Jamaican song and story

by Unknown

We can hardly expect to find considerable traces of this aboriginal African music after two centuries of missionary and of trade influence. African travellers have repeatedly told us how prone the negro is to introduce fresh tunes from other villages and to adapt them to his own purposes. Indeed, the contaminating influence which the Arabs and Portuguese have exercised upon primitive African music makes the study of the latter especially difficult.

But a community does not adopt exotic music without at the same time exercising selection. Those melodies have the greatest chance of success which, to some degree at least, follow the current canons of public taste. Revolutionary innovations are rare. The gradual changes in taste which take place are the result of such selective adoption of foreign music as we have indicated.

There is one feature in the above-quoted '[Angola]' song which is also shared by the modern songs of this collection, namely, the presence of 'bobbins' or short refrains.

The simplicity in structure of the songs is still a feature of Jamaican music. I may be allowed to call attention to the repetition of single phrases in Song [XVIII.] and to the building up of simple phrases in Songs [LXXVII.] and [LXXIX.]

I had hoped that some light might be thrown on the antiquity of certain songs by the presence of nonsense words; but in this I was disappointed.

I quite agree with Miss Broadwood (see [next page]) that the majority of the songs are of European origin. The negroes have learnt them from hearing sailors' chanties or they have adopted hymn tunes.

But adoption always involves adaptation. A song is modified to suit the current canons of taste. In Song [L.] I observe 'Home, Sweet Home' and (in the latter half) a hymn tune which I frequently heard in the Torres Straits. Song [CXXXIX.] is doubtless 'The British Grenadiers.' But it, again, has not been adopted without modification.

Needless to say, a detailed study of these modifications would throw light on the characteristics of modern Jamaican music.

In Song [XXXI.] a typical non-European modification is the insertion of an extra (the fifth) bar, so that the phrase consists of nine bars. The five time in Song [XI.], the change of accent at the close of Song [XXIV.] and in Song [XLI.], are no doubt the expression of African delight in the complexities of rhythm.

In the already-quoted '[Koromanti song],' we may observe the curious temporary change of rhythm in the second air, and the characteristic measure which prevails throughout the third air with its syncopation and almost baffling changes. Such features are precisely what we should expect to meet with among a primitive people who more than two centuries ago doubtless possessed in a still higher degree that delight in complication of rhythm which according to Mr. Jekyll ([p. 6]) persists among their descendants of to-day. For a more detailed study of this aspect of the subject I may perhaps refer enquirers to my "Study of Rhythm in Primitive People" (British Journal of Psychology, vol. i. pp. 397-406).