VIII

In collecting and studying the music of primitive peoples great difficulty is experienced in obtaining trustworthy data. Almost all the savage and semi-barbarous peoples of the world at the present day have been in contact more or less with civilized man for so long that they have acquired by imitation many of his manners, customs, and ideas. Thus the savage’s original development has been overlaid as it were with a varnish of culture, which is foreign, not native, to him. The first civilized men to come in contact with a savage tribe have not as a rule been intent upon observing their manners and customs nor upon recording their primitive music or folk-lore. These first men have usually come as discoverers and as conquerors. They have been followed by missionaries, who in their zeal to perpetuate the doctrines of Christianity have been ever anxious to divert the minds of the people from their ancient traditions, by substituting for them stories from Bible history. Their ancient songs and barbarous-sounding incantations, however interesting to the ethnologist, have been in most cases tabooed by the missionaries as impious, who substituted for them the hymns of the church. This thing has happened in Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Africa, and particularly in America, the Indian tribes having been so inoculated with musical ideas, hymns, and scraps of folk song, that it is frequently only with great difficulty that the character of their own primitive music can be determined.

A collection of the music of the Hopi tribe, who dwell in seven naturally fortified hill towns in the desert of Arizona, reveals to a large extent Spanish influence. Many of their melodies have the grace and movement of Spanish dances. This is quite explicable, however, when it is remembered that the Spanish held dominion over these towns from 1580 to 1680. Spanish influence is also apparent in the music of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, and in the traditional music of the Mexicans and Peruvians. Brasseur de Bourbourg has translated into French from the Quinche, the former Mayan tongue, an ancient manuscript called ‘Rabinal-Achi.’ It is an immense dramatic ballet accompanied by music and danced and acted by hundreds of performers. But when we come to examine this music it is only to find that it has an unmistakably Spanish character.

From the fascinating histories of Francis Parkman it is plainly seen with what zeal the early Jesuit missionaries strove to Christianize the Canadian tribes of Indians. At the present day it is not an unusual thing to find turns of melody and even whole tunes which resemble to a large extent certain hymns of the Catholic Church. Frederick R. Burton, who has investigated the Ojibways’ music, says that, while on one of his trips in the vicinity of Lake Huron, he fell in with a particularly isolated tribe of these Indians. He asked them to sing one of their old choruses. The Indians complied and—sang a garbled version of ‘Old Hundred.’

The innate love of music among the African blacks has been remarked. Their imitative powers are likewise well known. We are told by Theophilus Hahn of an instance in which not only the music but the words of certain Dutch hymns, the latter being entirely unintelligible to the negroes, were remembered and repeated almost exactly, after being heard but once by them. Noirot,[9] after calling attention to the great resemblance existing between certain African airs and English jig tunes, or French vaudeville songs, says: ‘It is necessary, however, to make an exception of those slow and monotonous phrases which are sung by the young women to accompany dancing, and of the airs played on the Bambara flute. In these we again perceive the savage aspect of this music; the chant inspired by the patriarchal life of the blacks.’ A specimen of one of these airs is here given:

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The first collectors of the music of the various savage tribes naturally were obliged to write it down in ordinary musical notation. But savages in their primitive melodies, like certain animals in their quasi-musical cries, continually use intervals of less than a semi-tone. In writing down these primitive melodies in our notation it has been necessary to disregard these small intervals and to treat them as accidental happenings, a mere out-of-tuneness, as it were. The note written down has always been assumed to represent the tone which the primitive singer was trying unsuccessfully to produce. But instances of these variations from the tones of the orthodox chromatic scale finally became so numerous as to give rise to the belief that savages consciously made use of quarter tones in their songs. This belief has had many learned and eloquent defenders, among whom may be mentioned James A. Davies[10] and Benjamin Ives Gilman.[11] The truth of this theory is, however, very doubtful. The conscious use of the quarter tones or intervals smaller than those in use in European music would indicate a much more refined perception of tones and their relations, a much more delicate musical ear, than is possessed by civilized Europeans. And this is hardly to be reasonably expected of savages. Moreover, during recent years the writer has examined some hundreds of Indian songs as recorded by the phonograph. Many repetitions of single songs have been examined by him. As a general rule the repetitions fail to agree in length, rhythm, or accuracy of intonation. Frequently they agree only in general contour. Any single tone is liable to vary up or down at least a quarter of a tone, and in some cases the variation is as much as a full tone. Now if the Indians consciously use quarter tones in their songs, one would expect to find a regular recurrence of these small intervals at the same place in each subsequent repetition of the song. But as such is very far from being the case, one is led to conclude that while these fractional intervals do really occur, their occurrence is much more the result of accident than of conscious intention. These conclusions in regard to North American Indian music apply, we believe, to the music of all savages.

The characteristics of that which is primitive are undoubted strength, directness of expression, and consequent effectiveness, but this elemental strength is coupled with crudity, inaccuracy, and an apparent lawlessness or impatience of restraint. No matter how charming, how effective, or how interesting many of these strains of primitive music may seem to us from an ethnological point of view, it is apparent that the mind of man has not yet grasped and moulded this tonal material. Primitive music does not show the effect of thought. It is merely the wild and wayward expression of emotion.