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Nguni Vocal Polyphony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

David Rycroft
David Rycroft*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

The Nguni Group comprises principally the Zulu, Xhosa and Swazi-speaking peoples of South Eastern Africa whose languages and cultures are closely related. Through European contact and conquest during the past century and a half, their way of life has been considerably affected. Musically, many non-indigenous forms and features have been adopted by certain sections of each community, but we shall here be concerned only with what still survives of their truly indigenous music.

For individual music-making, instruments of several varieties—particularly musical bows—were formerly used by all Nguni peoples. But their communal music seems always to have been exclusively vocal, apart from the occasional use of ankle-rattles in dance-songs.

Type
Multi-Part Techniques in Folk Music and Dance
Information
Journal of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 19 , 1967 , pp. 88 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © International Council for Traditional Music 1967

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References

Notes

1. Rycroft, David, “African Music in Johannesburg: African and Non-African Features,” Journal of the IFMC, Vol. IX, 1959, pp. 25–30.Google Scholar

2. Kirby, Percival R., The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa, Oxford, 1934.Google Scholar

3. Rycroft, David, “Stylistic Evidence in Nguni Song,” Essays in Music and History in Africa and Asia (ed. Wachsmann, K. P.), London, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1967.Google Scholar

4. Id., “The Guitar Improvizations of Mwenda Jean Bosco,” Part I, African Music, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1961, pp. 83-84; and Part 2, op. cit., Vol. 3, No. 1, 1962, pp. 88-89.

5. Ibid., 1959, p. 26.

6. Kirby, P. R., “Old-time Chants of the Mpumuza Chiefs,” Bantu Studies, Vol. I, 1923-26, pp. 23–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Marius Schneider cites roughly the same intervals for some ‘Zulu’ examples in his Geschichte der Mehrstimmigkeit (Berlin, 1934, PP. 87-88, and Appendix, p. 36). The items cannot be regarded as representative of truly indigenous Zulu music, however, and Schneider himself suggests Western influence in five out of the seven. He provides no information as to where they were obtained and, from the scores, none of them seems to bear much resemblance to any Zulu music I have encountered in the field. There is a more recognizably Zulu example in the same writer's later publication, “Über die Verbreitung afrikanische Chorformen” (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 69, 1937, P. 84), though it contains features of semi-traditional ‘town’ music. However, he comments only on the continuous ostinato nature of the chorus, and this fortunately does happen to be fairly common feature in pure Zulu music too.

8. Hindemith, Paul, The Craft of Musical Composition, Vol. 1, New York, 1945, pp. 57 ffGoogle Scholar; List, George, “Transcription of a Hukwe Song with Musical Bow,” Ethnomusicology, Vol. 8, No. 3, 1964, pp. 258 and 263.Google Scholar

9. Kolinski, M., “Consonance and Dissonance,” Ethnomusicology, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1962, pp. 66–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Blacking has previously drawn attention to ‘root progression’ among the Venda, another Southern African people, of the Northern Transvaal—though not in connection with bow songs. ( Blacking, John, “Problems of Pitch, Pattern and Harmony …, “ African Music, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1959, p. 23.Google Scholar)

11. Rycroft, D., 1967.

12. Kirby, P. R., 1923-26.

13. Rycroft, D., “Friction Chordophones in South-Eastern Africa,” Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 19, 1966, pp. 91–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Kirby, P. R., 1934, P. 199.