Xizambi
Xizambi ( Xitsonga ), also zambi, tshizambi, chizambi, chimazambi, is an arch of the mouth among the Tsonga and neighboring ethnic groups in the south of Mozambique and in the north of South Africa , the notched string carrier of which is crossed with a stick. According to the sound generation as with a scraper instrument , the xizambi is a scrap bow or friction bow , according to the form a musical bow whose string is reinforced with the mouth, i.e. the simplest type of stringed instrument. At the same time, the rattling vessels attached to the stick are set in motion , which also turns the musical bow into an indirectly stimulated idiophone . The xizambi is considered the most popular traditional musical instrument of the Tsonga and is characteristic of their music.
Design and mood
A musical bow consists of a flexible and bent rod that holds a string tied at both ends under tension. A rod zither is constructed in a similarly simple manner, with a string stretched parallel over its rigid string support. In both cases, a resonance body is attached to the side of the rod to amplify the sound. With the mouth bow, the player's mouth, with which the string or bow stick is enclosed at one end, replaces the resonance body. Often the string is stimulated directly by regular hits with a stick, in the case of scraping arches the support rod passes the vibrations on to the string.
The slightly curved string carrier of the xizambi is 36 to 48 centimeters long, has a diameter of 1.5 centimeters and consists of a branch of Brachylaena discolor (Xitsonga mphata ). Between both ends of the string holder ( mphonwani ) a good one centimeter wide sheet strip is the string as Rohrkolbenart Typha capensis or Doumpalmenart Hyphaene petersiana (Xitsonga Nala , Shona MURARA tensioned). The player holds one end of the mouth arch with his left hand sideways from his head and presses the other end against the chin and cheek of the right side of his face so that the string passes between his lips. The slightly parted lips should not touch the string. With one or more fingers of the left hand, he can shorten the string by pressing on the side. On the side facing away from the player in this position, the string support is evenly notched in the middle area. To make the string carrier vibrate, it strokes the notches with the scraper in quick movements. The notches, the distance between which corresponds to the diameter of the scraper rod, are cut vertically with the knife, but not across the entire width of the rod, so as not to endanger its stability.
The scraper ( fahlwana ) consists of a straight wooden stick about 36 centimeters long, on which two or three fruit bowls filled with rattles (bean seeds or stones) are impaled as vessel rattles ( maronge ). A drilled wooden tube with a corrugated surface is attached to the upper, thinned quarter of the rod. With this, the player strokes the bow stick, while the other end of the scraper stick serves as a handle. With his right hand, he guides the stick from below and, with the pendulum movement, simultaneously makes a crackling noise from the seeds in the rattles. In terms of instruments, the scraper is assigned to the indirectly struck idiophones .
Above the inaudible fundamental , the open string produces a series of overtones . The second harmonic overtone can be heard constantly, even if the player shortens the string with one finger in order to produce notes one to four pitches (around 200 to 500 cents ) higher. Above the second overtone, the player generates a sound amplification from the third to the seventh (or ninth) overtone that can be influenced with his mouth. The string must not be too loose for the desired pitch, but if it is too tight it will break. The restrictive properties of the string and the limited grip options with the left hand result in a relatively standardized set of tones for the xizambi . You can mainly hear the fourth overtone, which is two octaves above the inaudible fundamental. For certain melodies, some musicians adjust the string tension or use an instrument of a different size. The constant back and forth movement of the scraper rod creates a constant string tone. The scraper complements a rhythmic pattern that can be even, choppy, loud or unstressed. The tones and tone sequences are memorized and taught by empty syllables, such as the syllable sequence hlawa-hlawa .
distribution
The xizambi is traditionally only played by men and is widespread except for the Tsonga of Mozambique and South Africa with the Hlengwe, Karanga and Ndau in the southeast of Zimbabwe and with the Ndau, Chopi and Tswa in the south of Mozambique. The ǃKung in Angola , Namibia and Botswana use the often somewhat larger scrap bow nxoronxoro ( nxonxoro ), which is held more forward with the left hand, which is why the player rubs the bow on the side facing him with the stick. This wand has no rattles. Instead of using the fingers, the nxoronxoro player can shorten the string with a short stick in the left hand. The music sheets of !Kung is either or have been out of their own tradition, such as the increased with the mouth Schrapbogen kawayawaya the Mbwela and Ng'kangela in Angola, from the Bantu taken. The previously used Schrapbogen n!kali the !Kung in Angola was the xizambi similar mouth bow, which was made of a wet branch.
The South African Zulu people are familiar with the rare shrap bow isizembe , reinforced with the mouth , the shape and name of which indicates an origin from the xizambi of the Tsonga. A corresponding scrap bow in the Venda is called tshizambi . The manufacturing methods of the scrap bow differ between the three ethnic groups. While Percival Robson Kirby (1934) describes that the xizambi string is first heated over the fire and then thinned at the ends so that the ends bend under the tension of the strings , with isizembe a green twig is freed from the bark at the ends thinned out and stretched with a string made from a leaf strip of the doum palm. A scrap arch reinforced with the mouth and played by men has been observed in Namibia . Its string carrier is straight in the notch area in the middle and bent up almost at right angles at the ends. Furthermore, scrap bows are common in the south of the Congo .
In addition to scrap bows, bowed musical bows are also used in southern Africa. The umrhubhe of the Xhosa is an arch of the mouth, which is held vertically downwards in front of the body and whose string is bowed with a thin rod. The player grasps the bow stick , not the string, with his lips while wrapping his lips. There are also single-string zithers, the string of which is bowed with a bow. One of the stick zithers is the isankuni , played in South Africa , whose straight string support protrudes from a tin canister that serves as a resonator. The shell zither segankuru is a little more elaborate and consists of a bowl-shaped hollowed-out wooden stick as a resonator and a tin canister, and it is believed to have originated from the zither tshidzholo reinforced with the mouth . Friction can also stimulate membranophones , such as the pwita rubbing drum played by the Humbi and Handa in south-west Angola , whose scratchy sound resembles a musical bow.
The way of combining two fundamentally different groups of instruments - string instrument and idiophone - is a specialty of xizambi , but in the African instrumental tradition numerous methods are used to change or supplement the melody with a noisy tone. The desired sound effect with xylophones is created by Mirlitone attached to the resonance bodies , i.e. from the combination of idiophone and membranophone. Such Mirlitons can also be found on the resonators of rod zithers. With stick zithers and musical bows, vessel rattles are often held in the hand together with the baton. Separate rattles, which the musician shakes while playing musical arcs, are particularly common in the East African inter-lake area. This way of playing came to Brazil with the gourd music bow berimbau . Berimbau players hold a wicker basket filled with seeds, stones or shells with a baton.
Style of play
The Tsonga know four musical arcs that are used in different social contexts. The xitende is an approximately 150 centimeter long calabash musical bow with a string made of copper wire and a vocal loop that wandering storytellers ( xilombe ) play because they do not need their mouths for this. As with the identical end of the Venda, the opening of the calabash is more or less pressed against the bare upper body in order to change the sound. The mouth arch xipendana, which is strongly curved at the ends and is 90 centimeters long, with an approximately central voice loop, is played only by girls, often two schoolgirls. The almost straight mouth arch mqangala , consisting of a plant tube about 60 centimeters long, resembles the type of the stick zither and corresponds to the mtyangala , which is only played by women in Malawi . For the Tsonga, the mqangala is mostly used by older men and their daughters.
The scrap bow is preferably played by professional court musicians in the vicinity of a chief in order to entertain the chief and the dignitaries who visit him. Around 40 percent of the Tsonga's folk music repertoire belongs to the category of beer drink songs, which are performed both at the chief's court and at all family celebrations (transitional ceremonies) that play a major role in the life of a Tsonga. The music at court also includes a female singing group, consisting of the chief's wives and other relatives, as well as dancers who perform the national dance muchongola and female drummers.
Sometimes the xizambi is also played by a storyteller who wanders from village to village, sings, dances and makes music, for which he receives food and a place to stay. Are even rarer xizambi playing hermit called mwarimatsi . The name means "child of the left-handed" and refers to the disdainful attitude of the Tsonga towards left-handed people. The left hand is the "hand of the monkey ( nfene )", it is used to go to the toilet and is therefore considered unclean. Food is offered with the right hand. Those outside of society, even if they are very good xizambi players, are called this way.
The playing technique with the scrap bow requires a continuously audible tone of the xizambi , in which an interruption is undesirable. Because the tone supply is less than required for most entertainment songs (beer drink songs), but the harmonic overtones are in stock, particularly high or low tones of the melody are transposed a fourth or fifth up or down for alignment . This is possible in the musical system of the tsonga without the listener losing the melody, because a descending pentatonic tone sequence is understood to be melodically identical with another that is parallel to it a fourth or fifth away. Typically, in a vocal group, part of the group performs the same melody parallel to fifths. In a song analyzed in 1982, the player uses C and G as main tones, which are produced with the open string. With the finger he shortens from C to D. In addition, the overtone A and other notes come with the shortened string. What is essential in this piece is the irregular rhythmic sequence of about 4 + 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 + 4 beats produced with the scraper.
The third, fourth, sixth and seventh overtones can best be amplified with the mouth. For the fifth overtone, the string is shortened with the finger instead. Starting from the fundamental c1, the player amplifies the third overtone g2 with a narrow mouth, the fourth overtone c3 with a normally open mouth and the sixth overtone g3 with a wide mouth. When singers accompany each other soloistically with the xizambi , which often happens, the playing is limited to the rhythmic rattling noises and the unchanging second overtone without using the mouth. Otherwise the xizambi accompanies a choir or plays with another xizambi , whereby the intervals (fourths and fifths) between the two instruments are based on the harmonic concept of Tsonga music.
The intervals that are so easy to reproduce on the xizambi are, for Thomas Johnston (1975), the presumed reason for its great popularity. With this he turns against the assumption of some ethnomusicologists that the widespread vowel harmony in southern Africa could, conversely, have been taken over from the existing intervals of the stringed instruments. Reasons for adopting the vocal harmony (singing in quart parallels) from the acoustic laws of musical arcs are the common occurrence in areas where musical arcs are to be found and the observation that singers who accompany themselves with a musical arch, their singing on the set the musical possibilities of the instrument. Counter-arguments for the other hypothesis, according to which the stringed instruments are selected according to the demands made by vocal music, are: In vocal music, melodies often occur alternately in parallel fourths and fifths, while stringed instruments always produce only the same intervals. Vocal music is regionally and significantly more widespread in the various social classes than the use of the musical bow. The fact that the xizambi is one of the musical arcs that can produce a number of nuances , but which are never used in the songs, seems to confirm the specifications from vocal music.
literature
- Thomas Johnston: Xizambi Friction-Bow Music of the Shangana-Tsonga. In: African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music , Vol. 4, No. 2, 1970, pp. 81-95
- Thomas F. Johnston: Tsonga Musical Performance in Cultural Perspective (South Africa) . In: Anthropos, Volume 70, Issue 5./6, 1975 pp. 761-799
- Thomas F. Johnston: Tsonga Bow Music . In: Anthropos , Vol. 77, Issue 5/6, 1982, pp. 897-903
- David K. Rycroft, Andrew Tracey: Xizambi . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 5, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 342f
Web links
- Chizambi . Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection
Individual evidence
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston, 1982, p. 897
- ↑ CTD Marivate: South Africa, Republic of. 4. Tsonga music (i) Musical instruments. In: Oxford Music Online
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world. Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 597, "Zambi"
- ↑ Scraped mouth bow (xizambi). Museum of Fine Arts Boston ( Xizambi from the 19th century, arch length 58 centimeters. A corrugated wooden tube attached to the scraper is not available here.) Zambi, xizambi . Percival Kirby Musical Instruments (illustration of a scraper stick wrapped in plant fiber)
- ↑ Thomas Johnston (1970, p. 82)
- ↑ David K. Rycroft, Andrew Tracey, 2014, pp. 342f
- ^ Gerhard Kubik : Theory of African Music. Volume 1. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) Chicago University Press, Chicago 1994, p. 223
- ^ Gerhard Kubik: The Khoisan legacy in the south of Angola. Forms of movement, bow harmonics and tonal order in the music of the ' Kung ' and neighboring Bantu populations. In: Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Music cultures in Africa. Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin 1987, pp. 82–196, here p. 134
- ^ Percival Robson Kirby: The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa . Oxford University Press, London 1934
- ↑ Tandile Mandela: The Revival and Revitalization of Musical Bow Practice in South Africa. (Dissertation) University of Cape Town, 2005, p. 18f
- ^ Minette Elaine Mans: Namibian Music and Dance as Ngoma in Arts Education . (Dissertation) University of Natal, 1997, pp. 22, 420
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: African string instruments. Museum of Ethnology, Berlin 1984, p. 24
- ↑ See David Dargie: The Xhosa “Umrhubene” Mouthbow: An Extraordinary Musical Instrument. In: African Music, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2011, pp. 33-55
- ^ Gerhard Kubik: Musical Bows in South-Western Angola, 1965. In: African Music , Vol. 5, No. 4, 1975/1976, pp. 98-104, here pp. 99, 103
- ^ Ulrich Wegner: music bow. V. Playing techniques. 5. Idiophonic elements in the stick zither game. In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1997)
- ↑ Thomas F. Johnston (1975, p. 765)
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston: The Cultural Role of Tsonga Beer-Drink Music . In: Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Vol. 5, 1973, pp. 132–155, here p. 150
- ↑ Thomas Johnston, 1970, pp. 83f
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston, 1982, pp. 888f
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston: The Music of the Shangana-Tsonga. (Dissertation) University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 1971, p. 27f
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston, 1982, p. 901
- ^ Thomas F. Johnston, 1975, p. 773