.be
- ↑ Allan P. Merriam: Musical Instruments and Techniques of Performance among the Bashi. (1955) In: Ders .: African Music in Perspective. (Critical Studies on Black Life and Culture, Volume 6) Garland, New York 1982, p. 173
- ↑ Cornelia Fales, 1995, pp. 6-8
- ^ Julius O. Adekunle: Culture and Customs of Rwanda. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport (Connecticut) 2007, p. 136
- ↑ Inanga. The Grinell College Music Instrument Collection
- ↑ Jos goose Emans: Les Instruments de Musique Du Rwanda. Leuven University Press, Leuven 1988, p. 164
- ↑ Cornelia Fales, 1995, pp. 31-32