Curiosities of Music: A Collection of Facts not generally known, regarding the Music of Ancient and Savage Nations

by Louis Charles Elson

Another bit of musical ceremony which Speke witnessed, will at once remind the reader of the great “Zapfenstreich” or grand tattoo practised sometimes in the German army. At the new moon the king surrounds himself with numerous drummers (Speke saw thirty-five); these strike up together, gradually increasing to a deafening noise; this is followed by a milder kind of music, similar to that described above. The object of the ceremony is to call in all the king’s warriors to renew their oath of fealty.[217] The time keeping is said to be very exact, and the drummers burst forth again and again during the night. The war drum of the Karague is beaten by women.

A kind of guitar exists among this people, and six of the seven strings which it possesses accord perfectly with our own diatonic scale, the seventh string only, being discordant. Their wind instruments are flageolet and bugle, or at least similar to them.

Among the nations adjacent to those already mentioned are the Bongo.

We again quote from the valuable work of the most musical traveller who has visited this section,—Schweinfurth.[218]

“The Bongo, in their way are enthusiastic lovers of music; and although their instruments are of a very primitive description, and they are unacquainted even with the pretty little guitar of the Nyam-Nyams, which is constructed on perfectly correct acoustic principles, yet they may be seen at any hour of the day, strumming away and chanting to their own performances. The youngsters down to the small boys are all musicians. Without much trouble and with the most meagre materials they contrive to make little flutes; they are accustomed also to construct a monochord, which in its design reminds one of that which (known as the Gubo of the Zulus) is common throughout the tribes of Southern Africa. This consists of a bow of bamboo, with the string tightly strained across it, and this is struck by a slender slip of bamboo.

The mouth of the player performs the office of sounding board; he holds the instrument to his mouth with one hand, and manages the string with the other. Performers may often be seen sitting for hours together with an instrument of this sort; they stick one end of the bow into the ground, and fasten the string over a cavity covered with bark, which opens into an aperture for the escape of the sound. They pass one hand from one part of the bow to the other, and with the other they play upon the string with the bamboo twig, and produce a considerable variety of buzzing and humming airs which are really rather pretty. This is quite a common pastime with the lads who are put in charge of the goats. I have seen them apply themselves very earnestly and with obvious interest to their musical practice, and the ingenious use to which they apply the simplest means for obtaining harmonious tones testifies to their penetration into the secrets of the theory of sound.

As appeals however to the sense of sound, the great festivals of the Bongo abound with measures much more thrilling than any of these minor performances. On these occasions the orchestral results might perhaps be fairly characterised as cats’ music run wild.

Unwearied thumping of drums, the bellowings of gigantic trumpets, for the manufacture of which, great stems of trees come into requisition. Interchanged by fits and starts with the shriller blasts of some smaller horns, make up the burden of the unearthly hub-bub which re-echoes miles away along the desert; meanwhile women and children by the hundred fill gourd flasks with little stones, and rattle them as if they were churning butter; or again at other times they will get some sticks or faggots and strike them together with the greatest energy.

The huge wooden tubes which may be styled the trumpets of the Bongo, are by the natives themselves, called “manyinyee;” they vary from four to five feet in length, being closed at the extremity and ornamented with carved work representing a man’s head, which not unfrequently is adorned with a pair of horns. The other end of the stem is open, and in an upper department, towards the figure of the head, is the orifice into which the performer blows with all his might.

There is another form of manyinyee, which is made like a huge wine bottle; in order to play upon it, the musician takes it between his knees like a violincello, and when the build of the instrument is too cumbrous he has to bend over it as it lies upon the ground.