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The Xhosa umrhubhe mouthbow: an extraordinary musical instrument
Get PDFIn the late 1970s a vinyl LP disc was published with recordings by David Marks of the Mpondo Xhosa musician Madosini Manqina [CD track 1]. The disc included several recordings of an unnamed musical instrument, referred to by Marks on the record sleeve as a \u27home-made Jew\u27s harp\u27. The music produced by this instrument was a two-part overlapping polyphony, like a wind instrument accompanied by an overtone instrument - a musical bow of some sort. When I began work at the Catholic Lumko Pastoral Institute, situated then at old Lumko Mission near Lady Frere in the rural Thembu Xhosa area, I set about trying to find the instrument, to see if anyone in that area could play it. The most likely candidate was umrhubhe, a small musical bow which sounded like the accompanying instrument on the recordings. Many girls and young women still played umrhubhe in that area at that time - one could sometimes see a young woman carrying umrhubhe wedged onto herhead-dress. I took a tape copy of the
Madosini recordings, and played them for people, to find out if they knew what it was. "Umrhubhe nomlozi" I was told: umrhubhe with whistling. In time I found several women who could perform umrhubhe nomlozi, some who lived in Ngqoko Village, two kilometres from Lumko, and others further afield: hence this article
The King of History: Classic 1970s Beats from Kenya. 2010. D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz. Stern\u27s Music STCD3051. One compact disc. Booklet (16 pp.) World Defeats the Grandfathers: Swinging Swahili Rumba 1982-1986. 2010. Issa Juma and Super Wanyika Stars. Stern\u27s Music STCD3050. One compact disc. Booklet (16 pp.)
No full textChopi timbila music
Get PDFIt is surprising that Chopi timbila xylophone music, one of the complex and organised musics of the world, has attracted so little ethnomusicological attention. Its sound hasbeen known to the world since Hugh Tracey\u27s recordings in 1942/3, published first on 78rpm discs in the late 1940s, and his book Chopi Musicians, 1948. Portuguese and other written descriptions from as early as 1560 focus on the visual impression andthe instruments. Recent research by Chopi writers focuses on ethnography and the analysis of the lyrics (Munguambe 2000; Jopela, pending). But the music itself
Fiddling In West Africa: Touching the Spirit in Fulbe, Hausa, and Dagamba Culture.Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje. 2008. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 352 pp.
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