Musical bow

Obu man playing a musical bow, Obubra, Cross River State, Nigeria

The musical bow (bowstring or string bow) is a simple string musical instrument part of a number of South African cultures, also found in other places in the world through the result of slave trade. It consists of a flexible, usually wooden, stick 1.5 to 10 feet (0.5 to 3 m) long, and strung end to end with a taut cord, usually metal. It can be played with the hands or a wooden stick or branch. Often, it is a normal archery bow used for music.

Types of bow are different mouth-resonated string bow, earth-resonated string bow, gourd-resonated string bow, bridged string bow, spiked fiddle, and bowed trough fiddle.[1]

History

Although the bow is now thought of as a weapon, it is not clear whether it was used in this way originally. The bow has been used as an early musical instrument. In theory, families of musical instruments descend from the musical bow.

Henri Breuil surveyed the Trois Frères in France caves and made an engraving that attempted to reproduce a c. 13,000 B.C. cave painting into a black-and-white lithograph engraving.[2] His engraving showed a mysterious figure, a "man camouflaged to resemble a bison," in the midst of a mass of herd-animals, "herding the beasts and playing the musical bow."[2][3][4] The artwork is confused, and those who are trying to reproduce the art in color have had to work to bring out legible images.[3][4] One interpretation of the "magician-hunter" image considers his hunting-bow to be a musical bow, used as a single-stringed musical instrument.[4][5]

Whether the bow in the cave illustration is a musical instrument or the hunting tool in a paleolithic hunt, musicologists have considered whether the bow could be a possible relative or ancestor to chordophones, the lutes lyres, harps and zither families. Curt Sachs said that there was good reason not to consider hunters' bows as likely musical bows.[6] One reason was that the oldest known musical bows were 10 feet long, useless for hunting, and that "musical bows were not associated with hunters' beliefs and ceremonies."[6]

Sachs considered the musical bows important, however. He pointed out that the name for the Greek lute, pandûra was likely derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian word meaning "small bow."[7] He considered this evidence in support of the theory that the musical bow was ancestral to the pierced lute.[7]

The bows used for music required a resonator, a hollowed object like a bowl, a gourd or a musician's mouth, in order to produce audible sound.[6] Although the musical bow could be manipulated to produce more than one tone instruments were developed from it that used one note per string.[6][8] Since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes for instrument families such as bow harps, harps and lyres.[8] In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords.[8] Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute.[9]

Musical bows are still used in a number of cultures today. It can be found as far south as Swaziland, and as far east as eastern Africa, Madagascar, and Réunion. and also outside of Africa, as in the case of berimbau, malunga (derivations of the African musical bow) or the Appalachian mouth-bow.

Playing ways

The usual way to make the bow sound is to pluck the string, although sometimes a subsidiary bow is used to scrape the string, much as on a violin. The Onavillu of Kerala sounds when struck with a thin stick. Unlike string instruments used in classical music, however, they do not have a built-in resonator, although resonators may be made to work with the bow in a number of ways.

The most usual type of resonator consists of a gourd attached to the back of the string bearer. The bow may also be stood in a pit or gourd on the ground, or one end of it may be partially placed in the mouth. This last method allows the size of the resonator to be varied as the instrument is played, thus allowing a melody to be heard consisting of the notes resonating in the player's mouth. As well as these various forms of resonators, the bow is frequently played without a resonator at all.

In Africa the musical bow is usually played by a solo performer. In Capoeira, the berimbau is played as part of the roda, a musical group standing in a circle, in the centre of which the Capoeiristas perform or play. The Appalachian mouth-bow can be played amplified in old-time music jams.

In Africa

Due to the nature of their construction and playing, musical bows are quiet instruments, therefore needing a resonator to resound. The resonator can either be a gourd (as in uhadi, umakhweyana, segankure, xitende, berimbau, etc.) or the player's mouth (as in umrhubhe, umqangala, tshihwana, xizambi, etc.)

Musical bows are the main instruments of the Nguni and Sotho people, the predominant peoples of South Africa. Historians believe that many of the musical bows came from Khoisan peoples. Although there are many differences between musical bows, all of them share two things: a resonator, and at least two fundamental notes.

The strongest notes are the fundamentals, the deepest notes produced by the string, whereas the higher notes (the harmonic partials) are produced by the resonator.

There are at least two fundamental notes produced by all musical bows, an open (when the player does not shorten it or touch it) and a closed (where the string is shortened or stopped by the player's hand). In Xhosa they are called vu (from the word Vuliwe, 'open') and ba (from Banjiwe, 'held') respectively. These two notes can already be on the string, if it is divided or stopped by a string attached to the gourd, as in the case of umakhweyana, xitende, berimbau, hungu, etc. The pitch difference between a vu and a ba is usually about a whole tone. In certain places in can be closer to a semitone (e.g. Zulu) or closer to a minor third (Tsonga).

Some of those instruments have more than two notes, for example the Zulu umakhweyana and the Tsonga xitende have three, whereas the Venda tshihwana has four.[10]

Other names

Musical bows are known by various names in the different languages of South Africa - some refer only to musical bows using gourds as resonators, others using the mouth:[10][11]

In other places

Richard Nunns playing a Māori musical bow

The most popular musical bow today is the Brazilian adaptation of the musical bow, the berimbau, most commonly associated with the jogo de capoeira.

Malunga, a musical bow made of bamboo, gut strings, and a coconut gourd is used by the Siddi people of India, of African origin.

Belembaotuyan is found in Guam, probably introduced through trade between South America and Asia in the nineteenth century.

Kunkulkawe is the name of a musical bow found among the Mapuche people in Chile and Argentina.

In the United States a musical bow is primarily found in the Appalachian Mountains, where it is called a "mouthbow" or "mouth bow".

In Northwestern Mexico, the Tepehuán Indians of Durango use the musical bow during their mitote. The Tepehuán's musical bow has a gourd attached to it.

The ku is a Maori instrument from New Zealand, made of matai wood and a fibre string, and is tapped with a rod.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Nzewi, Meki and Nzewi, Odyke (2007). A Contemporary Study of Musical Arts: Informed by African Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Volume 1: The Root: Foundation, p.108. African Minds. ISBN 9781920051624.
  2. 1 2 "Trois Freres Cave". Retrieved March 27, 2015. Henri Breuil surveyed the cave... a detailed study was published by H.Breuil and R.Begouen of the hundreds of engraved drawings in the deep gallery known as the "Sanctuary"...Its walls are filled with some 280 engraved (often superimposed) images of bison, horses, stags, reindeer, ibexes, and mammoths...
  3. 1 2 Garcia, Alfredo (5 October 2014). "EL ARTE RUPESTRE PALEOLÍTICO EN LAS CUEVAS FRANCESAS. LA CUEVA DE LASCAUX". algargosarte.blogspot.com. [Concerning a pair of images below the text; the top image is a line drawing showing a herd of animals drawn over one another with the hunter and bow in the pack; the other image is a photo of the cave wall with that image, enhanced to show the hunter and animals directly in front of him distinctly:] En Les Trois Frères destacaría su estilo tan naturalista... Es famosa la escena que del hombre camuflado como un bisonte, ¿Un chamán o un cazador?, que persigue o conduce a otros animales y que he destacado del conjunto superpuesto de abajo. [translation: In Les Trois Frères I would highlight his naturalistic style...The scene is famous, that of the man camouflaged to resemble a bison, (a shaman or a hunter?), that pursues or leads other animals, and that I have stood out from the set superimposed below...]
  4. 1 2 3 Walter, Eugene Victor (1988). Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: UNC Press Books. p. 89. ISBN 0-8078-1758-9. a semi-human figure dances in the midst of the animals...herding the beasts and playing a musical bow. He wears the head and fur of a bison with human legs...
  5. ↑ Campen, Ank van. "The music-bow from prehistory till today". HarpHistory.info. Retrieved March 26, 2015. A cave-painting in the "Trois Frères" cave in France dating from about 15,000 years ago. The magician-hunter plays the musical bow.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Sachs, Curt (1940). The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 56-57.
  7. 1 2 Sachs, Curt (1940). The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 136-137.
  8. 1 2 3 Dumbrill, 1998 & page 179, 231, 235–236, 308–310
  9. ↑ Dumbrill, 1998 & page 308–310
  10. 1 2 Lucia, Christine (2005). The World of South African Music: A Reader. Cambridge Scholars Press. p. 239. ISBN 9781904303367.
  11. ↑ "Musical Bow". Retrieved 2015-01-22.
  12. ↑ http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/talkingdrum/TDno16sep2001/tdno16sep2001.pdf
  13. ↑ Best, Elston (2005). Games and Pastimes of the Maori. pp. 313–4. Retrieved 2015-01-22.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.