Ngoni

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Boat-shaped pike lute ngoni . Bassekou Kouyate 2014 in Wuppertal

Ngoni , also nkoni , is a one to seven string plucked skewer lute in Mali . In the Manding language , the stringed instruments with a boat-shaped body and an open skin cover , which are widely used in West Africa, are referred to as ngoni in addition to their regional names . This also includes changes in the history of development, which lead away from the lute instrument type through an upright bridge with notches or holes and towards the harp bridge .

Origin and Distribution

Lute instruments in the Sahara and Sahel zone of West and Central Africa have either a boat-shaped or slightly waisted sound box , which consists of a hollow solid piece of wood, or a circular body made from a calabash . In both cases, the neck, which consists of a round rod, is passed longitudinally just below the skin cover without emerging again at the lower end. They therefore belong to the inland skewers or - because of the open top shape of the resonance body - to the shell skewers.

Similar stringed instruments with a long stick-like neck can be seen on wall paintings in burial chambers of the ancient Egyptian 18th dynasty . Henry George Farmer first pointed out the connection between ancient Egyptian and Maghrebian lute instruments of the gunbrī ( gunībrī ) type in 1924. From Egypt the gauntlet spread up the Nile to the Kingdom of Kush (7th century BC to 4th century AD). With the migration from the Sanhadschas (a Berber tribe ) to the west, they should have come to the Maghreb and into the western Sudan zone . In this region they form an instrument group that is not related to the stringed instruments of the Arabic music introduced by the Arabs in the course of Islamization , as Farmer also assumed. They are nonetheless widespread in areas that were Islamized by the Arabs from the 11th century onwards because they asserted their place in entertaining and ritual folk music. The tubular spit violins, such as the Ugandan endingidi , which are mainly known in East Africa, have a different design and origin .

The skin-covered string instruments with a bowl-shaped body are equally represented in Moorish-Western Saharan and Western Sudanese music. In addition to plucked sounds, there are also numerous one or two-stringed spit violins bowed with a round bow, some of which are called goge, goje or similar between Niger and Northern Ghana and are similar to the imzad played by the Tuareg . The missing pegs are characteristic of all instruments . Instead, the strings are attached to the neck with leather straps that can be moved for tuning. The plucking of the North African Berbers, comparable to the ngoni , is the box-shaped three-string gimbri (also sintir ) used by Gnawas in Morocco and a round gimbri played by the Stambali musicians in Tunisia , the box-shaped single-stringed fiddle ribab of the Moroccan Schlöh- Berber, the loutar of the Imazighen (Berbers in Morocco), the Mauritanian tidinit and the three-stringed tahardent of the Tuareg.

The lute instruments south of the Sahara have between one and seven, most commonly four, strings. In addition to the three or four-string ngoni in Mali, there is the xalam in Senegal, which is called Wolof . Fulfulde and Soninke speakers there know the four-string gambare . This is likely to be related to the Moroccan gimbri (also gunbri, guinbri and guimbri ). The Fulbe call their three-stringed instrument gaaci, hoddu or nkoni, the Mandinka their five-string konting (or kontingo ). The name molo is known by the Fulbe and in the east to the Hausa in Nigeria. In the north of Niger , the southeastern distribution area of ​​the Tuareg (Tuareg group Iwellemmedan ), their sounds are called tahardent, also molo , the Hausa there also call their sounds garaya . Where the ngoni is played there is the simpler single-string molaaru . The inland spit lute among the Kutin people in northeastern Nigeria is called mulore.

Akonting, round pike lute with a calabash body and a continuous stick

The most important instrument in Bori -Besessenheitskult the Hausa is the one-stringed spike fiddle for centuries Goge . Since the beginning of the 20th century, the plucked molo (three strings), garaya (two strings) and kwamsa (two strings) have been used for this purpose.

Certain African pluckings may have been a model for the forerunners of today's American banjo . With the Atlantic slave trade , West Africans were dragged off as workers to the plantations in the New World , where from the 17th century they made plugs with circular calabash resonators. They were called banza, bania, bangil or something similar. For the first time in 1678 an instrument called banza was described there in connection with the dances of the blacks. The doctor Thomas Winterbottom, who worked in Sierra Leone from 1792 to 1796 , used the comparative word banja , by which he meant the banjo of the Caribbean , to describe the three-stringed molo of his adopted country . Until the 19th century, such gauntlets, with the truss rod sticking out from below, were used to accompany black African songs and dances in the Caribbean. A West African model can still be found today in the three-string akonting with a calabash body. This instrument, played by the Diola in the Casamance region in Senegal, has a very long, continuous neck. Boat-shaped wooden inland skewers like the ngoni , on the other hand, can only be identified as a rare exception among Afro-American slaves.

Lute

Narrow skewer lute with wooden body. Bassekou Kouyaté plays ngoni

The resonance body of the ngoni is boat-shaped and narrow, hollowed out thin-walled from a block of wood and covered with cowhide, which is nailed to the side. The most common ngoni (also koni ) has four or seven strings and is about 60 centimeters long. A larger, deeper form is called ngoni ba , a smaller and higher sounding ngoni micin . The four-string instrument has two shorter outer strings that are tuned to the basic notes of the melody to be played and plucked empty. The two longer strings in the middle are shortened with the fingers of the left hand on the bridge. Other strings attached below are also short and increase the range. As with the harps, the tuning is mostly pentatonic . Rhythmic accents are tapped on the body with the fingers. The ngoni is probably the oldest accompanying instrument used by the professional award singers and storytellers, who in Mali are called jelis (commonly known as griots ). The range is from one octave to one octave plus fifth . The strings used to consist of ponytail hair , today only nylon cords of different thicknesses (fishing lines) are used.

The ngoni of the Bamana is slightly larger than the koni of the Mandinke and Xasonka (all Mande -speaking ethnic groups). The storyteller accompanies himself with the deeper sounding instrument, while Jelis usually play the koni in pairs with other traditional and electrically amplified instruments. Occasionally, an animal horn plate is attached to the index finger with a leather strap to amplify the sound. The index finger operates the two long strings, the middle finger operates the short lower strings in an upward motion and the thumb plucks the upper short string. The melodies are heavily decorated and complemented by tapping on the body.

Tidiane Koné , who founded the Rail Band in 1969, is considered one of the best ngoni players . Through his interaction with the American blues musician Taj Mahal , Bassekou Kouyaté from the Ségou region became internationally known. His fellow musicians include the kora player Toumani Diabaté and Kélétigui Diabaté at the balaphon . Other ngoni players are Mama Sissoko, Sayan Sissoko, Fuseini Kouyate and Moriba Koïta.

Development from the lute to the bridge harp

Kora bridge harp

In the case of the lutes, the strings run over a bridge parallel to the top of the body or, in the simplest case, parallel to a stick (stem lute). In harps, the string plane is perpendicular to the top and neck. In principle, the development towards the West African harps, the most famous of which is the kora , may have originated from the gauntlet. In order to increase the number of strings, they are no longer guided horizontally over the flat bridge, but rather over a vertically positioned bridge that has notches on the edge or a row of holes in the middle. The bridge lifts the strings from the ceiling and divides them evenly into two vertical planes to the left and right of the bridge.

The oldest forms of these instruments have about six strings. These include the six to ten-string simbingo and the six-string donso ngoni , both of which are played by the hunters of the Mandingka. These hunter harps have a raised bridge with three notches on each side, so the strings run vertically in two rows. They are considered to be the direct forerunners of the kora with a hole bar and 21 strings arranged in two rows (biplane), which are also attached to the long neck with leather straps on this complex instrument. The truss rod is pushed right through the body of the harps and protrudes slightly from the underside. The strings are intertwined into a knot with a notched bar directly behind the bar or come together with a perforated bar on an iron ring that is attached to a notch on the rod protruding below.

The development from the piercing lute to the bridge harp (other name: harp lute) is more difficult to understand with a special form of bridge harps that have a long, curved neck, such as the six-string kon with the Dan in the west of the Ivory Coast. Outwardly they resemble the East African bow harps without a bridge, to which the Ugandan ennanga belongs and which are common in the west as far as Cameroon. Bow harps rarely have more than eight strings, while the largest bridge harp occurs in the Bissagos archipelago and has 24 strings.

While the gauntlet occurs equally in the black African south and among the Berbers in and north of the Sahara, the jetty harps were limited to the Sudan region. In the Mauritanian Sahara, ardin, a unique angle harp that has nothing to do with the bridge harps, occupies the musical field. The ardin has no bridge, its neck leaves the top of the body at an obtuse angle. There was no need for the parallel development of a bridge harp next to the ardin .

Some bridge harps and lutes are easy to confuse because of their names. With the donso ngoni long mythological stories are told about the hunt ( donso means "hunt"); two instruments belong to the ensemble of the Nya obsession cult in the south of Mali and above all to Wassoulou (Wasulu-) music, which became particularly well known through Oumou Sangaré . The donso ngoni is plucked with the thumb and index finger of the left hand, while the right hand resting on the neck only uses the thumb. The leather rings on the neck are difficult to move, making the instruments difficult to tune.

There is also the kamale ngoni , a six-string harp newly developed by Allata Brulaye Sidibe in the 1950s, which is occasionally equipped with guitar pegs ( kamale means "youth"). He also made the first sound recordings on this harp in 1977. Its pentatonic and a fourth higher than the donso ngoni tuned strings (CDFG-Bb-c) are also plucked with the left thumb and index finger and with the right thumb. It is used more for lighter dance music.

The goni in the Dioula around Bobo-Dioulasso is slightly larger than the kamal ngoni and has eight (to ten) pentatonic DFGAcdfg strings. As with the kora, the body of the three instruments mentioned consists of a circular calabash .

The traditional music of the hunters can be divided into three groups: lightly played light music to accompany the athletic dances of the younger hunters; ritual hunting songs reserved for more mature men who have earned some social recognition; as well as listening to epic heroic songs performed at the end of the hunting rituals. The only heptatonic tuned harp is the simbi of the Malinke hunters with a calabash body.

literature

  • Eric S. Charry: Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology). University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 978-0226101620
  • Lucy Durán, Aurelia W. Hartenberger: Nkoni. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 601f
  • Gerhard Kubik : West Africa. Volume 1: Ethnic Music. Delivery 11. (Werner Bachmann (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures. ) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1989
  • Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. (New episode 41. Department of Ethnic Music V.) Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin 1984, pp. 135–142, 175–184

Web links

Commons : Ngoni  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry George Farmer : The Arab Influence on Music in the Western Soudan . In: Musical Standard XXIV, 448 , November 1924, pp. 158f
  2. ↑ Eric Charry: Plucked Lutes in West Africa: An Historical Overview. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 49, March 1996, pp. 3-37, here p. 3
  3. ↑ Charry, 1996, p. 13; Curt Sachs , Reallexikon der Musikinstrumenten , 1913, p. 201b, keyword Kambre , describes a lute instrument widespread from Senegal to Niger, which the Sarakole call gambare .
  4. ^ Kubik, pp. 80, 86, 94
  5. ^ Dena J. Epstein: The Folk Banjo. A Documentary History. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 19, No. 3. University of Illinois Press, September 1975, pp. 347-371, here p. 351
  6. ↑ Shlomo Pestcoe: The Ngoni / Xamam Hypothesis. ( Memento from April 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) shlomomusic.com
  7. ↑ Lute. Ngoni-2. Hartenberger World Music Collection
  8. ↑ Charry, 2000, p. 189
  9. ^ The ngoni, a plucked lute from West Africa. www.coraconnection.com
  10. ^ Kubik, p. 188
  11. ↑ Wegner, p. 176
  12. ^ Kubik, p. 188
  13. ↑ Charry, 2000, p. 80
  14. ^ The Family of the Kora. www.kora-music.com
  15. ↑ Charry, 2000, pp. 83f