Dances of the character of “corroborees” are a step towards the ritual dances which play so great a part in most religions. I may instance the epileptic dances of the Siberian and American Shamans, or the Negro fetich-worshippers, the gyrations of the Dervishes, the masked ballets performed by the Buddhist-Lamaite priests, the sacred dances of the Levites among the ancient Jews, etc. Christianity retained the dance in its rites even until the eighth century, and one may still see the partial survival of it in what takes place in Seville Cathedral during the Easter festival. Dancing assumed a sacred character by being conjoined with a symbolic mimicry, especially as connected with offerings, with sacrifices, or with religious ecstasy.
But it has also evolved in another direction by having associated with it two other species of mimicry, one recalling strife and battles, the other love. Hence come warlike dances and lascivious dances. The latter have this characteristic, that they are performed either solely by women—as, for example, the “Hula-Hula” of the Hawaiians—or by both sexes (Eskimo), and very seldom by men alone (the “Kaoro” of the Australians, performed at the advent of the marriage season, or the time of the yam harvest). Moreover, it may be presumed that the alternating dances of men and women were, at the beginning of societies, a powerful aid to sexual selection.
The movements performed during the dance vary with every people, and also according to the nature of the dance. The Australians leap, advance suddenly, then fall back with threatening or lascivious gestures, as the case may be (Fig. [59]); Negroes add to the steps and innuendoes movements of the head and pelvis. Among most Asiatics (Chinese, Japanese, Malays) men do not dance, and in the case of women, the choregraphic art degenerates into a series of rhythmical movements of the arms and trunk, without change of position. It is to mimicry, that is to say, the first step towards pantomime, that dances imitating the movements of animals (Eskimo, Araucans) owe their origin. The pantomime of the uncultured, like their dancing, is always accompanied by music and song, sometimes by masks and disguises. We have but to develop the share of song and recitation, to render the music less dependent on the rhythm, in order to transform these exercises into real dramatic representations.[228]
Vocal and instrumental music are the common property of mankind as a whole. There is no people that does not know at least how to hum an air of a few notes; and rare are those who have no instrument of music (Fuegians, certain Micronesians, Veddahs). The music of uncivilised peoples is most frequently reduced to one only of its elements, rhythm,—better understood when we bear in mind that the greater part of the time it forms only the accompaniment of dancing. Melody and harmony are reduced to their simplest expressions.[229] And yet in the opinion even of specialists it is very difficult to note the airs of “savages,” and three-fourths of the notations published in different works are incorrect. That is the result of these airs having been written down according to our scale, which is heptatonic. Now this scale, although existing even among many uncivilised peoples, is not the only one which is used.
We find them using certain successions of sounds with fixed intervals, that is to say, true scales of two, three, and even six sounds. Most frequently “natural tones” (tonic, third, fifth) form the scale (Bushmen). The airs of uncivilised peoples are often in the minor tone, for example, the following Fuegian air, transcribed by Carfort:—[230]
In fine, the scale being merely a convention based on the construction of instruments, the most perfect of which, like our violin, can only give half-tones or, exceptionally, quarter or third tones, there can be no such thing as a “natural scale.” It is the musical instruments of a people that determine the scale it uses; thus the study of these instruments should precede that of singing.[231]
As the most primitive music may be reduced to rhythm alone, the earliest musical instruments were objects serving to beat time; pieces of wood clapped together, as still seen to-day among the Annamese, or rude drums like those which the Australian women use during the corroborees—a cloak of opossum skin stretched between the thighs, on which they tap with a stick (Fig. [59]). But, like castanets, the triangle, etc., these, properly speaking, are not instruments of music producing a scale, or at any rate a series of varying sounds. Three kinds of true musical instruments may be distinguished—wind instruments, string instruments, and percussion instruments. Of wind instruments the most ancient is probably the flute or the shepherd’s pipe of cane, bamboo, animal or human bone, etc., as seen among the Botocudos and the Yurunas of Xingu (Brazil).[232] The bow was the first corded instrument; the Kafirs and Negroes of Angola “play on the bow” by attaching to it a gourd and tightening at will by means of a sliding ring the cord which they play (Fig. [135]). As to instruments of percussion: the most generally used among the Negroes are the Sansá, a sort of musical box (Fig. [68]), and the xylophone, a kind of piano (Fig. [69]). The most uncivilised peoples, however, have composite instruments; as, for instance, the “gora” of the Bushmen (Figs. [70] and [71]).[233]