But in all this negro music, as in that of all primitive races, the melody varies little; it consists of short, mournful phrases, scales of more or less unequal intervals, beginning with the highest notes within the compass of the human voice and descending abruptly to the very lowest, in a dragging, plaintive wail.
The negro women often sing at their work, or during that listless half-sleep, which constitutes their siesta. In that intense stillness of noon, a stillness more impressive out there than that in our fields of France, this singing of Nubian women, with the eternal stridulation of grasshoppers for its accompaniment, has a charm of its own. But it would be impossible to transport this singing from its exotic environment of sun and sand. Heard in other surroundings it would no longer be itself.
The more primitive, the more elusive the melody appears by reason of its monotony, the more difficult and complicated is the rhythm. As the long wedding processions one meets at night meander over the sands, they sing, under the leadership of the griots, concerted choral music, weird in character, and the persistent, syncopated accompaniment seems, as if of its own sweet will, to bristle with rhythmic difficulties and eccentricities.
A very simple instrument, reserved for the women, plays an important part in this ensemble; it is merely a long-shaped gourd, with an opening at one end; this gourd is beaten with the hand, now on the side, now on the opening, and two different tones are thus produced, one sharp, one dull. It yields no other sound, but the result obtained in this manner is nonetheless surprising.
It is difficult to describe the sinister, almost diabolical effect, of a distant clamour of negro voices, half-drowned by hundreds of these instruments.
The persistent counter-rhythm of the accompaniment and the startling syncopations, perfectly understood and observed by the performers, are the chief characteristics of this form of music—inferior perhaps to our own, certainly very different from it, and such as our European tradition does not enable us wholly to appreciate.
V
BAMBOULA
A passing griot raps out a tattoo on his tom-tom. This is the summons, and a crowd gathers around him.
Women come running; they form themselves into a close circle, and begin to intone one of those obscene songs which rouse them to passionate excitement. One of them, the first arrival, breaks away from the crowd and hurls herself into the unoccupied centre of the circle, where the tambour is sounding. She dances, jingling her grigris and beads; her steps, which are slow at the beginning, are accompanied by gestures appallingly licentious. Soon the pace is accelerated until a state of frenzy is reached, which might be likened to the antics of an insane monkey, the contortions of one possessed.