Music bow
The music sheet (English musical bow ) is a simple string instrument , wherein the one or more strings between the ends of a flexible and curved string support are tensioned. The string tension is generated by the bending force of the mostly thin and long support rod; If, on the other hand, one or more pretensioned strings run parallel to a rigid support, the musical instrument is called a stick zither or music stick (English stick zither , French cithare sur bâton ). The resonance body, which usually consists of a natural hollow body such as a calabash , must be brought into contact with the rod in order to transmit vibrations and amplify sound. The special form of a musical bow without a resonance body, in which the player's mouth is used for sound amplification and sound modulation, is called the mouth bow .
There is an enormous variety of different playing techniques for the instrument, which often does not differ from a hunting bow . The string can be plucked with the fingers, struck with a chopstick or swept along, blown with the mouth or bowed with a second string bow.
Musical arcs are or were widespread in large areas of Africa, Asia excluding North Asia , Europe and on the two American continents. They are unknown in Australia and Micronesia . Today their focus is in sub- Saharan Africa , especially in the cultural sphere of influence of the Khoisan in southern Africa.
Origin and development
An approximately 15,000 year old cave drawing in the Three Brothers Cave in France possibly shows a dancer playing the mouth arch. You can see the outline of a clothed man with a small bow near his mouth. Since the drawing belongs to a scene of many partially overlapping figures, the arc could have nothing to do with the one figure. Other prehistoric rock carvings leave room for interpretation when it comes to the question of whether the bows depicted were hunting weapons or musical instruments. Likewise, the circular disc in the hand of an Iron Age rider in Scandinavia, who is depicted with a stick in the other hand, could have been a battle shield or a basin .
Homer mentioned in the 9th century BC Chr. In his epics Iliad and Odyssey the sound of the bowstring flattering the ears. According to Roman mythology , Diana , the goddess of the hunt, is said to have inspired her brother Apollon , god of the arts and especially music, to build the lyre kithara with the bow .
The musical bow is the easiest string instrument to construct . The invention of the hunting bow formed the economic basis for the expansion of the hunter-gatherer cultures. At the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century there were technical discussions as to whether the bow was first developed as a hunting or musical instrument during the evolution of mankind. Since both possible uses refer to the same instrument, this question is no longer asked today. Some bows are used one after the other for hunting and making music. The shortening of the string when playing musical arcs inevitably led to the discovery of tonal orders and the targeted production of individual tones from the natural partial tone series . Another leap in development was the invention of the applied resonator.
Due to the elasticity of the bow stick, which changes due to material fatigue and climatic influences, the pitch is subject to fluctuations. A further development of the musical bow is the pretensioned strings attached parallel to a straight stick. With these stick zithers or musical sticks , the strings can be tightened significantly. But so that the strings can vibrate freely, one or two spacers must be placed under them as bridges . The straight string carrier, like the curved stick of the musical bow, does not in principle have a sound-amplifying effect. With this distinguishing feature, the distinction between the rod that only provides support and the resonance-enhancing, hollowed-out support of a tubular zither is often difficult in practice. The simplest tubular zithers are idioglotte instruments in which the strings were cut out of the tube itself, i.e. made of the same material (the bamboo zithers valiha from Madagascar and sasando from Indonesia). Tubular zithers with stretched (heteroglottic) strings correspond in principle to today's box zithers .
To further develop a musical bow in a different way was to make the elastic bow stick shorter and thicker so that it could no longer deform, to bend it more and to connect the stick directly to a resonance body at one end. It was now possible to attach several strings and tension them independently of each other. The oldest known string instruments in Mesopotamia are three-string harps constructed in this way , which together with lyres on clay tablets from the end of the 4th millennium BC. Can be seen. The first bow harps in ancient Egypt appeared on murals and as grave goods around the middle of the 3rd millennium.
According to Vedic literature written in Sanskrit , the first stringed instruments in India were musical bows (mouth bows), which were called pinaki vina or picchora vina , among others . Vina was the general term for stringed instruments and today denotes different types of North and South Indian long necked lutes. The course of development from the musical bow to this point corresponds to the two basic directions mentioned. The straight zither made from a wooden stick took on the form of a bamboo tube zither called rudra vina , as it first appeared on Indian temple reliefs in the 7th century. Around this time, the Indian bow harps, which had been depicted on temples since the 2nd century, disappeared. The ancient Indian bow harp survives only in the Burmese saung gauk and in the very rare bin-baja in central India. Practically the only comparable bow harp in Africa is the Ugandan ennanga .
Designs and ways of playing
Music sheets can be prepared by the non-cultural ( etic ) criteria of Hornbostel-Sachs in those with cavity and mouth arches without resonator (1) divide. In the latter case, the oral cavity held on the bow stick or the string is used to amplify and modulate the sound. The resonator , which usually consists of a calabash , the stone shell of a coconut or some other hard fruit shell, can be firmly connected to the bow stick at any point (2). Unconnected sound amplifiers (3) are held by the player between the fingers in contact with the stick or often pressed between the stick and the upper body.
A further subdivision for all three designs determines whether a tuning loop is present or not. The tuning loop is a short piece of string that, in many musical bows, encompasses the string a little outside its center or, more rarely, near the edge and pulls it towards the bow stick. It is usually positioned in such a way that the string division results in two fundamental tones with an interval of between a second and a fourth , more rarely up to an octave .
Several strings can be stretched parallel or at a different angle to one another between the bow ends. In East Africa there are multi-string, strongly curved musical bows, the string of which runs in a Z-shape between both sides. Such instruments are sometimes incorrectly referred to as “harp” or “zither”. The resonator is usually attached in the middle of the arch rod.
A special form of a multi-string musical bow is the pluriarc , which looks like a half-open hand. In this instrument, which can also be classified as a bow lute and occurs south of the Sahara , a resonance body extends from several curved rods to each of which a string is attached. Very rare representatives of this type of instrument in Suriname (agwado) and Brazil go back to African influence.
If a string is excited, it vibrates in its entire length on the fundamental and, according to the physical law to be demonstrated on a monochord , in half the length an octave , shortened to a third, a further fifth above the fundamental, shortened to a quarter in the second octave, a major third shortened to a fifth and an octave shortened to a sixth above the fifth. Of these overtones , the first octave can be heard best, but in many musical arcs the fundamental is difficult to hear. The musician can filter out and amplify the individual overtones using different playing techniques. Individual overtones can be created in the arch of the mouth by appropriate shaping of the oral cavity; in the case of gourd bows, this is done by the position of the gourd, the opening of which is held in different proximity to the upper body. Assuming a fundamental F, the interval between the major third and fifth results in the tone sequence F – A – C. If the player needs a different tone sequence, he can shorten the string at the end and a semitone or a whole tone. If it is shortened by a whole tone, it receives the root G and the tone sequence G – B – D in this case. By alternately shortening the string and lifting the finger off again, i.e. changing the tonality , he can produce the tones F – G – A – B – C – D.
The playing techniques of the musical bow are so numerous and varied that only the most common variants can be enumerated. The oral bow player grasps the bow stick or the string at any point with his lips, but not his teeth, or puts the end of the stick into his mouth. The string is stimulated by regular rhythmic hits with a stick or by finger plucking. Scraper arches have a corrugated surface that can be wiped with a stick. Some musical bows are bowed with a second bow, and the string can also be rubbed with a stick made of wood or plant stems. String bows covered with animal hair in southern Africa are likely to be due to European influences. There they are used in the single-stringed trough zithers serankure and isankuni , which are probably derived from mouth arches .
Africa
The Dutch explorer Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563–1611) published a travelogue in 1596 that contained one of the first pictorial sources on African music. The copper engraving shows a typical landscape with a mountainous background which, according to the caption , can be located in the area of the Mozambican coast. One of the men shown plays a mouth bow. The details show that the string was divided into two parts roughly in the middle by a loop and that the player brought the bow stick and not the string to his mouth. The interpretation of the picture includes the fact that the mouth arch was struck with a chopsticks and was probably the forerunner of today's mouth arch, called chipendani in the language of the Chopi in southern Mozambique . The chipendani mouth arch type has a broadly carved arch, richly decorated with geometric patterns, and occurs in the interior of the country to the north as far as the Tete province , except in the south with varying names .
Hunting bows, which were also used as musical bows (longombe) , were used by the Nkundo in western Congo . They used it to shoot birds, monkeys and other small mammals. The Sandawe in Central Tanzania used the rumbarumba hunting bow as well as a trog zither similar to the inanga to accompany singing. Especially old hunting bows, which were no longer flexible enough or otherwise unusable for hunting, were used for making music. On the other side of the structural spectrum is the bow enzenze (also enzenzya ), made by the Konjo in Uganda only for making music, with a fixed calabash resonator, whose flat curved rod marks the transition to the rod zither. The instrument, like a similar one from the Congo, has raised bumps on the fixed bow stick, which can be grasped as frets , producing several pitches. In Rwanda and Burundi , the umuduri has a large calabash resonator attached to the center of the arch with a tuning loop, the opening of which is pressed against the chest while standing while playing.
The curvature of the arch ranges from almost U-shaped, as in the large musical arch of the G'bakka in the Central African Republic, to the almost straight mouth arch mtyangala made from a bamboo tube, which is played only by women in the tumbuka in northern Malawi. The same mouth arch type is also called nkangala in Malawi . It was introduced from South Africa in the 19th century, where it is known by the Zulu and Xhosa as umqangala . In the South African pedi , the corresponding lekope is one of the musical instruments used by women.
The material used for the strings is twisted animal skin strips in the sagaya mouthbow in southwestern Angola, in South Africa with the ugubhu calabash bow, which is played by the Zulu , twisted cow's tail hair , and in the kha: s mouthbow of the Griqua (Korana) the back tendons of oxen. Other strings are made from plant materials. For tuning, one end of the string is always firmly tied, the other is wrapped around the bow stick.
With the Xhosa mouth bow umrhubhe , a roughened stick is passed over the string while the string is held to the mouth. The umrhubhe is worth mentioning because with it the first overtone dominates over the barely audible fundamental tone and the Xhosa musicians sometimes produce a whisper as a second melody in addition to the overtones amplified by the string. Women's choirs match their polyphonic singing to the overtones of this instrument.
An indirect sound generation characterizes the mouth bow gora , played by the Khoisan in South Africa , the string of which is excited by a quill pen. The first detailed description of the instrument comes from Peter Kolb (1675-1726), a naturalist who stayed in South Africa from 1705 to 1713. By alternately blowing on the edge and breathing deeply, the spring is set in vibrations like a lamella, which are transmitted through physical contact to the string and at the same time back into the oral cavity. The gora originated under the Khoisan as an entertainment instrument for the cattle herders and was adopted by the Batswana , a cattle-breeding Bantu ethnic group, under the name lesiba ("feather"). In the 1930s, Percival R. Kirby found the gora widespread among ranchers in large parts of South Africa. It is still popular in Lesotho today . East Asian dragon bows work on the same principle.
In the 1950s, the calabash bow played with a stick, kalumbu , still stood for a separate genre in Zimbabwe - alongside the kalimba songs on the lamellophone of the same name ; like many other musical bows, it is now being replaced by the guitar.
Lobi musicians in Burkina Faso , West Africa, can use the kankarama to imitate the different pitches of the language and convey simple messages. Until the early 1960s, the Lobi played their mouth bow, which was covered with a plant fiber, only from August to the end of October, because at that time the Hirsehalm was available in the fields, which is needed to strike the string. Today mostly young musicians play the kankarama accompanied by a rhythmically beating bottle for entertainment all year round.
The umakhweyane music bow with a calabash attached roughly in the middle is 1.5 to 2 meters long, has a wire string that is struck with a thin rod, and a tuning loop. Percival Kirby (1934) found it widespread in South Africa among the Swazi and Zulu . It corresponds to the dende of the Venda and the sekgapa of the Pedi . The Zulu change the tonality of their ugubhu calabash bow by shortening the string for a second fundamental tone higher by a semitone, while the Xhosa always grab a second fundamental tone higher by a whole tone.
Khoisan
The Khoisan in southwest Africa developed the largest variety of musical bows worldwide . The women of the Nama in Namibia play the single-string musical bow khas , which they press against their right shoulder while touching the string with their chin to create a second keynote. The Nama word khas is a feminine form and means both musical and hunting bow. In the north-west of Namibia, the ǃgomakhas musical bow equipped with two wire strings is known. The higher tuned string is considered female and produces resonance vibrations for the plucked lower (male) string.
In Angola , a musical influence of the nomadic ǃKung tradition on the neighboring Bantu-speaking population groups can be ascertained. In the south-east of the country, Gerhard Kubik counted four forms of musical bows in 1965, the origin of which was ascribed to a tribe of the ǃKung , while only the scrap bows called kawayawaya had a Bantu tradition. Otherwise, the local Bantu had no stringed instruments, while in southwest Angola a hunting bow also used as a mouth bow, a calabash bow with attached resonator ( embulumbumba ) and the pluriarc cihumba were played. The latter was held so that the ends of the arches pointed away from the body.
The Ju|'hoansi -Sprachgruppe the !Kung in northeastern Namibia used for song accompaniment, all known types of music sheets: the mouth bow n!aoh tzísì (there is also an identical one-stringed stick zither), the Resonatorbogen g!omah tzísì , the Schrapbogen aìhn tzísì , the four-stringed bow sounds oq'àcè tzísì and the five-string bow lute gáukace tzísì . The songs played with these instruments tell of a successful hunt, the birth of a child, are effective in initiation ceremonies or are only used for entertainment.
Mouth arch
The most frequently played hunting bow has a string loop that divides the string in the middle in such a way that two deep fundamental tones are created, the difference between which is approximately a whole tone. In the southwestern Angolan province of Huíla , the instrument is in !Kung and Bantu speakers onkhonji (also ohonji, Sagaya, Sagaia ). In the region Kwandu-Kuvangu the call !Kung the mouth bow n|ka . The arch is a little over a meter long, it is gripped in the middle with the left hand and held at an angle to the left and down, away from the body. The player sticks the top end far into his mouth so that the right cheek is pushed outward. By changing the oral cavity, it can amplify several overtones. The shorter string section is closer to the mouth.
The Kung and some of their neighbors in the Kalahari region have used the bow as a hunting and music bow to this day. Another technique of kung playing the bow of the mouth is to bring the back of the bow to your mouth approximately in the middle. The upper lip lies firmly on the bow stick, the musician makes movements with the lower lip as if he were speaking. In doing so, it generates additional noise. The string consists of a twisted strip of animal skin that is wrapped around the ends of the rod. The tuning loop is attached near the center of the bow. Using the two fundamental tones, which differ by a whole tone, the player can selectively amplify a maximum of the sixth overtone of the lower fundamental tone and the fifth overtone of the higher fundamental tone by appropriately shaping the mouth. In practice, he amplifies overtones up to the fourth partial tone by means of mouth positions with which the vowels a, e and o can be formed. The player uses a thin leather stick to strike.
Resonator arch
In musical bows with a resonator, the shell of the genus Strychnos spinosa (local name likolo , pl. Makolo ), which belongs to the nuke nuts , is placed on the outside of the bow. The player holds the bow diagonally in front of his body and presses the opening of the centrally attached resonator against his chest. Coming in from the !Kung nǁkau called musical bow with loosely applied pericarp same plant as the n|ka beaten with a leather bar. This instrument was also created from a hunting bow through a change in function. Nevertheless, Kubik sees an independent development in the nǁkau with the resonator attached and in the hungu , whose resonator is attached to the loop. The calabash bow, called by the Ambundu in Luanda hungu , is similar to the mbulumbumba of the Himba in southwestern Angola and the cimbulumbumba on the eastern border of the country. These musical bows are a Bantu development. The gourd bow hungu possibly came from the province of Huíla during the Portuguese colonial period in the 18th century with abducted slaves to Luanda. In both types of musical bow, the player holds the resonator with the open side against his chest or stomach. The timbre changes depending on the distance between the calabashes; rhythmic approaching and removing produces fine fluctuating overtone changes. Similar sound effects by changing the distance between the resonator opening and the background are also achieved with the Cameroonian mvet bridge harp , with some lamellophones and outside of Africa with the Yemeni stemmed drum ṣaḥfa . The same type of sound modulation was also practiced in a type of Indian stick zither vina , which disappeared at the end of the 1st millennium AD . Today's descendants of this vina are the single-string Indian tuila , the single-string Cambodian kse diev and the multi-string northern Thai stab zither phin phia . The movements follow a precise temporal pattern and result in a finely structured sequence that is added to the melodic rhythm and contrasts with it, which through its pitch and timbre fluctuations produces a very complex musical result.
A classification of musical instruments based on non-cultural criteria does not distinguish whether the resonator is placed on the bow stick or firmly connected to it by means of a cord. The difference is not solely of a structural nature, because the cultural-historical development of both types of instruments is different. The resonator at nǁkau consists of the wild-growing Strychnos spinosa fruit peel, which is collected by the ǃKung according to their traditional hunter-gatherer economy. In contrast, the Bantu-speaking ethnic groups attach a calabash made from an agriculturally grown, air-dried pumpkin. Where the musician occasionally holds a tin can to the bow instead of the fruit bowl, the contact with urban civilization is evident.
Group play sheet
The third way of playing is called the "group arc". The tuning loop is no longer needed, the bow is placed horizontally by one of the three Bantu-speaking players with the string up on a large resonator lying on the floor. The second player strikes a rhythm with two chopsticks, while another lightly touches the string at regular intervals with a piece of gourd or something similar, which creates a rasping sound. The third player shortens the string at an outer point with some object and thus creates a tone a fourth higher. Because of its positioning, this hunting bow can also be referred to as a "single-string earth zither ".
Scrap arch
Bantu Schrapbogen kawayawaya with which it is fixed by means of the tuning loop resonator is from !Kung independent -Musikbogen with applied resonator development. Its string consisted of a wide band of palm leaves ( Hyphaene coriacea , a genus of the doum palms , local name mukulwane ). Except in southern Angola, the scrap bow, in which the bow stick is rubbed, was also known to the Valucazi on the upper reaches of the Zambezi in northwestern Zambia and in Mozambique . As an exception, the ǃKung adopted this bow from the Bantu in the regions mentioned , who even occasionally practice playing styles that are unfamiliar to them. Near the eastern Tangolan city of Luau , the scrap arch kalyalya had, in addition to the notches on the surface, a longitudinal incision in the middle, which, based on the principle of the slit drum, gave it a greater resonance.
The !Kung -Schrapbogen n!kali was carved out of an elastic thin wet branch at both ends, so that it was strongly curved in the center and flat at the ends. The palm fiber string was tightly wrapped at one end and detachably attached to the other so that the keynote could be retuned at any time. With this undivided mouth bow, the player brought the string to his mouth while pressing the bow with his left hand on his left shoulder and lightly touching the string on the side with his thumb to create a higher fundamental tone. With a staff in his right hand, he rubbed the ribbed part of the arch.
There is a structural relationship between the Angolan scrap arches and the mouth arches of the two Congo republics, whose strings are also made of fiber ribbons. The strings of the West Central African mouth bows, however, are struck in contrast to the Angolan scrap bows. The corresponding mouth arch in Gabon has no noose; by placing a stick on its string, the result is a higher tone. In Gabon, members of the Bwiti cult community create polyrhythmic music with this mongongo called mouth bow, the bow harp ngombi , a bamboo pounder , various rattles and wooden idiophones , which, in addition to taking the drug iboga, is of particular importance in their initiation ritual. The mouth arch xizambi of the Tsonga is a scraping arch with two to three rattling vessels attached to the rubbing stick , which generate a rhythmic noise to the permanent sound of the string.
Multi-string African musical bows
Bunyoro in central Uganda have musical bows placed on a separate resonator with several strings on a bow pole; among the Haya (in the settlement area of the former Buhaya Empire west of Lake Victoria ) they are called kinanga . The three-string music bow ekidongo from Nyambo has arms of different lengths and is placed on a tin cooking pot to amplify the sound. The strings are made of twisted sisal fiber that is pulled through in one piece. The player plucks the upper string with a wooden pick and shortens it in two places with his chin, and plucks the lower and middle strings with his thumb. A second player strikes a basic rhythm with a stick on the metal pot.
The adungu of the Acholi and Alur ( adingili ) in the north of Uganda is a further development of the ekidongo to the bow harp with a fixed, curved neck . The adungu is often built with nine or another number of strings and in different sizes up to two meters in length. Its lower string is plucked empty, the upper one can be shortened by touching the chin. This technique of shortening a string with the chin is also known in several other musical bows in the Lake Victoria area. The tone supply of the three-stringed instruments increases to five.
The Hamar in the southwest of Ethiopia play a three-stringed mouth bow, the strings of which run from a starting point to three different ends of a bow-shaped branch forked in the shape of an antler.
The pluriarc (bow lute) with several strings and one string each occurs in three separate areas of Africa: The eight-string bow lute cihumba in the Huíla province in southwestern Angola goes back to the musical tradition of the Khoisan . A similar five-string instrument in eastern Namibia and Botswana is played only by women. The Pluriarc kahumba (okaxumba) among the Ovambo in Namibia has between five and eight strings. The second distribution region of the Pluriarc is western central Africa. There the Ekonda in the west of the Congo have the very large, five-string instrument lokombi (with the Teke: lukombe ). The Fang in Gabon developed an arc lute entirely from raffia fibers. The third region is southwestern Nigeria in the area of the ancient Kingdom of Benin . There storytellers accompany each other on the seven-string bow lute akpata . In Cameroon six-string bow lutes are called komè and paata .
Oceania
Oceania is one of the main distribution areas for multi-string rod zithers. In New Zealand and Hawaii there is a tradition of two, three and four-string mouth arches. Mouthbows were widespread in Melanesia , while calabash bows were virtually unknown. In Polynesia , musical arcs were rare, in Micronesia they were completely absent. The traditional music of the Melanesian Nukumanu Islands is limited, as is typical for the region, to singing accompanied by drums. The only melody instrument was the susupu musical bow . In the 1930s, the mouth bow tita'apu was still played on Fatu Hiva , one of the southern Marquesas islands . There was also a bamboo mouth flute , a reed instrument and a nose flute , which have also disappeared today. The tita'apu was about 45 centimeters long and was plucked with a piece of coconut shell. In 1920 another one meter long mouth arch was mentioned as having practically disappeared. Other mouth bows were the 60 centimeter long kodili on the Solomon Islands , over whose bamboo rod two fiber strings were stretched, and the somewhat shorter kigulu . With this bamboo stick, the strings ran over a piece of wood at both ends as a spacer. It was probably a stick zither.
In New Guinea's music , mouth bows are the only stringed instruments. One of the few known mouth bows in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea is the two-stringed mouth bow gawa , which is tuned to a third interval and is played by both sexes among the Huli . Women play a 20 to 30 centimeter long, men an approximately 50 centimeter long, asymmetrically curved mouth arch. For the neighboring Duli people, the term alima stands for musical instruments in general as well as for a small mouth bow corresponding to the gawa . A curved branch is held in shape by two strings made of plant fibers, now also made of nylon. The upper end of the bow is put into the mouth and the lower end is held with the left hand. With the thumb of this hand, the player only shortens the inner string. Together with the outer string, struck empty with a stick in the right hand, there are three basic tones. This instrument can also be played by women.
In Taiwan play or playing to the indigenous peoples counting Amis , Bunun , Puyuma , Thao , and Tsou mouth arches. It is possible that some musical instruments from the southern Chinese region spread to the Southeast Asian and Pacific islands in prehistoric times and can serve as evidence of the Austronesian expansion. These musical instruments include idiochorde tubular zithers, beaten bamboo idiophones , flutes and drums . The Dumagat people, who live in remote mountainous regions of Luzon in the north of the Philippines , occasionally pluck a simple hunting bow with their fingers, which is reinforced with a tin can held on the chest. Otherwise there are no musical arcs with resonators in Oceania. The only exception is a large musical arch on the island of Guam , which belongs to the Mariana Islands , which is struck with a stick and serves as evidence of the settlement of the Mariana Islands from the northern Philippines.
East Asian dragon bow
In the dragon bows in East and Southeast Asia , an air current causes a string to vibrate according to the principle of the blown South African musical bow gora . Instruments with several strings moved by the wind have been praised as aeolian harp in poetry since ancient times. The Japanese unari consists of a long, thin bamboo stick, at the ends of which a wide, thin ribbon made of a plant fiber or plastic is inserted. In Japan, a string made from wisteria wood is used. The string band must be oriented parallel to the rod if it is to be attacked evenly by the wind and to produce a bright humming sound. The Japanese let the kite bow soar into the air attached to a large hakkaku kite . The Chinese counterpart is the "wind harp" feng-cheng , which has been manufactured at least since the Tang dynasty (7th to 9th centuries).
On Indonesian kites, a bow covered with a rattan ribbon called guwangan is raised in the air. With two guwangans on a kite, one produces a “male” buzzing sound, the other a “female” buzzing sound. Together they bring good luck and drive away evil spirits.
Èk is a part of the name of Cambodian musical instruments and particularly refers to the musical bow, khlén is the word for "kite". The khlén èk is an elaborately designed colorful kite. A musical bow is attached across its tip, the string of which is set in rotation in the wind.
In 1972 Laurence Picken found a dragon music bow in a village in the Isan region of northeast Thailand, in which the string band does not flutter in the wind, but rotates. The bow ( Thai sanu , from Sanskrit dhanu ) consists of a bamboo strip that is almost a meter long and is slightly bent by the tension of the strings. The string is divided into three parts. The narrow middle strip from the leaf of a sugar palm is connected at both ends with shorter, thin silk threads. In the wind, the strip rotates around its own axis until the energy stored in the silk threads is sufficient to cause a reverse rotation.
South asia
The four- or five-string instrument waji from the northeastern Afghan province of Nuristan , which is sometimes referred to as a bow harp and - in addition to the Burmese saung gauk and the Indian bin-baja - as the last remnant of the ancient Indian harps should rather be described as a multi-string musical bow. In terms of development history, the waji represents a unique link between the musical bow and the harp. The asymmetrical bow rod rests vertically on an elongated resonance body, through the skin of which it is inserted at the point of support. The strings are stretched individually. They are all played at the same time with a pick in rapid up and down movements, while strings that should not be audible are muted with the fingers of the left hand. The same playing technique of adding a snarling sound to the string tone was used in ancient lyres , it is also common in modern Arabic lyres such as the simsimiyya .
Siddis are the names of the descendants of black African slaves who were brought to India as workers by Arab traders in the Middle Ages , where they mainly live in the states of Gujarat and Karnataka . The clearest sign of their African origins is the almost man- high music bow malunga , to whose off-center tuning loop a large calabash is attached. At ritual dance events, the Siddis appear in skirts and with feathered headdresses and play the small drum dhamal , the large drum madido , the African ngoma- like drum mugarman , the coconut rattle Mai Mishra (the name of a female patron saint) and the natural trumpet nafir (corresponds in its function to the African kakaki ).
An Indian musical bow tradition has been preserved in some niches of village culture. A rare musical arc in central east India is played in the remote mountainous region of Dandakaranya, which is to the south of Chhattisgarh state and west of Orissa . The Adivasi living there have passed on a rich cultural tradition of their own. This includes a hunting bow, which is also used as a music bow. In the Bastar district in this region, the dhankul dandi hunting bow is two meters long; it is placed over a clay pot on the floor that acts as a resonator. The music sheet is an important part of the epic poetry and is used to accompany the singers, whose songs deal with everyday topics such as the cultivation of rice and millet, childbirth and domestic violence. The women are called gurumai (in India village priestesses, organize pujas ), they also play the musical bow. Men can take part in the events, but they remain in the minority. The sung folk poetry in India is otherwise mostly a matter of men, whose themes include war, conquest and death. The only mention of a similar women's musical tradition comes from Kanyakumari on the southern tip of India.
The narrative tradition of Villu Pattu (also Villuppattu , "bow song") developed in Tamil Nadu in the 15th century. In the center of these folk songs is a 2 to 2.5 meter long musical bow (villu) , which is placed with the back of the bow over a large clay pot ( ghatam or kudam ) to amplify the sound . The music group consists of seven or eight members, who now mainly perform at temple festivals. The cantor holds the bow while sitting on the floor and recites mythological themes from the Mahabharata , Ramayana or the Puranas in ballad form . Up to five companions beat the rhythm with sticks on the string and the clay pot, others play the double-headed hourglass drum udukkai , the wooden rattles daru talam or kattai and the small cymbals talam or jalra . To do this, they repeat the chorus in choir singing and enter into a relationship with the audience, which is to be entertained for several hours, with plenty of gestures.
Middle and South America
Before the Spanish and Portuguese conquest in the early 16th century, there were no stringed instruments in Mexico and South America, with the possible exception of a few mouth bows. In the Maya Codices , illuminated manuscripts that tell of the life of the Central American Maya from pre-colonial times, there are no musical arcs. Around 1900 there were voices like those of the ethnologist Otis T. Mason (1830–1908) who fundamentally ruled out that there were any pre-Columbian stringed instruments on the continent. On the other hand, at the same time, the archaeologist Marshall H. Saville (1867–1935) expressed the view that the also pre-colonial Aztec manuscript Manuscrit du Cacique contained an image of a musical bow. The manuscript consisting of 16 deer skin sheets is also called Codex Becker after Philipp J. Becker († 1896), who brought it to Germany. The controversial illustration shows six figures, two of them beating drums, one holding a rattle and two blowing trumpets. In the last figure, Saville saw a musical bow player. Saville did not ask about the reason for the illustration and who the “ pre-Cortésian music group”, which has now become prominent in specialist circles , should have represented. The editor of a new facsimile edition in 1961, Karl A. Nowotny, summarized the state of research, according to which the images contain scenes from the middle of the 11th century and one of the musicians depicts the royal David, known as "Tiger's Claw", who appears in Mixtec annals. Today the prevailing view is that the conquered peoples of Central America did not have stringed instruments.
The African cultural influence began around the middle of the 16th century in the places of European colonization. Descriptions and illustrations of musical arcs before this time are also not available from other regions. Statements about the prehistory of an arch of the mouth, for example, which was seen among the Huaorani in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin in 1829 , cannot be made. A calabash musical bow played by Indians, known in Nicaragua and Costa Rica as quijongo and in El Salvador , Honduras and Guatemala as caramba ( carimba ), is said to have an African or Indian origin.
The calabash musical bow in northeastern Brazil is called berimbau , less known is the uruncungu in the south of the country. Both Brazilian musical arcs are a product of Afro-American culture and have their roots in Central Africa. The berimbau was first described in 1817. The calabash resonator is attached to the outermost end of the 1.5 meter long arched rod by means of the tuning loop. Its opening is held in front of the belly, similar to the instruments in southern Africa, and the distance between it is changed in such a way that the sound is periodically changed. With a coin held on the string above the tuning loop, its length is changed and a second fundamental tone is generated.
In addition to musical bows for ethnic groups of African descent, there are also mouth bows in Brazil that are played by Indians. The musical bow gualambo (gualambau) made by the Kainguá (a Guaraní language ) in Brazil and Paraguay is 180 centimeters long and is rubbed with a stick, as is the smaller bow piom pirintzi played by the Asháninka . In Bolivia , to play the two-stringed mouth-bow mapuip, a chopstick moistened with saliva is quickly passed back and forth between the two strings. The Mapuche in Chile and Argentina used to use a second bow to bow the string in kunkullkawe (cunculcahue) . Both parts of this instrument were related because the strings ran into each other. In the 19th century in Patagonia , a small mouth bow, the string of which was torn with a bone pick, is said to have been called koh'lo or colo .
In 1964, in the village of San Basilio de Palenque , a settlement founded by African slaves in the north of Colombia , the ethnomusicologist George List made sound recordings of the last still active oral bow player. The mouth bow was called marimba , which was obviously a name for all melody instruments that do not belong to the wind instruments. In the past, this man played the bow of the mouth, preferably in an ensemble, with two box drums of different sizes ( tambor and cajón ), a rubbing stick ( guacharaca ) and a bamboo rattle ( guacho ).
Further musical arcs can be found in a catalog of the Crosby Brown Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1914. In Costa Rica there was accordingly an approximately 1.80 meter long musical arch made of palm wood, which was strung with a wire string. In the middle of this quijonga had a tuning loop with a calabash, which was decorated with line engravings. The player hit the string with a stick in his right hand, while he covered the calabash opening with his left hand to shape the sound. A small Mexican musical bow, called sam-po-ua , consisted of a fish bone. One end of the instrument was placed in the mouth, the other end held and the string struck with a second bone. The Mayans used the small mouth arch jul made from a vine and struck with a stick .
On the South American continent, multi-string musical bows, which are classified as pluriarc or bow lutes, are very rare. One example is the agwado (also agbado ), the three strings of which are attached to thin, curved branches that are passed lengthways through a large bottle gourd. The Aluku, an ethnic group belonging to the Maroons , who lived politically autonomous and culturally isolated during the Dutch colonial era , have preserved many traditions of their black African origins. The agwado is used to accompany solo chants, and the songs often address possessive deities. Other pluriarcs, which can be traced back to African influences, are only known from Brazil .
North America
In North America, the arch of the mouth occurred among individual Indian peoples , especially in California : among the Karok , Maidu, Yokuts and Yurok. The Tlingit and Dakelh on the west coast of Canada also knew mouth arches. The Maidu knew the ma'wu mouthbow as an instrument of the shamans , the Yurok played pure musical bows that were not also used for hunting.
The American singer of Indian descent Buffy Sainte-Marie played in several songs on a single-stringed mouth arch in the 1960s and 1970s.
European settler communities who have settled in the eastern Canadian mountainous region of the Appalachian Mountains form a particular focus of distribution for mouth bows with African roots . Parts of the English-speaking settlers did not move to the western United States after the introduction of cotton at the end of the 18th century, but began to plant large cotton fields west of the Appalachians together with black African slaves in the 1790s. In this mountain world and on the Ozark Plateau further south, thanks to the cultural seclusion, the African tradition of mouth bowing has been preserved among the descendants of the settlers as part of old-time music . A photographically documented sound recording by Alan Lomax in Arkansas in 1959 shows an oral bow player who holds the convex side of the bow stick to his mouth at one end and strikes the string with a chopstick. Similar playing styles have been documented in the Appalachian Mountains. Gerhard Kubik attributes this technique to an influence from central and southern Mozambique, where the two mouth arches nyakatangali and chipendani are common. Slaves from Mozambique and Angola brought their musical traditions to the settlers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.
Europe
From the 17th century in Europe, the bowed musical bow bumbass (English bladder and string ) was popular with wandering folk music singers . At one end of the slightly curved stick an animal bladder filled with air was wedged between the wood and the string. The main purpose was probably the loud rhythmic background music, because the elastic bladder made the string tension changeable, so that no sound could emerge at a defined height. The instrument was played in various forms in France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, Sardinia and Poland until the 19th century. An illustration in a German goods catalog from the 1890s shows a long wooden stick hung with bells and cymbals . Overloaded with colorful, clattering accessories, but without an animal bladder, the instrument is used today under the name of the devil's violin for carnival parades and similar occasions. Apart from stroking the string with a bow, the devil's violin can be hit hard on the floor or rubbing the grooved handle with a scraper can be used to make noise.
literature
- Henry Balfour: The Natural History of the Musical Bow. A Chapter in the Developmental History of Stringed Instruments of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1899; New editions: Longwood Press, Portland 1976; Library Reprints 2001, ISBN 978-0-7222-5993-1
- Frances Morris: Catalog of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments. Vol. II. Catalog of the Musical Instruments of Oceania and America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1914 ( archive.org )
- Gerhard Kubik : The Khoisan legacy in the south of Angola. Forms of movement, bow harmonics and tonal order in the music of the ' Kung ' and neighboring Bantu populations. In: Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Music cultures in Africa. Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin 1987, pp. 82–196
- Ulrich Wegner: musical bows and musical sticks. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . (MGG) Sachteil 6, 1997, Sp. 1164-1182
- Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. Volume 2. (New part 41. Department of Ethnic Music V.) Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin 1984: Musikbögen, pp. 13–28; Music sticks, pp. 29-38
Web links
- Mouth bow. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium)
- Keyword musical bow. South African Music Archive Project (SAMAP). Archive with audio samples of African musical arcs
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bo Lawergren: The Origin of Musical Instruments and Sounds. In: Anthropos , Volume 83, Issue 1./3, 1988, pp. 31–45, here p. 36
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan heritage in the south of Angola , 1987, p. 107
- ↑ Emmie te Nijenhuis: Dattilam: A Compendium of Ancient Indian Music. Ed .: K. Sambasiva Sastri, Trivandrum Sanskrit Series no.102. Trivandrum 1930, p. 80
- ^ Pluriarc, Benin (southwestern Nigeria), Early 20th Century. National Music Museum, University of South Dakota
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik: To understand African music. Lit Verlag, Vienna 2004, pp. 131-136
- ^ Richard Kinseher: The bow in culture, music and medicine, as a tool and weapon. Books on Demand , 2005, p. 29, ISBN 978-3-8311-4109-8
- ↑ Umuduri. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium)
- ↑ Ulrich Wegner: African String Instruments , 1984, pp. 16-18
- ↑ a b Ulrich Wegner: African String Instruments , 1984, p. 26
- ↑ The mysterious "Goura" from South Africa - a mouth-blown musical bow. windmusik.com
- ^ Percival R. Kirby: The Gora and its Bantu Sucessors: A Study in South African Native Music. Bantu Studies , Vol. 5 (1), 1931, pp. 89-109 doi: 10.1080 / 02561751.1931.9676255
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, p. 1172; Funso Afolayan: Culture and Customs of South Africa . Greenwood Publishing, Westport 2004, p. 234, ISBN 978-0-313-32018-7
- ↑ Kalumbu song, by Chris Haambwiila. Youtube video
- ^ Diro and his Talking Musical Bow. African Family Film Foundation (trailer of a documentary film)
- ↑ Patrick Kersalé: Burkina Faso: Musiques et chants des minorités. Music and Songs of minorities. (PEO CD-921) 1997, booklet p. 17f
- ^ Percival R. Kirby: The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa. Oxford University Press, London 1934; extended new edition: Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg 1965
- ↑ Dave Dargie: "Umakhweyane": A Musical Bow and Its Contribution to Zulu Music. In: African Music , Vol. 8, No. 1, 2007, pp. 60–81, here p. 61
- ↑ The Khoisan word element !goma from comprehensive Bantu term ngoma derived
- ^ Gerhard Kubik: Musical Bows in South-Western Angola, 1965. In: African Music , Vol. 5, No. 4, 1975/1976, pp. 98-104, here p. 99
- ^ Emmanuelle Olivier: Categorizing the Ju 'Hoan Musical Heritage. (PDF; 774 kB) In: African Study Monographs , Suppl. 27, March 2001, p. 15f
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan heritage in the south of Angola , 1987, pp. 101–110
- ^ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan heritage in the south of Angola , 1987, pp. 116, 119
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan heritage in the south of Angola , 1987, p. 118 f.
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan heritage in the south of Angola , 1987, p. 134
- ↑ Uwe Maas, Süster Strubelt: Music in the Iboga initiation ceremony: polyrhythms supporting a pharmacotherapy. (PDF; 408 kB) Music Therapy Today, Vol. IV (3), June 2003
- ↑ Ekidongo. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (Belgium)
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, Sp. 1173
- ^ Roger Blench: A guide to the musical instruments of Cameroon: classification, distribution, history, and vernacular names. (PDF; 4.3 MB) Cambridge, July 31, 2009, p. 25
- ↑ Jennifer Johnstone, Richard Feinberg: From "Oriori" to the Everly Brothers: Observations on the Music of Nukumanu. (PDF) In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society , Vol. 115, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 365–381, here p. 366, (PDF; 604 kB)
- ↑ Jane Freeman Moulin: Music of the Southern Marquesas Islands. (PDF; 10.4 MB) In: University of Auckland (Ed.): Occasional Papers in Pacific Ethnomusicology , No. 3, 1994, p. 16
- ^ Frances Morris: Catalog of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments , 1914, pp. 30f
- ↑ Don Niles, Allison Jablonko, Andrew J. Strathern, and others. a .: Highland Region of Papua New Guinea . In: Adrienne L. Kaeppler, JW Love (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 9: Australia and the Pacific Islands. Routledge, New York 1998, p. 542
- ↑ Kirsty Gillespie: Steep Slopes. Music and change in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. 2. Duna ancestral music. Anu E-press, Canberra 2010
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, Sp. 1167
- ^ Roger Blench: Musical instruments and musical practice as markers of the Austronesian expansion post-Taiwan. (PDF; 654 kB) March 26, 2006, p. 7f
- ↑ The “Unari”, a one-part dragon music bow from Japan. windmusik.com
- ↑ Bali International Kite Festival. (July 1996) asahi-net.or.jp
- ↑ Richard Kinseher: The bow in culture, music and medicine, as a tool and weapon , 2005, p. 44f
- ↑ Cambodian dragon music sheet "Èk". windmusik.com
- ↑ Laurence Picken : The sound-producing instrumentarium of a village in North-East Thailand. In the same (ed.): Musica Asiatica. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, pp. 225-229
- ↑ Photo gallery: Documents relacionats amb la photo. Photo of a four-string waji from Nuristan
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, Sp. 1167, 1173
- ^ The Sidi Malunga Project. Rejuvenating the African Musical Bow in India. apsara-media.com
- ↑ Carole Boyce Davies (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora. Origins, Experiences, and Culture. ABC Clio, Santa Barbara (CA) 2008, p. 560, ISBN 978-1-85109-700-5
- ↑ Shanar , from Shānān: Edgar Thurston: Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Volume VI, P-S. Government Press, Madras 1909, p. 370 ( archive.org )
- ↑ Chris A. Gregory: The Oral Epics of the Women of the Dandakaranya Plateau: A Preliminary Mapping. (PDF; 101 kB) Journal of Social Sciences 8 (2), 2004, pp. 93-104
- ↑ Manohar Laxman Varadpande: History of the Indian Theater. Abhinav Publications, New Delhi 1990, p. 125, ISBN 978-81-7017-278-9 ; Alison Arnold (Ed.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 5: South Asia. The Indian Subcontinent. Garland, New York / London 2000, p. 367 f.
- ^ Otis T. Mason: Geographical Distribution of the Musical Bow. (PDF) In: The American Anthropologist , Vol. X, November 1897, pp. 377-380, here p. 380
- ^ Marshall Howard Saville : The Musical Bow in Ancient Mexico. (PDF) In: The American Anthropologist , Vol. XI, September 1898, pp. 280–284, here p. 283
- ^ Robert Stevensen: Music in Aztec and Inca Territory. University of California Press, Berkeley et al. a. 1976, pp. 22-27, ISBN 978-0-520-03169-2
- ^ Dale A. Olsen, Daniel E. Sheehy (Eds.): Garland Handbook of Latin American Music. Routledge, New York 2008, pp. 387, 474, ISBN 978-0-415-96101-1
- ^ John M. Schechter, Daniel E. Sheehy, Ronald R. Smith: Latin America. In: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 29, No. 2, spring-summer 1985, pp. 317-330, here p. 319
- ↑ Bernal Flores: La mulsica en Costa Rica. Editorial Costa Rica, San Jose 1978; based on a review by Gerard Béhague in: Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana , Vol. 3, No. 1, spring-summer 1982, pp. 128f
- ↑ Christian David Sauer: Sounds of Cars, Slavery and Resistance. The Afro-Brazilian musical bow Berimbau. ( Memento from October 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) journal-ethnologie.de, Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt 2008
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, Sp. 1171f
- ↑ George List: The Musical Bow at Palenque. In: Journal of the International Folk Music Council , Vol. 18, 1966, pp. 36–49, here p. 37
- ^ Frances Morris: Catalog of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments . 1914, p. 212 f., 195
- ↑ Kenneth Bilby: Music from Aluku: Maroon Sounds of Struggle, Solace, and Survival. (PDF; 7.9 MB) Booklet of CD 50412 from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2010
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. In: MGG, 1997, Sp. 1169
- ↑ The Mouthbow. mouthbow.org (contains the songs played by Buffy Sainte-Marie on a mouth bow)
- ↑ Appalachian Mouthbow Care and Feeding. Noteworthy Instruments
- ^ Gerhard Kubik: Africa and the Blues. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson (MS) 1999, pp. 12-15, ISBN 978-1-57806-146-4
- ↑ Jeremy Barlow: The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham 2005, p. 231, ISBN 978-1-84014-615-8