Nzumari

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Shrill- sounding zumari on Zanzibar .

Nzumari also zomari, Zumari, nzomari, ndzumari, nzumara, ndhumari, Somari , is a conical double reed of wood or horn and metal having four to six finger holes, in a plurality of Arabic ZAMR, mizmar , derived pronunciation variants in the East African Coast South Somalia is distributed along the coast of Kenya ( nzumari ) via Zanzibar ( zomari ) to the Comoros ( mzumara ). Other names for this type of cone obo , which occurs throughout the Orient, are bungo among the Giriama in northern Kenya and anjomara or kabiry on the northwest coast of Madagascar . Typologically related is the algaita , which belongs to the Islamic culture of North Africa . In East Africa the spread of the cone oboe probably started from the island of Lamu and from some ethnic groups belonging to the Mijikenda on the Kenyan coast.

origin

The zūrnā in Algeria belongs to the one-piece oriental cone
obo type surnay .

The Swahili culture on the East African coast emerged towards the end of the 1st millennium with several cities being founded in an area of Bantu-speaking groups. From the 8th century onwards, Arab trading establishments and an incipient Islamization of the coastal towns can be proven archaeologically. In the centuries that followed, Zanzibar , Lamu , Kilwa and other coastal cities began to flourish . As early as the end of the 1st millennium, there were probably trade contacts from the Malay Archipelago and India via the Indian Ocean to the East African coast and along this south to Madagascar. Under the rule of the Sultan of Oman , Zanzibar was the main hub of the East African slave trade from the 17th to the 19th centuries . In the 19th century, Arab traders and Swahili founded some settlements in the interior along the transport routes of the supra-regional caravan trade, such as Tabora and Ujiji in Tanzania and Kisangani in the Congo.

Through the centuries-old trade contacts, African , Arabic and, since the 20th century, Indian influences can be recognized in Swahili music . The wind instruments can be roughly divided into cross-blown natural horns of African origin, Arab-Persian flutes and European trumpets . The latter are called tarumbeta in Kiswahili and are played in procession music at celebrations. The group of African wind instruments includes the transversely blown antelope horn baragumu , which is known in southern Africa as phalaphala , was used in the 19th century by the Swahili as a war horn and is generally used ceremonially for calling for meetings. The most important ceremonial horn was the long, ivory siwa , which was one of the ruler's insignia. Of the few flutes, the unusual ludaya of the Bagisu in eastern Uganda could be a regional development, while the flute chivoti found on the Kenyan coast bears similarities to the Indian bansuri . The assignment of the ibirongwe played east of Lake Victoria by cattle herders of the Kuria is also unclear .

Some flutes in East Africa could be regional creations, others are probably of Near Eastern origin, such as the open length flute nai or semaa on the Tanzanian coast, which is derived from the nay , which is widespread in the Islamic Orient . In contrast to the shabbaba flute belonging to this area of ​​folk music, the nay is an instrument of classical music and can also be used in an Islamic-religious context. This distinguishes nay or nai from the cone oboe, which is also widespread throughout the Orient, to which the East African nzumari belongs. The oriental cone oboes are considered impure for religious music and unsuitable for court chamber music because of their loud, piercing sound. They are commonly used for joyful music at outdoor festive events, usually in conjunction with the double-headed cylinder drum davul ( tapan in the Balkans ).

etymology

Kiswahili nzumari is derived from the names of Arabic wind instruments with single or double reeds, including mizmār for generally "woodwind instrument" or in particular for an Egyptian cone oboe and zummāra for a double reed pipe . The underlying Arabic consonant root zmr does not specifically stand for wind instrument, it can also appear in the word for a string instrument and initially denotes "sing", the utterance of the human voice including the process of inhaling and exhaling. In zummāra the meaning "throat, throat, windpipe" is contained and this leads to the association of the scream of a donkey via the blowing of the bagpipe made from a leather tube ( zummāra al-qirba ). Also Latin sum (m) arius ( "Saumtier") communicates with zmr in relationship. The word environment ( zamara, zimāra ) means “to blow into a reed instrument”, “to play a reed instrument” in Arabic.

According to the African understanding, a musical instrument is generally not “played” and a wind instrument is not “blown” because the verb used for the activity of making music often belongs to the word context “strike” or “sing”. In Kiswahili, not only xylophones are “struck”, such as kupiga mbila (“playing a xylophone or lamellophone ”), but also wind instruments, which is why it is called kupiga tarumbeta (“playing the trumpet”, literally “beating the trumpet”) and accordingly kupiga nzumari . In the south of Malawi, on the other hand, they say kuyimba bangwe ("playing the zither", literally "singing a zither").

distribution

Algaita in northern Cameroon .

Musically, the conical double reed instruments on the East African coast belong to the group of the Arab-Persian surnay and the Turkish zurna . These wind instruments, which reached East and Southeast Asia with the spread of Islam, have a one-piece music tube, the cylindrical shape of which widens conically at the lower end. Linguistically, the word context surnay , which also includes shehnai in India and suona in China , is not related to zmr , but rather goes back to Arabic-Persian nay for "wind instruments". The surnay type, which was introduced in the Islamic period after the 7th century, spread with the Ottomans from the 14th century at the latest to Europe, where it has been preserved in the Balkans. In sub-Saharan Africa, double-reed instruments presumably also came predominantly from the oriental-Islamic cultural area, but they are rare there overall and in some cases could also come from pre-Islamic times.

Typologically, the nzumari are closer to the multi-part cone oboes in North Africa, which consist of a conical chime, an attached wide bell and a long metal mouthpiece with a lip support . They are known in the Sahel as algaita and, together with the double-headed tubular drum ganga, form a separate type of ensemble that is used for ceremonial and popular music. A related ensemble, which appears exclusively at ceremonies, consists of several metal long trumpets kakaki , several algaita and ganga drums. The algaita was spread across North Africa with the Islamic expansion and reached Europe via the Iberian Peninsula. The (western) algaita type, which can be distinguished from the one-piece cone oboes , came to Africa independently and earlier than the (eastern) surnay type.

With the East African caravan trade , some musical instruments made their way inland from the Swahili coast in the 19th century. Sukuma and Nyamwezi porters brought nzumari , the antelope horn barghuni and the raft rattle kayamba to the villages along the trade routes, where they themselves took part in the local ngoma dance festivals.

Design and style of play

Somalia

The nzumari cone type is common on the East African coast from southern Somalia to Madagascar. For Somalia, reference is made to the Italian ethnologist Vinigi Lorenzo Grottanelli (1947), who found cone oboes among the Gubahin, former black African Somali slaves who knew the instrument under the Swahili name parapanda . Grottanelli mentions the explorer Nello Puccioni, who in the 1930s found two cone oboes with the local name simbar or sombar in the area of ​​the southern Somali town of Merka and wrongly called them "clarinet trumpets". Grottanelli's remarks aim to prove a Southeast Asian origin for the cone oboes and other musical instruments. Following the theory of diffusionism at the time, he considered it possible to spread the cone oboe from West Asia to China, on to Indonesia and from there to the East African coast.

Lamu

On the small island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya, the focus is on Islamic-religious music . The largest religious ceremony of the year is maulidi , the birthday of the prophet , during which several frame drums with a bell ring ( twari , plural matwari ) and small cylinder drums ( kigoma ) are used together during processions . Another musical form that is also practiced at maulidi is the singing samai (from Arabic samāʿ , “to hear”), which, in addition to the two drums , is accompanied by the short length flute nai . These three instruments are reserved for religious occasions. The Kegeloboe Zumari ya ntapa shortly Zumari is used to Lamu in the entertainment and music accompanied mainly dances at weddings. Until recently it was also part of rituals of possession ( pepo ). George W. Senoga-Zake (1986) states that the zumari was first introduced to Lamu by the Somali Bajuni and later adopted by the Giriama and then by other ethnic groups on the Kenyan coast.

The zumari consists of an approximately 25 centimeter long, conical play tube made of wood (preferably made of teak , Swahili msaji ) with usually five, exceptionally six finger holes, a bell and a blown pipe with a wide lip support. At around 36 centimeters, the total length is slightly longer than on the mainland. The double reed is made from a leaf of the palmyra palm. About an instrument with five finger holes produces the series of tones fis 1 -a 1 -c 1 cis 1 -f 2 -fis 2 . Usually the tone sequence of the nzumari is pentatonic .

On Lamu, the bowling oboe is played with several different drums ( goma, chapuo, mdundo, vumi and the military drum beni , which was introduced by Europeans in the 19th century , derived from “band”) in an ensemble to accompany the dance. As traditional percussion instruments, the raft rattle kayamba and the buffalo horns pembe ( pembe, “animal horn”; especially “buffalo horn” in Kiswahili means vugo ), which are beaten with a stick by women in processions, are added . One of the dances is the chakacha , which is popular among the Swahili at weddings on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts , in which the women dancing in a circle move their hips in belly dance fashion . Further dances are the stylized sword dance of the men chama , the stick dance of the men goma , the circle dance for both genders msondo and the stick dance kirumbizi performed at weddings . In these and other dances, the trumpet has been preferred to the zumari since the end of the 20th century . Modern bands also use keyboards, saxophones, guitars and drums.

Kenyan coast

The nzumari , which is played by the Digo , Giriama and other ethnic groups belonging to the Mijikenda on the Kenyan coast, has a total length of 30 to 40 centimeters, a cylindrical or slightly conical playing tube and a conical bell. According to a description from 1975, the Digo instrument consists of a 15-centimeter-long playing tube made of bamboo ( mvumgo ), in older specimens also made of ivory, and a wooden bell that is attached with a braided cord. The nzumari has four to five finger holes at the top and one thumb hole at the bottom. The double reed is made from a regional type of reed grass. The bell made from the root wood of the mchumbu tree ( Lannea schweinfurthii ) has a diameter of about 7.5 centimeters and a length of 9 centimeters. The hole in the play tube is 1.7 centimeters. The mouthpiece measures 8 centimeters, the reed is 2 centimeters wide and 3 centimeters long. The player takes the mouthpiece with the wide double reed far into the mouth so that the reeds can swing freely and blows with circular breathing .

The standard ensemble for the accompaniment of the sengenya dance, which is mainly cultivated by the Digo, consists of six wooden drums of different sizes and a metal plate ( patsu or ukaya ) that provides the beat from the melody instruments nzumari and chivoti , a transverse flute. The plate is not beaten with the hands like the cream used in Yemen , but with two palm leaves. Some of the rhythm instruments may be dispensed with, but at least one of the two wind instruments is always required. In the normal cast, the nzumari and chivoti players stand on both sides of the drummers, who introduce the rhythmic basis at the beginning of the piece, on which the chivoti supplements melodic phrases and variations on the musical theme. After a while the nzumari takes over , after which the two wind instruments alternate several times. The leading dancers sing one or two songs during a performance, the melody of which is repeated by the choir of the other dancers. The wind instruments only start again after the songs have ended.

With the Duruma, another subgroup of the Mijikenda, the bungo or nzumari is a much longer cone oboe that occurs in three voices. The highest bungo has a total length of 75 centimeters and, with its four finger holes, produces the tone sequence a – h – e 1 –f sharp 1 –b 1 . The bungo consists of five parts. On the wooden game tube ( mwanzi a conical bell () is kivute or kinu ) from the wood of a Würgefeigenart ( mugumo ) plugged. At the upper end of the play tube, an inserted, thinner intermediate piece ( kigingi ) made of wood leads to a conical brass tube ( kinari ), onto which a wide, round lip support ( chivo ) made of a coconut shell or other vegetable material is attached . The reeds are larger than in the other nzumari and arranged twice opposite each other.

The bungo is played solo or together with drums and rattles. To accompany an alternating song , the Giriama play an ensemble with a bungo , several pipes and the kayamba rattle . Dancers also wear rattling vessels on their legs. On a sound recording from 1993, the bungo player adds a rhythmic ostinato to the percussion instruments with his deep-sounding instrument , while he moves freely between the dancers and musicians.

Residents of a village or a district in East Africa meet weekly for events called ngoma with dance, song and instrumental music, at which social and religious disputes are also negotiated. Ngoma played an important role in the colonial era for all social classes as a forum to express complaints to the administration, and for some groups ngoma was and is a magical-ritual dance festival that is part of circumcisions, weddings and other transitional ceremonies. Ngoma groups from different areas meet for weekly dance and music competitions. For ngoma members, their group is structured in three hierarchies. The leader should be a skilled songwriter and a person capable of leadership. In second place are qualified drummers, singers and lead dancers as well as professional nzumari or trumpet players who are hired for individual performances. The majority of the group is made up of the dancers, background musicians and choirs who participate, even if they are not very experienced.

At circumcisions and weddings, women perform the ngoma singing style vugo , which is named after the "buffalo horn". The buffalo horn struck with a stick is the only indispensable musical instrument in this performance. The women strike the horn at a constant pace and chant as they march down the street in procession. For Vugo -Gesang includes the dance kishuri, in which the women swing their hips in a circle. In larger cities such as Mombasa , Malindi and on Lamu, male musicians take part in vugo and the nzumari is replaced by the tarumbeta (trumpet). In a special performance described in 1984, vugo ya kuingia ndiani , about 30 women were involved, about half of whom beat a buffalo horn and the other half a frame drum. There was also a male nzumari player, two women who beat small, vase-shaped clay drums sambuku , and a leader and a leader of the group. In general, women often play musical instruments in vugo , only the nzumari is always blown by a man. In the almost always male ensemble accompanying the chakacha dance, an nzumari or a tarumbeta provide the melody. The typical male ngoma ensemble in the men's dance goma (similar to the women's dance vugo ) consists of an nzumari, several different drums ( goma, kunda, small double-headed cylinder drum chapuo ) and the idiophon upatu (round metal plate, food tray, which is used to reinforce the resonance during play) put in a saucepan). In addition to their entertainment function, the dances promote the cohesion of the community.

Zanzibar

Zumari at the dance msewe on Pemba, which is named after the basket rattle msewe worn by the dancers.

On the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania , in addition to the best-known musical style containing Arabic, African and Indian elements, taarab , which was introduced at the Sultan's court in the 19th century , and the religious recitation style maulidi , in which stories from the life of the prophet Mohammed are recited two other traditional styles that are also of Arabic origin: Sambra and Sharaha fall under the umbrella term ngoma . While a large single-headed drum, also called ngoma, is typically used in ngoma performances , in Zanzibar the small double-headed cylinder drum mirwas (Arabic, plural marāwīs ) is struck in these two musical styles . In sambra music, the main melody instrument is the five-string lyre simsimiyya ; in sharaha music, the nzumari is the focus. The rhythmic pattern for accompanying the taarab singing often comes from both styles .

In 1925, the British colonial official William Harold Ingrams mentioned an obsession dance (as part of the pepo cult) in Zanzibar against the malicious spirit Nyange , which was performed by women and accompanied by a male ensemble. They played the large kettle drum mrungura , standing on three feet , the three-legged drum mshindo , which was open at the bottom , the small barrel drum chapuo , the brass plate upatu and the nzumari . At certain intervals, the women danced from the tent in which the treatment of the possessed patient was taking place, out and back again.

Comoros

The Comoros are culturally linked to the Swahili coast. Since the 1st millennium, Arabs, Shirazi, Sakalava from Madagascar, black Africans, Indians and some Europeans have settled on the island . Shirazi are a subgroup of the Swahili who, according to their legend of origin , came across the sea in 975 with Ali ibn al-Hassan from Shiraz , the founder of Kilwa in Daus , and who now live mainly in Zanzibar and Pemba. The ethnic ties are reflected in the use of the musical instruments used in the gendered traditional musical styles. Women prefer the single-headed frame drum tari without a bell ring (in Sansibar tari, from Arabic tār ), men prefer the large double-headed cylinder drum fumba (in Sansibar vumi ), which is used in obsessional dances by men. Further parallels are the metal plate patsu (on Sansibar upatu ), the raft rattle nkayamba (on Zanzibar kayamba ), the five-string short-necked lute gabus (i) (name related to the Yemeni qanbus and the kabosy in Madagascar), the box zither ndzedzever ( ndzendze ), the East African flat bar zither zeze ) and the cone oboe mzumara , which the Sakalava of Madagascar call anjomara . All the string instruments mentioned and the bowling oboe are only played by men. The mzumara is over 50 centimeters long, has a wide bell and a relatively small lip support. Pronunciation variants of Comorian mzumara are ndzumari, and on the island of Mayotte , where Mahorish is spoken, ndzumari or nzumara .

literature

  • KA Gourlay: Nzumari . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 618
  • George W. Senoga-Zake: Folk Music of Kenya . (1986) Uzima Press, Nairobi 2000
  • Timkehet Teffera: Aerophones in the instruments of the peoples of East Africa . (Habilitation thesis) Trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

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  3. ^ Roger Blench: The worldwide distribution of the transverse flute. Draft, October 15, 2009, p. 13
  4. Timkehet Teffera, 2009, p 32, 271
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  6. Martin Vogel : Onos Lyras. The donkey with the lyre. (Orpheus-Schriftenreihe 16) Volume 1. Verlag of the Society for the Promotion of Systematic Musicology, Düsseldorf 1973, p. 340f
  7. ^ Gerhard Kubik: Some basic terms and concepts of African music research. In: Ders .: To understand African music. Lit, Vienna 2004, pp. 64–66
  8. Christian Poché, Razia Sultanova: Nachbarāy. In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  9. Timkehet Teffera, 2009, p 261
  10. Alfons Michael Duration : Tradition of African Wind Orchestras and the Origin of Jazz. (Contributions to jazz research, vol. 7) Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1985, p. 76f
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  14. George W. Senoga-Zake, 2000, p. 164
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  16. See Everett Shiverenje Igobwa: Taarab and Chakacha in East Africa: Transformation, Appreciation and Adaptation of Two Popular Music Genres of the Kenyan Coast. In: Conference on Music in the world of Islam . Assilah, August 8-13 August, 2007, pp. 1-8
  17. ^ Alan Boyd: The musical instruments of Lamu. In: Kenya Past and Present, No. 9, 1978, pp. 3-7
  18. ^ KA Gourlay, 2014, p. 618
  19. Timkehet Teffera, 2009, pp. 270f
  20. Asante Darkwa: Sengenya Dance Music: Its Instrumental Resources and Performance . In: Journal of International Library of African Music , Vol. 7, No. 1, 1991, pp. 48-54, here p. 49
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  22. George W. Senoga-Zake, 2000, p. 165
  23. Timkehet Teffera, 2009, pp. 269f
  24. ^ Rebecca Kathleen Gearhart: Ngoma Memories: A History of Competitive Music and Dance Performance on the Kenya Coast. (Dissertation) University of Florida, 1998, p. 42
  25. ^ Carol A. Campbell, Carol M. Eastman: Ngoma: Swahili Adult Song Performance in Context. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 28, No. 3, September 1984, pp. 467-493, here pp. 472, 476, 480
  26. Janet Topp Fargion: The Music of Zenj: Arab-African crossovers in the music of Zanzibar. In: Journal des africanistes, Vol. 72, No. 2, 2002, pp. 203-212, here p. 205
  27. ^ William Harold Ingrams : The People of Makunduchi, Zanzibar. In: Man, Vol. 25 , September 1925, pp. 138-142
  28. ^ Tanzania - Ethnic Groups. African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania
  29. ^ Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer: Culture Contact and Musical Style: Ethnomusicology in the Comoro Islands. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 1970, pp. 458-462, here p. 461
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