Tshidzholo
Tshidzholo , also tsijolo ( Tshivenda ), is a single-stringed half- tubular zither or bowl zither of the Venda in South Africa, bowed with a short bow . The tone of the obsolete instrument is amplified by the long, groove-shaped string support and, like an arch of the mouth , the player isolates individual overtones through a specific mouth position. The tshidzholo is a simpler and probably older form of the bowl zither segankuru played in Botswana and other countries in southern Africa and is also related to the sefinjolo of the Batswana , the sekatari of the Sotho in Lesotho and the stave zither isankuni of the Mpondo in the Eastern Cape province .
Design and style of play
According to their design, the simple string instruments are divided into musical bows with a flexible and curved string carrier and in rod zithers with a straight and rigid string carrier. The most extensive study of traditional South African musical instruments to date was published by Percival Kirby in 1934. He does not classify the pre-European stringed instruments of South Africa according to their comparatively simple shape, but according to their complex sound and distinguishes between three groups: (1) the overtones sound together as a chord , ( 2) the overtones are isolated to form a melody; and (3) the overtones, in harmony with the fundamental, create a simple form of polyphony . The first group includes (a) the calabash musical bow with an undivided string, which is typical of the Nguni ethnic groups, which is called uhadi by the Xhosa, ligubu by the Swazi and dende by the Tsonga , and (b) calabash musical bows with one string inside the middle-dividing vocal loop , such as the xitende and with the tsonga the dende of the Venda. The second group, in which individual overtones are isolated as a melody line, contains (a) the musical bow kha: s of the Nama in Namibia and the gora , whose string is blown, and (b) the trough zithers segankuru and tshidzholo . According to Kirby, four types of musical bows belong to the third group: (a) the mouth bow ! Gabus of the Koranna made from a slightly curved plant tube , the similar but almost straight umqangala of the Nguni, the mtyangala of the Tumbuka in Malawi, nkangala of the Chewa in Malawi, umquengele of the Zulu and lugube of the Venda as well as others, which organologically differ only little from a stick zither, (b) mouth arches with a thicker middle piece into which thinner sticks are inserted on both sides, e.g. the goukh: as of the Damara , the isitontolo of the Tsonga and Zulu , the lekope the Pedi and tshigwana the Venda, (c) with the mouth reinforced Schrapbögen as the nxonxoro the !Kung and xizambi ( tshizambi ) of the Venda and (d) oral bows with a straight thick rod, to which a thinner at one end curved rod is attached, including the older, now disappeared form of the umrhubhe of the Xhosa and the utiyane of the Swazi.
The tshidzholo is made from a branch of a softwood tree about 75 centimeters long and up to 5 centimeters thick. After removing the bark, the branch is cut in half lengthways to a length of about 10 centimeters, which is retained at one end. The inside of the halved section is cut out, leaving a semicircular long bowl or groove. Occasionally, a bamboo tube is split open and shaped accordingly. A hole burnt into the completely preserved end of the rod is used to hold a wooden tuning peg about 20 centimeters long, which protrudes equally far on both sides. The other end of the rod is pointed on both sides. A wire wound around the tip is stretched over the channel-shaped string carrier to the end of the tuning peg and tied there. The wire string moves away from the upper end of the groove at an acute angle and is a good 5 centimeters away from the string carrier at the peg. With the little finger of the left hand, which the musician places in a notch in the stick near the tuning peg, he brings the hand into the correct position while playing. The musician grips the tuning peg with the remaining fingers of his left hand. So he holds the stick diagonally down to the left and presses it with the upper end against his open mouth.
The bow of the bow consists of a six to eight inches long, curved branch that is notched close to one end and a little further away from the other end. Some cowtail hairs are tied at both ends as a covering. Their short length limits the size of the arch. The musician holds the bow between the fingers and the thumb of the right hand, using his thumb to push the hair outward to stretch it if the bow is almost straight. In the case of a strongly curved arch, he tensions the hair by pressing it inwards against the arch. The correct bow tension, the pressure on the string and the exact position in the upper area of the string determine which overtones are filtered out. More pressure on the page gives a higher tone.
The hollowed-out string carrier acts as a sound amplifier. In addition, the sound can be influenced with the mouth. The hairs of the bow rubbed with resin are stroked over the string in a counterclockwise circular motion. With the side of the thumb or a phalanx of the left hand, the musician shortens the string and thus receives a fundamental tone raised by a whole tone. Further basic tones can be created, but are not part of the usual playing style. For the formation of the melody, not the fundamental tones, but a series of overtones are needed. The tshidhzolo and the related single-string zithers are played as soloists and to accompany vocals.
Origin and Distribution
In southern Africa, single-string musical bows, which are amplified with a calabash resonator, mouth bows and stick zithers used to be common in a wide variety of forms. In addition, there were some rare pluriarc with multiple strings. Before the influence of the Europeans, to which the introduction of the plucked ramkie , simple string instruments derived from the violin , and from the 19th century the guitar and a box zither ( autoharp ) can be traced back, the Nguni in South Africa had no other multi-string instruments . Musical bows and stick zithers can be stimulated by plucking, striking and bowing the string, in the case of the gora by blowing the string or by rubbing the bow with a scraper. In the one-string of the strings Zithern carrier may be tubular, flat (as with the Platt rod Zither zeze ) or trough-shaped.
The latter type includes the tshidzholo of the Venda and the sefinjolo of the Batswana . Both names are linguistically related and can be traced back to Afrikaans viool for "violin", whereby the se- in sefinjolo is a prefix for Batswana nouns and tshi- in tshidhzolo (also ku- and lu- ) is a diminutive prefix and means "small" ( in the word Tshivenda means tshi- "language of ..."). Similar instruments are called in Botswana segankuru , occasionally setinkane in the Sotho in the Transvaal sekgobogobo or setsegetsege and the Sotho in Lesotho sekatari . According to Percival Kirby (1934), the isikehlekehle was hardly played by the Swazi, the ubhek'indhlela by the Zulu and the uhadi by the Xhosa. The etymology of segankuru and isankuni is unknown, both words do not belong to Bantu languages.
The linguistic derivation and the presence of a tuning peg make only a poor reference to the violin. Other role models cannot be specifically identified either. The style of play and the use of a hair-covered bow suggest a European influence. During his stay with the South African Khoikhoi from 1772 to 1776, the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman found a simple imitation of the violin called t'guthe , whose three to four strings stretched over a wooden board were bowed. Since then, the influence of the European violin on South African instruments can be demonstrated; David Rycroft (1966), on the other hand, does not consider a relationship to the tubular violins such as the endingidi in Uganda imported by Arab traders in East Africa to be likely. String instruments may have been stimulated with a rubbing stick even before the first European contacts. Shortening the string with the thumb is the usual playing technique for mouth bows, the only reinvention seems to be the use of a circularly moving hair bow.
Percival Kirby (1934) considers the mouth reinforcement in the tshidzholo to be the older playing technique compared to the segankuru , which mainly occurs in Botswana , in which, according to the principle of the calabash musical bow, a tin can put over the upper end of the string carrier takes over the resonance reinforcement, as described in 1928 . The Pedi in Transvaal call this instrument with a tin canister sekgobogobo , the Sotho sekatari and the Swazi their isikothroat. The ubhek'indhlela apparently took over the Zulu from their surroundings and modified them. The string carrier of the ubhek'indhlela is no longer hollowed out, instead the metal canister was nailed to the rod. In some examples, the string is not attached to the end of the rod, but to the sheet metal. This corresponds to the construction of the isankuni of the Mpondo in Pondoland . The isankuni has no tuning pegs and the metal canister is - unlike the segankuru - in the playing position below.
The transition from the mouth-reinforced rod zither, which is held diagonally away from the mouth, to a zither with its own resonator, which is leaning vertically in front of the upper body on a shoulder, follows the development from the mouth bow / hunting bow to the calabash musical bow. In his third group of instruments, Percival Kirby describes presumed intermediate stages on this path: At the beginning there is a long, thin bow like the outa of the Damara with a tuning loop (roughly central string division), which was held vertically and not reinforced with the mouth. The thin bow stick creates little resonance. Instruments of group 3b instead have a three-part string support made of a thick straight tube in the middle, which, corresponding to the hollowed-out string support of the tshidzholo, causes a certain amplification of the resonance and which is lengthened at both ends by thin curved bars ( isitontolo of the Ndebele , Zulu and Xitsonga , setolotolo of Sotho and lekope of Pedi). With the utiyane of the Swazi, umqunge the pondo and umrube the Xhosa and Zulu, a thin, curved rod is stuck in a thick tube only at one end (group 3 d). The player holds the tube against his mouth with the thin stick up and strokes the string with a roughened wooden stick. As with the tshidzholo , he produces a second root note by shortening the string with a finger on his left hand. The position of the mouth isolates individual overtones.
Apparently was the found in the 1930s by Percival Kirby and as with the mouth strengthened described tshidzholo also provided later with a Blechresonator. A picture by John Blacking (1979) from 1956 shows the pedi musician Gena Mohali, who is holding a tshidzholo, described as a “single-stringed fiddle ” with a folded sheet metal at the top, leaning vertically on his right shoulder and accompanying his singing with its playing .
literature
- Percival R. Kirby : The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa. (1934) 2nd edition: Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg 1965
- Tsijolo. In: Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world . Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 544
- David Rycroft: Friction Chordophones in South-Eastern Africa. In: The Galpin Society Journal , Vol. 19, April 1966, pp. 84-100
Web links
- Musical bow (tshidzholo?) . Museum of Fine Arts Boston (illustration of a tshidzholo from the 19th century. Length of the bamboo tube 67.5 centimeters)
- John Blacking: Venda Music. School of Music, University of Washington (in track 9 d, minute 2:06 to 2:39 is, in a recording from 1956 Gena Mohali from Tshakhuma southwest of Thohoyandou to hear, tshidzholo plays and sings.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, p. 196
- ↑ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, pp. 196-240
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: Music bows and music sticks. V. Playing techniques. 1. The vibration excitation. In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1997)
- ↑ Laurie Levine: The Drum Cafe's Traditional Music of South Africa. Jacana Media, Johannesburg 2005, p. 157
- ↑ Percival Kirby, 1965, pp. 215f
- ↑ Luvuyo Dontsa: The tonalities of the "Isankuni". In: The Galpin Society Journal , Vol. 60, April 2007, pp. 161–166, here p. 165
- ^ David Rycroft, 1966, p. 97
- ↑ Shumani Leonard Tshikota: The Noun and the Dictionary in Tshivenda. (Master's thesis) Stellenbosch University, 2001, p. 89f
- ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, p. 215
- ↑ Anders Sparrman : A voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antarctic polar circle and round the world: but chiefly into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres, from the year 1772, to 1776. Volume 1. GGJ and J. Robinson , London 1786, p. 229
- ^ David Rycroft, 1966, pp. 97f
- ^ Dorothy F. Bleek: The Naron. A Bushmen Tribe of the Central Kalahari. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1928, p. 21
- ^ Percival Kirby, 1965, p. 217
- ↑ Tandile Mandela: The Revival and Revitalization of Musical Bow Practice in South Africa . (Master thesis) University of Cape Town, 2005, p. 72
- ^ Percival Kirby (1965), plate 64
- ^ Percival Kirby, 1965, pp. 228, 239
- ^ John Blacking: Musicians in Venda. In: The World of Music, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1979; Pp. 18–38, here Fig. 6 on p. 28