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PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

THIS study of the Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa has been made possible by a generous grant received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, through the Research Grant Board of the Union of South Africa. Without such assistance it would have been impossible for me to cover so large a field, for in the course of my investigations I have had to travel many thousands of miles. I undertook no fewer than nine special expeditions to distant native areas, as well as many shorter excursions. On these expeditions I frequently lived in native kraals, and participated in the musical performances of the people, the only way, in my opinion, for a European observer to learn and understand the principles underlying native music.

In this book my chief aim has been to attempt to supply specific and detailed information, and to correlate to some extent the earlier and often rather vague generalizations on the subject which have appeared in the works of travellers. South Africa, by which I mean that portion of the Continent which lies south of latitude 22°, or, roughly, south of the River Limpopo, has been, from the point of view of the ethnologist, in a very fortunate position. For hundreds of years little was known of it except those portions near the coast, which from the fifteenth century were regularly visited and described by travellers from many lands. The interior, on the other hand, remained practically unknown until the nineteenth century, when the driving force of European colonization opened it up rapidly, revealing a strangely chaotic mixture of races whose past history is only now being brought to light. Further, those non-African peoples who from time to time have visited the east coast of Africa, and even penetrated far inland, have had singularly little influence upon the peoples dwelling south of the Limpopo, and such influence may, I think, be readily recognized. In other words, the native races which have inhabited large areas of South Africa for the last five centuries or so have retained much of their original culture, although they have naturally exchanged many ideas and adopted not a few. There remains, it would seem, in spite of inter-tribal wars and their inevitable consequences, much that is ancient and individual among the various native peoples of South Africa. The musical instruments used by them illustrate this well, and, from the point of view of the ethnologist, the study of them would appear to possess a double value, since they partake both of the material and the spiritual. I have therefore tried to trace, where possible, the history of the various types of musical instruments found in South Africa, using as a basis the wealth of historical material which the country is fortunate in possessing, together with the evidence of native tradition and ritual. I have also endeavoured to indicate, as precisely as I could, the geographical and tribal distribution of the instruments, and likewise to secure their nomenclature, from which much may be deduced. Finally I have, by personally studying most of the instruments under the guidance of native experts, attempted to reveal their true nature, as well as the materials from which they are made and the manner of making them.

In the course of my study I have been fortunate enough to acquire over three hundred specimens of South African native musical instruments, a number of which are rarely seen by European visitors; many others I have observed in use in the field. As a further check I have examined practically all the musical instruments in public collections in this country, as well as many in Europe.

The ultimate result of my investigations, which I cannot hope to be exhaustive, in spite of the generous assistance of many willing helpers, will, I trust, show that, although the musical instruments of the native peoples of South Africa may, at first sight, appear simple and their players unsophisticated, in reality they display not only constructive ingenuity on the part of their makers but also a real understanding of certain of the basic phenomena of sound.

To the African, music, one might say, is life, rather than a part of life; and although this study deals only with a part of that music, I trust that it will serve to show in some measure how full and varied the musical life of the African is.

The names of the various instruments I have checked as well as I could; but, since there are so many different dialects, I must confess at once that I may have omitted many variants; yet I venture to hope that the work is neither very inaccurate nor very incomplete in this respect.

With regard to the spelling of native words, I have tried to be as consistent as is possible in these days of orthographic argument; in most cases I have used the more commonly accepted forms. Again, when quoting from any writer I have always preserved his spelling of native words. It would have been a simple matter to call in the aid of our phonetic experts and use phonetic script for all these words; nevertheless, with the exception of certain Bushman and Hottentot words I have not done so, since this book is not primarily a linguistic study.

In the same way I have decided to present the musical illustrations in European notation. Occasionally I have used a plus or minus sign to show that a note is higher or lower by less than a semitone than the notation indicates. But I think that it will be clear that, with few exceptions, such fine shades of intonation do not exist for the South African native. True, his musical system is radically different from that of present-day Europe, but, like that of many Europeans, his pitch-sense is frequently at fault, and the almost universal lack of permanent absolute pitch standards gives him little opportunity of improving it. Pitch, to the South African native, is, however, chiefly relative, not absolute. But in the harmonic series he has a definite standard by which he may measure intervals; and it is one of my objects to demonstrate to what a great extent it has controlled his musical art.

The map shows the general distribution of the various native peoples; no map which shows the exact distribution exists as yet, although steps are being taken to prepare one. The difficulty will be realized when it is pointed out that, although in a province like the Transvaal there are, as indicated on my map, certain areas where particular tribes are to be found, yet in those very areas large numbers of other tribesmen have settled. Again, although strictly speaking the Pedi are actually Transvaal Sotho, I have only used the former name for them when referring to the particular people who inhabit the area shown on the map. Further, I would point out that the older writers, when using the name Damara, were usually referring to the race now known as Herero.

The index of musical instruments has been deliberately made very full in the hope that it may assist students who may wish to identify specimens whether in the field, in museums, or described in books.

I have made no mention of the musical instruments played by the Indians of Natal or by the Chinese on the Rand, because I have found that such instruments have had no influence upon those of the native races of South Africa.