Umqangala

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Umqangala ( siSwati and isiZulu ), also umqengele (isiZulu), is a mouth bow that belongs to the musical tradition of the Nguni ethnic groups of Zulu , Xhosa , Swazi and Ndebele in South Africa . Depending on the ethnic group, women or men are more likely to play the umqangala , which they reinforce with their mouth at the end of the rod and pluck the string with a finger or hit with a thin rod. Starting in South Africa, the shape, name and playing style of this mouth bow type spread in the 19th century to the north of Malawi , where the mtyangala occurs , among other things .

Design and style of play

Zulu musician around 1900. Left arch of mouth umqangala , the string of which is plucked at the mouth with a finger of the right hand and shortened with the thumb of the left hand. Right calabash musical bow without tuning loop.

A mouth bow corresponds to the shape of a musical bow , in which the sound is amplified and modulated not by a resonance body brought into contact with the string carrier , but by the mouth held against the string carrier or the string. The string support generally consists of an elastic wooden rod which is curved to a greater or lesser extent by the string stretched between its ends. The rod of the umqangala is a reed (isiZulu umhlanga ) about 60 centimeters long , which is almost straight, so that the distance between the string in the middle is only a few centimeters. The pipe is cut when it is green. When dried in the air, it takes on a slight curvature without any external influence. In practice, this type of musical bow approximates the simple bar zither , in which the string is held at a distance from the straight and rigid string support on one or both sides by a piece of wood pushed underneath. In this widespread oral arch type, the string can be made of plant fibers, animal tendons, twisted hair, wire or nylon. According to Percival Kirby (1934) the Swazi and Zulu use a somewhat longer and thicker string support for umqangala than other ethnic groups and prefer a string made from cattle tendon ( umsinga ). The tendon is tied at one end with a multiple wrap around the rod and at the other end with a knot. Today a nylon fishing line is used instead of the tendon. The Zulu umqangala is sometimes decorated with engraved designs . A rattle made from parts of snail shells is attached to some instruments and produces a rhythmic sound.

The musician holds the stick of the umqangala at one end in front of his mouth and touches it lightly with his lips. With the left hand, the other end protruding to the left is held in such a way that the string protrudes outwards away from the body. The string is plucked close to the mouth with a finger of the right hand or struck rhythmically approximately in the middle with a stick in the right hand. At the same time, touching it with the thumb or finger shortens the string at one point at the far end. This creates a further fundamental in addition to the fundamental of the open string. The Xhosa usually use the fundamental tone one whole tone higher for the umqangi of the mouth . The Venda shorten the string of their lugube in two places, resulting in three basic tones. The Zulu also play three basic tones. The Zulu musician Bavikile Ngema, born in 1951 in the municipality of Nkandla , creates these by shortening the string with the thumb and forefinger. To a much greater extent, the oral arch play is shaped by the mouth. The volume of the oral cavity can be changed with the tongue in order to emphasize individual overtones . In the same way the sounds are at Jew's harps produced. The height of the fundamental tones depends on the string tension, which must be dimensioned so that the volume of the oral cavity is sufficient to amplify the desired overtones.

In the alternating play of the open and shortened string, two superimposed overtone rows emerge, from which the players create a pentatonic scale. It is possible that the Zulu, who also use the pentatonic scale, have adopted this from neighboring ethnic groups, such as the Sotho, Khoikhoi and San , for their oral bow play . Since the oral bow player cannot sing herself, she is occasionally accompanied by a singer who performs the overtone melody of the oral bow with or without words. A special feature is the Xhosa mouth bow umrhubhe , which is stroked with a stick , in which the musician adds a whisper and thus arrives at a two-part melody line. With the Nguni men often play the umqangala type of mouth bow , with the Sotho and Venda it is mostly women and girls.

distribution

Almost all musical bows in southern Africa are used to form melodies, only the lipuruboro hunting bow in the Kavango region in Namibia is used as a rhythm instrument . Music arcs can be classified according to their shape, the type of sound generation or the sound result. The latter is considerably more complex than the simple construction would suggest. Percival Kirby (1934) divides musical arcs according to their sound into those in which (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 are a simple form of the Result in polyphony . The first category includes calabash musical bows with an undivided string, such as segwana (for the Setswana ), dende (for the Tsonga ), ligubu (for the Swazi) and uhadi (for the Xhosa), as well as calabash musical bows with a string in the middle dividing vocal loop , such as xitende (with the Tsonga), umakhweyana ( umakhweyane ) with the Zulu, tshikala or dende (with the Venda ), sekgapa (with the Balobedu) and tshitendole (with the Tsonga). The second category includes the khas of the Nama in Namibia and the gora , the string of which is blown, and the tshidzholo ( tsijolo , among the Venda) and segankuru and sekgobogobo (among the Pedi ). In the shape and length of the strings, the gora corresponds to the umqangala .

Kirby counts four types of musical arcs in the third category, which is focused on sound generation. Of these, the first, widespread type, to which the umqangala belongs, contains simple mouth arches with an almost straight pipe string support. Other names of variants of this mouth arch are mtyangala with the Tumbuka in Malawi, nkangala with the Chewa in Malawi, umquengele with the Zulu, lugube with the Venda, lekope with the North and South Sotho , lengope with the Setswana, chidangari and kadimbwa with the Shona in Zimbabwe and the Chewa in Mozambique , inkinge with the Mpondo ( Eastern Cape Province ), inkinge with the Xhosa and ! gabus with the Griqua (formerly “Korana- Hottentots ”). Like the umqangala, they all have an almost straight string carrier, only the ! Gabus is slightly more curved and shows most clearly the relationship to a hunting bow. The shape, name and style of playing the South African mouth bow umqangala spread in the 19th century to Malawi ( gkaggala in the south, mtyangala and nkangala in the north of Malawi) and to the southwest of Tanzania ( nkangala ).

The umqangala type with a straight, uniform rod differs from mouth bows with strings that taper at one end or are reinforced by a piece of wood in the middle and which are equipped with a tuning loop. These include the thsigwana of the Venda, the lekope Sotho and the isitontolo of the Swazi and Zulu. The third type consists of mouth arches with a notched string backing that is rubbed with a stick, like the xizambi of the tsonga . Nguni Women on the coast on both sides of the border between South Africa and Mozambique play alongside the umqangala the grater mouth bow isizenze , not the end of the bar, but the string is amplified by mouth with that. In the fourth type, the string carrier is composed of a rigid, straight tube and a thinner, elastic rod inserted into this at one end. The Pondo call this type of mouth bow umqunge , the Xhosa and Zulu call their instrument umrube .

Umqangala and umqengele are diminutive forms of umqangi and umqunge . These similar-sounding names, which come from Khoisan languages, are believed to have been used to designate several different musical arcs in southern Africa. The onomatopoeic quality of these words includes the palatal click q, which indicates that they may have been introduced specifically to denote the arches of the mouth struck with a staff. In the past, this name could also have meant the mouth bow umrhubhe, which is now drawn with a stick , whereby the word umrhubhe, also borrowed from the Khoisan languages, contains the voiceless velar fricative rh (u) , which seems to imitate the rubbing sound of the bow onomatopoeically.

An early example of umqangala as a name for a mouth bow is Henry Balfour, The Natural History of the Musical Bow (1899). Balfour's main thesis is the evolutionary development - which is no longer absolute today - from a hunting bow, which is occasionally used as a musical instrument, to a mouth bow used only for making music, to a musical bow equipped with a resonator. The umqangala consists according Balfour of a rod held in the mouth and a chord is struck with the thumb and index finger of the right hand in an up and down movement. The Tyrolean priest Franz Mayr (1908) describes the umqangala a little more precisely . A photograph in this work shows several Zulu musicians playing different musical bows and the reed flute igemfe . The South African social anthropologist Eileen Krige describes briefly the arch of the mouth in The Social System of the Zulu (1936) and also mentions that the string is shortened with a finger and plucked with the thumb.

The tradition of this type of musical bow has declined sharply in South Africa, but it is maintained in some areas, especially among the Zulu. These include some villages in the province of KwaZulu-Natal , particularly in the Maputaland region on the coast in the northeast of this province. There it is played mainly by girls and unmarried young women (isiZulu izintombi ) who express their longing for a future bridegroom with lyrical songs. The price verses ( izibongo ) directed at a certain person represent an expression of one's own identity and individuality in a society that is strongly based on the cohesion of the group. The izibongo are non-metric, they are performed with different pitches, but are not actually considered as Singing ( ukuhlabelela ). It happens that the girls accompany their award verses themselves with the umakhweyana musical arc , presumably in individual cases another girl accompanies the umqangala . The umqangala is generally not used by the Zulu girls to accompany singing, but as an instrumental translation of certain forms of song. In addition to the mouth bow, the girls play introduced by Europeans in the 19th century Maultrommel isitweletwele or isitolotolo.

literature

Web links

  • Umqangala. Youtube Video (Bavikile Ngema plays umqangala at the Bow Music Conference, University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2016)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tandile Mandela, 2005, p 27
  2. ↑ Angela Impey, 2006, p. 59
  3. ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, p. 225
  4. ↑ Percival R. Kirby, 1934, pp. 222f
  5. ↑ Bavikile Ngema. Bow Music Conference, University of Kwazulu-Natal
  6. ↑ David Dargie: Umakhweyane: A Musical Bow and is Contribution to Zulu Music. In: African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2007, pp. 60–81, here pp. 72, 80
  7. ↑ David K. Rycroft, Andrew Tracey (2014, 141)
  8. ↑ Dave Dargie: Ruwenge: Researching a Kavango Jew's Harp, South Africa. tranquanghaidanmoivn
  9. ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, p. 196
  10. ↑ David K. Rycroft: Umakhweyana . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 5, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 140
  11. ^ Percival R. Kirby: The Gora and its Bantu Sucessors: A Study in South African Native Music. Bantu Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1, 1931, pp. 89–109, here p. 96 ( doi : 10.1080 / 02561751.1931.9676255 )
  12. ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1934, p. 220
  13. ^ Gerhard Kubik : Malawian Music. A Framework for Analysis. Center for Social Research, University of Malawi, Zomba 1987, p. 8
  14. ↑ Angela Impey, 2006, pp. 60f
  15. ^ Percival R. Kirby, 1965, pp. 220, 225, 235, 239
  16. ↑ Dave Dargie: The Xhosa Umrhubhe Mouthbow. An Extraordinary Musical Instrument. In: African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2011, pp. 33-55, here pp. 36f
  17. ^ Henry Balfour: The Natural History of the Musical Bow. A Chapter in the Developmental History of Stringed Instruments of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1899, p. 13
  18. ^ Franz Mayr: A Short Study of Zulu Music . Adlard, London 1908
  19. ^ Eileen Krige: The Social System of the Zulu. Longmans Green and Company, London 1936
  20. ↑ Tandile Mandela, 2005, p 23
  21. ^ Rosemary Joseph: Zulu Women's Music. In: African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1983, pp. 53-89, here pp. 61, 77
  22. ↑ Elizabeth Gunner: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Women as Composers and Performers of “Izibongo”, Zulu Praise Poetry. In: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Special Issue on African Song) Fall 1979, pp. 239–267, here p. 265
  23. ^ Angela Impey: Songs of the In-Between: Remembering in the Land that Memory Forgot. In: Peddie Ian (Ed.): Popular Music and Human Rights. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) Ashgate, London 2011, pp. 39–52, here p. 44
  24. ↑ Rosemary Joseph, 1983, pp. 80, 84