Zeze (lute instrument)

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A Mgogo (singular from Wagogo) plays izeze and sings in a dance group.

Zeze , also sese, izeze, chizeze, is a bowed or plucked, single or multi-string bowl skewer , which is played mainly by the Wagogo, a Bantu ethnic group in the Dodoma region in central Tanzania and occasionally in other regions of Tanzania . A typical izeze of the Wagogo has two or four strings, with up to 13 strings.

The Swahili -Wortumfeld zeze , that can mean in a general sense "string" or "stringed instrument", also referred to the widespread in East Africa Platt bar Zither zeze , a musical bow of Sandawe in central Tanzania and also a doubt celled tube drum of Bati-language group in Congo .

Origin and Distribution

In the case of pike sounds, the long straight neck, usually consisting of a wooden stick, goes through the body and protrudes a short distance from the underside. The lutes with a straight spear are widespread in North and East Africa. The inland skewers that occur throughout West Africa and the Maghreb represent a special form , in which the neck inserted into the body ends inside and becomes visible at an opening in the lower area of ​​the ceiling. The strings are connected to the bridge through this opening. The inland spit sounds ( ngoni , tidinit , imzad ) can be traced back to images from ancient Egypt and were spread with African cultures in the Sudan region.

The West African shell skewers with a continuous spear of the goge type in northern Nigeria occur in a wide area where, from the middle of the 11th century, an Arab-Islamic influence prevailed from the north. They belong to black African music, but are at least partly related to the Islamic culture of North Africa. The East African philistines have a different and much more recent history of origin. The single-stringed fiddles spread during the 17th to 19th centuries through the East African slave and ivory trade from the coast with Arab traders and their Swahili-speaking porters inland. At that time trade routes led through the settlement area of ​​the Wagogo and Nyamwezi in what is now Central Tanzania to the Congo. In the 18th century the spit-shell violins reached Lake Malawi . In addition to Tanzania, the bowl-skewer violin is particularly popular today at its southern limit of distribution, which is in southern Malawi and northern Mozambique . Another bowl skewer violin is the lokanga bara in Madagascar . The use of a bow connects the zeze with the single-stringed trough zither segankuru played in southern Africa .

According to the body shape, these fiddles are divided into shell skewers, box skewers and tubular skewers. The Ethiopian masinko , which is related to the Fidel rabāba of the Bedouins , belongs to the box spit lute . They are typical for the entire Arabized north of Africa, on the other hand the East African pipe spit violin endingidi , which was only brought to Lake Victoria in trade caravans at the end of the 19th century , can be traced back to Chinese relatives of the erhu type . An Indian origin (cf. ravanahattha ) can also be considered for the zugozogo , which only became popular with the Sandawe in central Tanzania in the early 1960s, and for other tubular spit violins that reached the Congo via Uganda in the 20th century . The ekegogo is a tubular spit violin in the Kuria district in southwestern Kenya.

With the popularization of guitar music at the beginning of the 20th century, which began mainly in those coastal areas where several string instruments were already being played, numerous older string instruments and lamellophones disappeared from everyday life.

The wagogo in the Dodoma region have the most mature tradition of playing different bowl skewer violins in all of Tanzania. With them, single and multi-string fiddles are known as izeze, zeze or chizeze . In addition , one-stringed fiddles called zeze are also found among the Ngoni in the Ruvuma region, among the Nyamwezi in the Tabora region , in the Singida and Kigoma regions in the west, with the Sukuma on the south bank of Lake Victoria ( Mwanza region ) in the regions Mara and Kilimanjaro on the northern border of Tanzania and in Mtwara and Lindi on the coast of the Indian Ocean in the south.

Design

Earlier bowl-neck lutes with the Wagogo had only one string; When Gerhard Kubik visited the Singida region in 1962, a two-string fiddle, which was also called chinwenwe , was particularly popular . The name contains the onomatopoeic syllables nwe nwe , which are supposed to express the bowing of the fiddle with the bow. The izeze can have between one and 13 strings, and it can be bowed with a bow or plucked with your fingers. Sometimes musicians practice both playing styles at the same time. Bowed izeze usually have two or four (five) strings. All instruments have in common a round rod as a string carrier and a spherical calabash as a resonator, from which a flat segment has been cut off at the top. The upper opening is covered with an animal skin (often goat or Nile monitor ) as a cover . A smaller opening on the floor serves as a sound hole. The round rod runs through the calabash near the edge and protrudes a short distance at the opposite end. The usual length of the instrument is 45 to 60 centimeters. The strings, which today are made of steel wire, are attached to a row of rear wooden pegs drilled through the round rod and run over a bridge placed in the middle of the membrane to the rod extension to which they are tied. The arch generally consists of a branch bent to a segment of a circle, which is covered with a covering made of sisal fibers , fibers from baobab or animal hair. The bow hairs are rubbed with resin. Alternatively, the strings can be struck with a wooden stick. A typical izeze of the Wagogo has four strings and a sound box made from a calabash or coconut shell, the opening of which is covered with snakeskin; other resonators consist of a wooden cylinder.

In a current method of manufacturing a calabash skewer, a ring made of solid wire is first placed around the outer edge of the upper opening. This is connected in several places by loops made of a thinner wire with a second wire ring on the inside. The wire loops drawn through the drill holes in the calabash wall are tightened inside with pliers. The outer wire ring secures the animal skin, which is then pulled up in a moist state and nailed close below the ring. A string wrapped around the nails, which are not yet completely hammered in, keeps the skin taut during the drying time. When the skin and calabash are completely dry, the string can be removed and the skin cut to fit. In the next step, the string support rod is inserted through the holes drilled on the side and glued in place. The branch of a star bush , Grewia bicolor (local name mkole ), is suitable as a bow stick , which is sawn off and sanded to a length of about 60 centimeters. The dark tree resin used as bow resin (local name mclachi ) is heated and, in a liquid state, spread into the lower throat between the string carrier and the calabash. The bow hair can be rubbed in at any time before and during the game.

The strings are attached to the tip of vertebrae that protrude upwards from the round rod of different lengths, so that they are not parallel, as is usual with a lute instrument, but in a vertical plane and run towards the bridge at an acute angle. The longest string is furthest from the string carrier. The izeze 's wealth of forms today is mainly due to Hukwe Zawose (1940–2003), one of Tanzania's most valued musicians. Zawose was born in Dodoma and learned the folk music tradition of the Wagogo as a child. In 1967 he was discovered by the then Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere , at a time when the preservation of traditional music ( muziki wa asili ) was a political goal, and later engaged for the national dance company. On behalf of the government, he taught the folk music of his home region in Bagamoyo , where he had moved with his family.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Zawose was instrumental in developing new zeze shapes, the largest of which is over a meter long. With common (four-stringed) instruments, the strings are led over a flat piece of wood with incisions as a bridge parallel to the ceiling. Only in the middle of the truss rod are the strings far enough apart that they can be plucked. Zawose developed an inclined bridge with an attached wedge, which increases the distance between the strings perpendicular to the ceiling and makes it easier to strike the strings individually with the bow. With a four-string izeze , three strings are passed over the wedge and the fourth string is passed through a hole in the bridge so that it can be plucked better.

The further west on the border with Burundi living Waha a one-stringed comes zeze ago with a gourd body is nailed to a goatskin ceiling. The string and bow hair are made of sisal fiber . The string is attached to the tip of a protruding vertebra so that it runs roughly parallel to the string carrier. The bow is much smaller than the fiddle and consists of a thin branch curved into a segment of a circle. Today the guitar has largely replaced the zeze at the Waha .

Style of play

Three izeze , two percussion instruments and vocals with the Wagogo, Tanzania

The Wagogo were culturally influenced by the Nyamwezi in the west and the Maasai in the north, but their music differs significantly from that of their neighbors. In the music of the Wagogo there is a form of polyphony in which melodic phrases of different lengths and rhythmic structures are performed simultaneously by the musicians and singers and are superimposed to form a cross-rhythmic structure. In contrast to the pentatonic melodies of the intermediate lakes area (highlands between Lake Victoria and the lakes of the East African Rift ), the tone system in central Tanzania is based on a partial tone series , the intervals of which become narrower as the pitch increases. The tone sequence is tetratonic from the fourth to the eighth partial and hexatonic from the sixth to the twelfth partial . A special feature of this polyphony is the harmonic system of the Wagogo, which was previously called the Quartorganum . The Wagogo use the partial tone series over a single root and use it selectively from the fourth through the ninth (sometimes tenth) partial. Gerhard Kubik recognized the tonal principle in the polyphonic singing of the Wagogo as a harmonic progression, in which fourth intervals progress to fifths reduced by a semitone and further down to perfect fifths. The perfect fifth forms the melodic resting point. The Wagogo transfer this harmonic phrase of the polyphonic singing to instrumental music, such as the izeze and the lamellophone ilimba . The harmonics and the tonal system of the Wagogo are interdependent. The mostly two-part, occasionally three-part chords use the tetratonic scale and, if extended, the pentatonic scale. All other tones are considered foreign. The interrelationships between voices, ilimba and izeze are obtained by a so-called skipping process, in which the second and third voice each produce the next but one note on the scale while moving on the parallel higher or lower melody. The Central African pygmies also produce a characteristic polyphonic overall sound by superimposing them by combining yodelling with the one-tone flute hindewhu .

Ilimba and izeze are combined with singing. The tuning of both instruments, like the tone sequences, is based on the Wagogo tone system. A two-string izeze is tuned in the interval of a minor third , which corresponds to the distance between the sixth and seventh partials of the overtone series. In the chord formation typical of the Wagogo, the singing voice lies at a certain interval below the izeze tones. Possible combinations are (indicated first the izeze tone, then the lower tone of the singing voice, the corresponding partial tones in brackets):

e 2 (10) - c 2 (8), d 2 (9) - b 1 (7), c 2 (8) - g 1 (6), b 1 (7) - e 1 (5) and g 1 (6) - e 1 (4).

These are the intervals major third, fourth, excessive fourth and fifth that inevitably result. In the context of these intervals, the instrumental tones and the singing voice run in parallel lines.

Musicians use different tunings for four and other multi-string izeze . When playing with the lamellophone ilimba, both instruments should be tuned to the same notes. Hukwe Zawose is also responsible for the expansion of the ilimba, introduced from the Congo in the 19th century , from which he developed a type with 56 lamellas, 30 of which are plucked. With the one and two-string zeze , the strings are bowed with the bow. Fiddles with four or more strings are bowed or plucked, and large Wagogo fiddles with 13 strings are only plucked. With a four-string izeze , the strings can be played individually one after the other or several together. Often three of the strings are used to form a melody and the fourth serves as a drone string . The fourth (highest and innermost) string is usually plucked with the little finger and not bowed. For a fiddle player who sings at the same time, playing the single-string zeze is easier with the Waha. This usually follows the singing voice or complements a drone.

The zeze is traditionally a men's musical instrument, but it can also be played by women. Traditional roles include that women prefer to dance, sing and beat the wooden hourglass drums muheme (or ngogo ). In addition to the play of izeze and ilimba , the polyphonic musical structures of the wagogo are expressed in the two forms of choral singing nindo and msunyunho , which are cultivated in rituals and for entertainment.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, 1984, p. 136
  2. ^ Roger Blench: The Morphology and Distribution of Sub-Saharan Musical Instruments of North-African, Middle Eastern, and Asian, Origin. In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Volume 4. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, p. 171
  3. ↑ Ulrich Wegner, 1984, pp. 116f
  4. ^ Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 114; Ulrich Wegner, 1984, pp. 122, 124
  5. ↑ John Brearley: The Segankuru - a "Bush Fiddle" or a Bowed Bow? Some of its Exponents and their Songs. In: Botswana Notes and Records , Volume 28, 1996, pp. 121–144, here p. 131
  6. ^ Roger Blench, 1984, p. 172
  7. ↑ Music of Kuria, Kenya and Tanzania: Ntimaru Musicians, Pt. 1. Youtube Video (bowl lyre itiringo , one-stringed spike fiddle tube ekegogo and vascular rattle in Kuria in Kenya)
  8. ↑ Cf. Paul N. Kavyu: The Development of Guitar Music in Kenya. In: Veit Erlmann (Hrsg.): Popular music in Africa. (Publications of the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, New Volume 53, Department of Ethnic Music VIII) Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1991, pp. 135–141
  9. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2015, p. 14
  10. ^ Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 116
  11. ↑ Stephen H. Martin: Music in Tanzania. In: Ruth M. Stone (Ed.): Africa. Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 1. Routledge, New York 1997, p. 641
  12. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 14
  13. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, pp. 27-49
  14. ^ A b Gerhard Kubik: Stability and Change in African Musical Traditions. In: The World of Music, Vol. 28, No. 1 ( Mechanisms of Change ), 1986, pp. 44-69, here p. 61
  15. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 23
  16. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 19
  17. ↑ Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 34f
  18. ^ Gerhard Kubik: Polyphony. B. Polyphony in Sub-Saharan Africa. III. The interdependence of African polyphonic forms and tone systems . In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The Music in Past and Present , Sachteil 5, 1996, Sp. 1779)
  19. ^ JH Kwabena Nketia, 1967, p. 80
  20. ^ Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 116
  21. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 55
  22. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 63
  23. ↑ Ella Isotalo, 2014, p. 15
  24. ↑ Tatasu Tsuruta: The Changing Roles of Social Gogo Sound Culture in Central Tanzania. With Special Reference to the Development of “Cultural Troupes”. In: Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology , Volume 15 ( Special Issue: Sound Cultures of Africa ), 2014, pp. 169–183, here p. 172
  25. ↑ JH Kwabena Nketia, 1967, pp. 84-86