YAO WOMEN AT MTUA
The singers, who are principally Nubians, state that this song is in their mother tongue, the Darfur dialect. I have not yet succeeded in obtaining a literal translation. The general meaning of the words, which are sung with enviable lung-power and indefatigable energy, is somewhat as follows:
“We are always strong. The Jumbe (headman) has been hanged by the command of Allah. Hongo (one of the insurgent leaders) has been hanged by the command of Allah.”
Thus much as to the results of my musical inquiries so far as they concern the foreign elements (foreign, that is to say, here at Lindi) of the Wanyamwezi and Nubians. I have obtained some records of ngoma songs from Yaos and other members of inland tribes, but I cannot tell for the present whether they are a success, as I find to my consternation that my cylinders are softening under the influence of the damp heat, so that I can take records, but cannot risk reproducing them for fear of endangering the whole surface. A cheerful prospect for the future!
Very interesting from a psychological point of view is the behaviour of the natives in presence of my various apparatus. The camera is, at any rate on the coast, no longer a novelty, so that its use presents comparatively few difficulties, and the natives are not particularly surprised at the results of the process. The only drawback is that the women—as we found even at Dar es Salam—usually escape being photographed by running away as fast as their legs will carry them. The cinematograph is a thing utterly outside their comprehension. It is an enchini, a machine, like any other which the mzungu, the white man, has brought into the country—and when the said white turns a handle on the little black box, counting at the same time, in a monotonous rhythm, “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty-two,” the native may be pleasantly reminded of the droning measures which he is accustomed to chant at his work; but what is to be the result of the whole process he neither knows nor cares.
GIRLS FROM LINDI
The phonograph, on the contrary, is an enchini after the very heart, not only of the black man, but even of the black woman. If I should live to the age of Methuselah the scene in Mr. Devers’s compound at Dar es Salam will always remain one of the most delightful recollections connected with my stay in Africa. After spending some time in the native quarter, watching the dances of various tribes—here a Manyema ngoma, there one of the Wazaramo, or yonder again that of some coast people’s club, and observing the costumes of the performers, sometimes hideous but always picturesque, I returned to my own quarters, at the head of a procession numbering some hundreds of the dancers, male and female, in order to take down the audible part of the proceedings. Everything had gone off in the most satisfactory way; but every time I changed the diaphragms, took out the recorder and put in the reproducer, when the full-voiced melody poured forth from the mysterious funnel in exactly the same time and with the precise timbre which had been sung into it—what measureless and at the same time joyful astonishment was painted on the brown faces, all moist and shining with their exertions in singing and dancing! Whenever this happened, all the more unsophisticated souls joined in the chorus, to be speedily enlightened by the derisive laughter of the more “educated” element.