Persimmons
Kakaki , plural kakakai , is a long, end-blown natural metal trumpet of the Haussa and neighboring ethnic groups, whose settlement area is in northern Nigeria and southern Niger . The kakaki, presumably introduced with the establishment of Islamic sultanates, has been used in ceremonies in representative orchestras at the ruling courts and as a signaling instrument since around the 15th century .
Origin and Distribution
By the end of the 7th century, the Muslim Arabs crossed all of North Africa on their conquest to what is now Morocco, and in the 14th century most of the empires on the southern edge of the Sahara had converted to Islam, at least nominally . When the Arabs established their own Islamic sultanates, the African rulers adopted drums, long trumpets and double reed instruments in their representative orchestras and as insignia of their power. The instrumentation and function of these ensembles is related to those of the Arab-Persian military and palace orchestras naqqāra -khāna . This type of orchestra, which has been known in the Arab world since the 10th century at the latest and was used in India until the beginning of the 20th century, included the eponymous pair of kettle drums naqqāra , cylinder drums , the cone oboe surnāy , the straight, shrill-sounding trumpet nafīr and the long trumpet karnā ( in central asia karnai ). The tightly mensored kakaki is similar to the Central Asian karnai . The double reed instrument often played with the kakaki is the algaita (plural algaitu ).
According to Veit Erlmann (1973), the earliest mention of long trumpets in West Africa can be found in the Kano Chronicle , written by an Arabic-speaking author who presumably came from the north and settled in Kano . Accordingly, long trumpets were first used in Kano under the ruler Sarki Tsamia (reigned 1307-1343). Since Islam was also spreading in Kano around this time, this would mean that the long trumpet came to the Hausa from the north through the Sahara. The long trumpet seems to have been known in Bornu at the beginning of the 15th century , because the Kano Chronicle says about the reign of Sarki Dauda (1421–1438) that a prince from southern Bornu had a large retinue, including many mallam (Islamic scholars), drums and trumpets played by musicians on horses came to Kano. Similar reports on the signaling function of kettle drums and trumpets have come down to us from the 16th and 17th centuries. When on March 16, 1584 El Hadi visited his brother, the Songhai ruler Askia El Hadj (r. 1583–1586, son of Askia Daoud, r. 1549–1583), he was accompanied by a group of drummers and trumpeters. The successor from the Askia dynasty, Askia Mohammed Bani (r. 1586–1588), announced the visit to his brother Sadiq only immediately in front of his house with kakakai . The Kano Chronicle tells of King ( sarki ) Kutumbi, who ruled Kano from 1623 to 1648, that he was accompanied by 100 horsemen on all his journeys and that 50 kettle drummers, 40 drummers and 25 trumpeters preceded his troops.
According to KA Gourlay (1982), who contradicts this reading of the chronicle, the long trumpet did not reach Tunis until the middle of the 14th century , without having crossed the Sahara to the south by then. The oriental origin of the kakaki , whose long, slim shape cannot be derived from black African natural trumpets , is generally accepted . The African Trumpet instruments Saharan are predominantly cross-blown horns as the Kuduhorn the Bantu , the South African antelope horn phalaphala . The long cross horn siwa, made of ivory, bronze or wood, used to belong to the Swahili culture on the East African coast . The ancient Egyptian longitudinally blown metal trumpet scheeb is also ruled out as a forerunner because it was only around 50 centimeters long. The kakaki similar the Roman tuba and having a long conical tube BUQ belonging to the military orchestras Egyptian Fatimides belonged in the 10th century. The name and function of the būq have spread to the Georgian buki , among others . In the 14th century, būq was understood to mean a curved animal horn in Arabic. Arabic-Persian names of military trumpets that came to the west and east with the spread of Islam were now karnā and nafīr . The Muslim traveler Ibn Battūta (1304-1368 or 1377), who visited Mogadishu on the east coast of Africa at the beginning of the 14th century , reports of a procession of the sultan, led by a military band with drums ( tabl ), horns ( būq ) and long trumpets ( nafīr ) was cited. At the Sultan's Palace, this military band ( tabl-chāna ) played with the same instruments, but supplemented with kegel oboes ( surnāy ), based on the Egyptian model. When Ibn Battuta was a few years later, in 1352/53, in Timbuktu with the ruler of Mali and other places in the western Sudan region, he saw the sultan's military orchestra and the army leaders, which consisted of drums and ivory horns ( anyab ).
KA Gourlay concludes from this that there were no metal trumpets in Mali in the 14th century. In the Sultanate of Ifat on the Horn of Africa , which existed from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 15th century and reported by the Arab historian al-Umari, who lived in the first half of the 14th century, bamboo trumpets were used as bells in the ruler's representative orchestra Blown cow horns. The orchestra was directed by the particularly loud sounding antelope horn janba . Trumpets of various designs as ceremonial instruments in the representative music of African rulers therefore existed before the introduction of the oriental metal trumpets, which is why Gourlay considers the wind instruments of the rulers Tsamia and Dauda mentioned in the Kano Chronicle not to be long metal trumpets, but rather trumpets made of reed or wood. In his opinion, the long metal trumpets called kakaki probably did not reach the Hausa area until the late 15th or early 16th century.
In any case, the metal trumpets could have come to the Haussa in three ways: directly from the north through the Sahara, with and without the help of the Songhai , from the East African coast or up the Nile and then through Kanem-Bornu to the west. If the latter were to be the case, the ruling centers to the east would have had metal trumpets before the Haussa. However, there is no concrete evidence of this from the Middle Ages. Since European travelers still found wooden trumpets in Kanem-Bornu at the beginning of the 19th century, it is unlikely that metal trumpets were previously there. According to Gourlay, the only thing left for the Haussa is the purchase of the trumpets directly from the north.
Alfons M. Dauer (1985) follows Veit Erlmann's earlier dating when he looks at the entire representation orchestra , which the Fulbe call ganyal . This type of ensemble around the long trumpet karnā is likely to have reached sub-Saharan Africa with the spread of Islam in the 11th to 13th centuries, i.e. at the same time as Europe. The metal percussion idiophones common in Arab orchestras are missing in the African ensembles . A typical Hausa orchestra in Nigeria, in which the old tradition is preserved, consists of three kakakai , two algaitu , two transverse horns farai and two drums gangan with snarling strings . With this ensemble the Sultan was praised in front of his palace on Friday ( daren dschuma , "Friday Music").
As a ceremonial instrument, this type of trumpet occurs in Africa only in the Sudan region in the east and south of Niger, in the north and center of Nigeria, around Lake Chad and in parts of the Central African Republic . According to Anthony King (2001), the kakaki trumpet is first mentioned in a report by Mahmoud Kati about the conquest of Aïr in central Niger by the army of the Songhai ruler Askia Mohammad I (around 1443-1538). In the 15th and 16th centuries , the kakaki spread over the Hausa states and Borno to the east beyond Lake Chad and southeast along the Niger Valley through the kingdom of Nupe to the confluence of the Niger with the Benue . In a jihad , the Fulbe leader Usman dan Fodio conquered most of the Fulbe states in northern Nigeria from 1804. The ruling Fulbe took over administrative organization and courtly ceremonies including the kakaki from the Hausa . The metal trumpet replaced or was used with other plant material trumpets. The kakaki subsequently spread to other states in the Sudan region.
The name kakaki is probably derived from the strong, choppy style of play. In Nigeria, Nupe use the word kakati , the Edo say kaki , similar word formations among the Kanuri on Lake Chad and the Fulani in northern Cameroon are kaschi, gaschi, gachi and gatschi . A two-meter-long trumpet in Benin that is comparable in form and function is called kankangui or kankanki .
Design and style of play
The kakaki consists of a thin, 1.5 to 3 meter long, straight tube made of brass , copper or, more recently, mostly made of the sheet metal of petroleum canisters. The end of the cylindrical tube, which can be dismantled into two parts, widens to form a bell. The mouthpiece is funnel-shaped with a narrow rim and is directly connected to the pipe. The kakaki may be about the two deep tones fifth apart produce the lower of the two tones is approximately C . A third tone is a semitone lower, but is rarely used.
Kakakai are usually played in pairs in the palace orchestra together with the double-headed cylinder drum gangan and the algaita , a double reed instrument related to the Asian surnai . According to European travel reports, the kettle drum tambari (related to the Arabic naqqāra ) was used instead of the gangan until the beginning of the 20th century . Solo play is rare, with four or more trumpets appearing more often. In this case, a trumpet tuned a semitone lower takes the lead while the others answer in chorus. Farai is a side-blown wooden trumpet (transverse horn) of the Hausa, which is usually played with drums or in an ensemble with the kakaki . In addition, there is the cross-blown kaho trumpet and the iron bell kuge, which has no clapper and is struck with a wooden mallet .
Cultural meaning
In general, trumpets are a symbol of rulership in northern Islamized Africa and are related to royalty. They are played exclusively by men and only on ritual occasions such as the announcement of the ruler. They are tied to the person of a head who has the orchestra with trumpets and drums.
The kakaki and other African trumpets are to be distinguished from the brass instruments played in West Africa, which were introduced with the European colonization and which have since performed similar representative functions in large brass orchestras at local ruling houses. In honor of the sultan and as an assurance of his political authority, the kakakai were blown by mounted musicians at certain courtly ceremonies. This honor can also go to the emir , village heads and other dignitaries. In Chad , the similarly ceremonial trumpet of the same design is called waza; The arrival of the king was also reported earlier in Ethiopia with the wooden, one-meter-long malakat trumpet . Consisting of several gourds composite waza of Berta in the boundary between Sudan and Ethiopia was also a grand status symbol.
In addition to the kakaki musicians, there were other court ensembles at Islamic ruling houses with other instruments that structured the daily routine (starting with morning drum alarm clocks for the ruler), were used for ceremonies and were employed for entertainment.
With the two tones of the kakaki a musical tonal language is formed in Nigeria, which can be translated into words. These are hymns of praise for the head, in the simplest form the exclamation ga sirki ("Here is the king") results from the tone sequence low-low-high, which is repeated several times by the kakaki . The words ga-schi (“see him!”), Blown on the arrival of a distinguished visitor , may have given the trumpet gaschi its name. This musical reputation was first described by Heinrich Barth in 1857 . In order to be able to announce the arrival just as befittingly, a modern emir let the horn of his vehicle tune to the appropriate notes. Another form of hymn of praise among the Hausa is accompanied by the single-stringed bowl lute goge .
literature
- Anthony Baines: Brass Instruments. Their History and Development. Faber & Faber, London 1976, pp. 76f, 80
- Anthony Baines: The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, pp. 129, 219
- Alfons Michael duration : Tradition of African wind orchestras and the origin of jazz. (Contributions to jazz research, Vol. 7) Academic Printing and Publishing Company, Graz 1985
- KA Gourlay: Long Trumpets of Northern Nigeria - In History and Today. In: African Music, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1982, pp. 48-72
- Anthony King: Kakaki. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 13. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, pp. 317f
- Anthony King: Kakaki. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 98-100
Web links
- nairaland.com (photos of Hausa musical instruments, including a kakaki )
- Patrick Effiboley: The Kankangui (or trumpet). ( Memento from June 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Alexandre Sènou Andandé Ethnographic Museum, Benin (similar trumpet in Benin)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Veit Erlmann: Some Sources on Music in Western Sudan from 1300 to 1700. In: African Music, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1973/1974, pp. 34-39, here pp. 35f
- ↑ Timkehet Teffera: Aerophone in the instruments of the peoples of East Africa. (Habilitation thesis) Trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2009, p. 346
- ^ Henry George Farmer : Early References to Music in the Western Sūdān. In: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 4, October 1939, pp. 569-579, here pp. 571f
- ^ KA Gourlay, 1982, p. 50f
- ^ KA Gourlay, 1982, p. 53
- ↑ Jeremy Montagu: Choosing Brass Instruments. In: Early Music, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1976, pp. 35-38, here p. 35
- ↑ Alfons Michael Dauer, 1985, pp. 56, 60f
- ^ Anthony King, 2001, p. 317
- ^ Anthony Baines: Brass Instruments: Their History and Development. Dover Publications, New York 1993, pp. 76, 80
- ^ Anthony King, p. 317
- ↑ Beverly B. Mack: Muslim Women Sing: Hausa Popular Song. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2004, p. 34