The melody of African music is strange to our ears, because, as I have said, it is usually derived from tone-systems that are unlike either our major or minor scales. They have the pentatonic scale, that is, a major scale without the fourth and the seventh notes, thus avoiding the use of semitones; but their other scales are strange to most people. Among them are some of the scales of the plain-song of the Roman Catholic Church—the Gregorian chant. The plain-song is the only survival (among ourselves) of ancient music. Modern music is based upon harmony, and consists essentially in a progression of chords. The successive tones of a modern melody acquire their character not chiefly from their own sequence, as do ancient melodies, but from the chords to which they belong; and the chords even when they are not voiced are always understood. But harmony itself is modern, dating from about the thirteenth century. African melodies cannot always be harmonized, and when the harmony is added it is not usually effective.
But in African music another scale is employed which is not Gregorian, but oriental. It is a minor scale with an augmented interval—a tone and a half—between the sixth and seventh notes, that is, with a minor sixth and a major seventh. This peculiarly effective interval imparts an intense melancholy. Verdi, with delightful propriety, makes use of this very scale in Aïda, in the hymn of the Egyptian priestesses in the first act, where an extant Arab melody is introduced. This scale is probably the oldest tone-system in the world and may have come originally from the banks of the Ganges, in the far-distant past.
The African, like the oriental, conceives of the scales, and the melodies derived from them, as moving downward, instead of upward like our own. All African music sings downward. Another striking peculiarity is that they lack tonality, as the musician would say; that is, they seem not to be in any particular key. The strong feeling of the key-note which characterizes our major scale is entirely absent; and this, of course, accounts for the absence of a well-defined cadence, to which I have alluded. The weird fascination of the African dirge is largely due to this absence of tonality. Musical genius could hardly surpass this instinctive expression of despair—the desolation of an everlasting farewell.
The emotion which it represents, however intense, is rather disappointingly transient. Sometimes it is even unreal; I mean to say that it is sometimes indulged for its own sake. And this is true of the Negro everywhere. A few days ago I came upon an article in an old magazine, in which a Southern woman, in “Rambling Talks About the Negro,” tells of a mourning party of Negroes that assembled one night beside her house to finish a mourning ceremony that ought to have been a part of a funeral a few days earlier; but a storm had interrupted it. The unearthly mournfulness of their music was intensified by their beautiful voices until it became unbearable, and the woman bowed her head upon the window sill and cried without restraint, while imagination conjured up fictitious woes, such as the sudden death of her children and of all her friends, until she was alone in a bleak world. Then it occurred to her that it was wrong for people to indulge a voluntary anguish and make a luxury of misery; so she sent a servant to offer a barrel of watermelons to the party of mourners on condition that, instead of mourning, they should dance and jollify; to which they heartily responded, after first making sure that the melons were in good condition, for they really preferred to mourn.
When, to the peculiar scales which Africans employ, one adds the further fact that in African music (and indeed in the Negro melodies of our South) the note which corresponds to our seventh in the scale (a step below the tonic) is seldom a true seventh, but is slightly flatted, enough to make a distinct note with a character of its own, one has probably accounted for the peculiar plaintiveness, the elusiveness, the vague mysteriousness, which constitutes the charm of all true Negro music.
The rhythm of African music is a further impediment to our appreciation. In the music of the dance the rhythm is of necessity somewhat regular. But even in this music it is variable and does not conform throughout to any one time-scheme but changes back and forth from duple to triple within the same melody. This also is characteristic of oriental music. In most African music the rhythm is regulated by the words, like the recitative, the rhythmic imitation of declamatory speech. But it has the symmetry that feeling secures. The best way to learn the African’s song is to watch the swaying of his body and imitate it, and if the words have meaning let their feeling possess one. Mr. William E. Barton, the compiler of a small collection of choice Negro melodies, tells how that “Aunt Dinah,” who had been trying to teach a Negro hymn to a young lady, at last seeing her begin to sway her body slightly and pat her foot upon the floor, exclaimed: “Dat’s right, honey! Dat’s de berry way! Now you’s a-gittin’ it sho nuff! You’ll nebber larn ’em in de wuld till you sings ’em in de sperrit.”
The African sings not only his joy, but his grief; not only his love, but his anger, his revenge and his despair. Livingstone was greatly surprised, upon approaching a slave caravan, to hear some of them singing. But as he listened he found that they were singing words of grief and vengeance—for usually they were betrayed and sold by some of their own people. So it was everywhere, as old men of Gaboon have told me; they went away chanting their desolation and their curses upon those who had betrayed them.
There is no doubt that music is the art-form of the Negro. He is the most musical person living. His entire emotional life he utters in song. He has not yet done any great thing. His day is still future. But I believe that when he comes, he will come singing.
DANCE SONG OF MPONGWE
The time signature is only approximately correct, and forces a rhythmic symmetry which African music does not possess. The energetic momentum is characteristic of African dance music.