Toka (rattle)

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Pati toka held in one hand and pounded in the other

Toka , also tokā, tokka, taka, thorká ( Assamese টকা ), is a fork-shaped bamboo rattle that is used in the northeast Indian state of Assam for the rhythmic accompaniment of folk songs and dances at religious festivals.

Design

According to their length, a distinction is made between three variants of the simple idiophone , which is circumscribed with a hammer or a split tube , and which all consist of a thick bamboo tube. The smaller pati toka or haat toka (“hand toka ”) is a 30 to 90 centimeter long bamboo tube that has been slit from one end lengthways in the middle to just before the ovary at the other end. The fixed end of the tube, cut about ten centimeters behind the ovary, serves as a handle. So that the split halves can swing with greater mobility and can be hit against each other, they are cut into a narrow strip from the ovary to about a third of their length. The player holds the toka with one hand at an incised point and hits the two free ends in the other palm or he holds the pipe at the lower end and shakes it so that the freely swinging fork ends quickly hit each other and produce a sound like a rattle . The Bodo speakers in Assam call this rattle thorka .

The much larger bor toka or maati toka (“bottom toka ”) is made from a bamboo tube with three internodes . The standing musician places the toka , which is about man's height, vertically in front of him on the floor.

In some regions of Assam there is a 13 internodal bamboo rattle that is operated by several players. The five or more meters long, slotted bamboo pole is positioned horizontally between two wooden supports on festive occasions.

Another percussion instrument made of bamboo is called gintang in Assam , also jeng toka (“string toka ”) or dhutong . In the gintang , two thin, parallel strips are cut out as strings between two ovaries from the epidermis and placed under the ends with small pieces of bamboo so that the strings are lifted slightly from the tube and stretched. The string length is determined by wrapping the string around the tube at both ends. The beaten with sticks to the strings, and optionally the tube instrument belongs to the Hornbostel-Sachs to the idiochorden (of the same material existing) bamboos zithern . If the bamboo strings are shortened with the fingers, percussive sounds can be produced in different pitches. A similar tubular bamboo zither in northeast India is the chigring among the Garo in Meghalaya state ; in Andhra Pradesh and Oriya the ronzagontam occurs. They can be seen as distant forerunners of the rod zither rudra vina . Bamboo tube zithers outside the region are the sasando on the island of Roti in Indonesia and the valiha in Madagascar . Slotted bamboo tubes without strings are assigned to the slotted drums , which in India are mainly found in Assam.

origin

The Sanskrit term for mostly wooden rattles, which is widespread in northern India and is kartal . On the one hand, this refers to two wooden sticks, which are hit against each other mainly by dancers in stick dances (stick rattles), and on the other hand, short pieces of wood that are knocked together in pairs like castanets with one hand (record rattle) or, today, mostly more elaborately shaped rattles with recesses for the thumb and the remaining fingers as well as with inserted cymbals , which are also played in pairs with one hand. A fork-shaped metal rattle is the chimta in northwest India and Pakistan.

The most original rhythmic vocalizations are clapping hands, stamping feet and other body actions. In the ancient Indian Shukla Yajurveda ("White Yajurveda"), clapping hands ( panighna ) are mentioned as a separate division of musicians in a large orchestra (Sanskrit talava ). As the figures show, ancient Indian ensembles mostly consisted of musicians, singers and instrumentalists. On a relief from the stupa of Bharhut (2nd / 1st century BC), for example, four dancers, two musicians with bow harps ( vina ), two drummers and three people are shown clapping their hands or beating sticks ( danda ) use and possibly also sing. Clapping your hands is still a common way of marking the meter and is cultivated in Indian classical music . Clapping of hands preceded the use of idiophones (which perhaps began with striking pebbles), and fork clapping appears to be a simple, mechanical extension of clapping hands. The rhythmic structure is generally called tala ( tal, talam ) in Indian music .

Assamese jaw harp gagana made of bamboo with handle.

The diverse uses of bamboo are characteristic of East and Southeast Asia, including among the Tai peoples , who are therefore given the nickname “bamboo culture”. The Tai include the Ahom , who came to Assam from southern China along with other Tai peoples at the beginning of the 13th century and ruled this region until the beginning of the 18th century. Some bamboo plants were planted by Assamese Vishnuits for religious worship. In addition to household items, numerous musical instruments (idiophones and wind instruments) are made from bamboo in Assam. The Klappern kartal in Assam consist of split segments of a bamboo cane. Gagana ( gogona ) is the Assamese frame jaw harp made of bamboo, which sounds quieter than the south Indian, metal ironing toll drum morsing . Bamboo flutes ( bahi ) occur as transverse flutes (otherwise in northern India bansuri , bansi, muruli ) and as longitudinal flutes, which are rare in India. An Assamese musical instrument with a fork-shaped slotted bamboo stick that belongs to the plucked drums is called lao-tokari .

distribution

The bungkaka occurs in the north of the Philippine island of Luzon .

In the case of beating forks, the plant tube is slit into two parts at one end. Bamboo forks are part of the old Malay musical culture and came or are found in many regions of the Malay Archipelago and in Polynesia . The Torajas in the south of Sulawesi consider the bamboo fork rere to be sacred and ghost-driving. Women perform a dance in which they suling the rere , the bamboo flute , the bowed spit lute arabebu (corresponds to the rebab ) and occasionally the pipe lele'o made from a rice stalk . For the Kalinga, an indigenous ethnic group on the northern Philippine island of Luzon , one of the Igorot , the bamboo beating fork is ballingbing alongside the tubular bamboo zither kolitong , the pounding pipes tongatong and the jaw harp kulibaw (related to the genggong ), one of the musical instruments made from a thick-walled type of bamboo. Other Igorot groups refer to their bamboo forks as bilbil, bungkaka, pahinghing, patuaw or pakkung . In his dissertation published in 1958, Hans Fischer also mentions a 50 centimeter long bamboo fork with two tongues on the Murray Island south of New Guinea .

In addition, there are one-handed rattles called beating rods or flatbeds, which consist of a short piece of pipe on the internode as a handle and a longer section divided into three or many small strips. These are shaken (rattle) or cracked open (whipping tube). Punch rods are occasionally used in Indonesia and California , the best known is the pu'ili bamboo rod used in pairs in Hawaii . Two differently long, multiple slotted bamboo segments are shaken or hit against the body during the pu'ili .

In the Balkans , according to descriptions from the 1960s, fresh corn stalks, slit open in the shape of a broom, were used as children's toys to produce noise. Such a corn stalk is called pokalica odet klepétec (“little rattle”) in Slovenia . The latter name is related to klepetalo , as a plant tube slit in three fork strips is called in Bosnia and Herzegovina . For such a three-part beating fork made from a corn stalk, isolated documents are known from Turkey , where the children's toy is called şakşak .

The Italian Jesuit and natural scientist Filippo Bonanni depicts a rattle consisting of three wooden strips in his work Gabinetto armonico pieno d'instrumenti sonori ("Showcase of musical instruments") in 1723 , which is held by a round wooden handle and moved like a handbell . He calls this instrument, in which the two movable side parts strike against the rigid axis in the middle, crotalo del mendico ("rattle of the beggars"). Apparently, beggars drew attention to themselves in Italy.

Style of play

The toka was probably not originally used for making music, but as a noise instrument for elephant hunting. A bamboo rattle of the same type was used in Karnataka for elephant hunting ( khedda ). A group of men circled Klapper hitting the alleged whereabouts of the animals, which were ultimately driven into a trap.

As a rhythm instrument, the toka accompanies songs and dances. Many styles of singing and dances are part of the Assamese- Hindu festival calendar, in which Indian and southern Chinese traditions have been incorporated. Bohag Bihu is a spring festival celebrated by all population groups in mid-April (in cultural terms and at the same time as Songkran in Thailand), which was adopted from an old fertility cult in the Hindu tradition. Young women and men perform in the several days and nights lasting hard a special Bihu- Reigentanz mainly from the barrel drum on, dhol ( durum ) or Doppelkonunstrommel khol and the buffalo horn pepa is accompanied. Other musical instruments that are not necessarily used in bihu dances at the same time include toka, the bamboo jaw harp gagana and the pair basin bartal ( bihutal ). Drums, buffalo horns and the clatter of bamboo can be heard from afar during the outdoor performances.

literature

  • Dilip Ranjan Barthakur: The Music and Musical Instruments of North Eastern India . Mittal Publications, New Delhi 2003
  • Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments of India: Their History and Development . KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1978, p. 59f.
  • Ṭokā. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 5, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 27

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roger Blench: A guide to the musical instruments of NE India: classification, distribution, history and vernacular names. (Draft) December 2011; Fig. A thorka : Photo 26 on p. 17
  2. ↑ Sivasagar Bihu 2013 Longest Toka, Pepa Rongpur Festival. Youtube video
  3. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments. National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, p. 71
  4. ↑ Heinrich Zimmer : Old Indian life: The culture of the Vedic Aryans according to the Samḣitā. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1879, p. 290 ( at Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, pp. 28, 42
  6. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: Musical Instruments. National Book Trust, New Delhi 1977, pp. 15, 18
  7. ^ GK Gosh: Bamboo: The Wonderful Grass. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi 2008, p. 192
  8. ↑ Praphulladatta Goswami: Hindu and Tribal Folklore in Assam. In: Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1967, pp. 19–27, here p. 24
  9. ↑ Dilip Ranjan Barthakur, 2003, p 117f.
  10. ^ Paul Collaer: Southeast Asia. Music history in pictures. Volume 1: Ethnic Music. Delivery 3. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1979, p. 138
  11. ↑ Ballingbing. Musical Bamboo Instruments
  12. ^ Hans Fischer : Sound devices in Oceania. Construction and play technique, distribution and function. Strasbourg 1958, reprint: Valentin Koerner, Baden-Baden 1974, p. 92
  13. ↑ Hans Fischer: Polynesian Musical Instruments: Inner Polynesian Structure - Extra Polynesian Parallels. In: Journal of Ethnology, Volume 86, Issue 2, 1961, pp. 282–302, here p. 288
  14. ↑ Pu ili . In: Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world. Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 423
  15. ↑ Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, pp. 41-43
  16. ^ Filippo Bonanni : Gabinetto armonico pieno d'instrumenti sonori . Placho, Rome 1723 ( figure crotalo del mendico )
  17. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva, 1978, pp. 59f.
  18. ^ Yasmin Saikia: Religion, Nostalgia, and Memory: Making an Ancient and Recent Tai-Ahom Identity in Assam and Thailand. In: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 65, No. 1, February 2006, pp. 33–60, here p. 47
  19. ↑ Dilip Ranjan Barthakur, 2003, p. 44
  20. ↑ Hem Barua: The Bihu Festival. In: Indian Literature, Vol. 16, No. 3/4, July – December 1973, pp. 35–43, here p. 35