posted
In my collection I have the instrument a African balafon. I decided to do some research about it, and the current research on the reconstruction of African musical cultural history. It's my show and tell.
Blench, Roger. Reconstructing African Music History: Methods and Results, SAFA Conference, 2002:
The tools usually available to musicologists in Europe, notably written sources, are absent, except in the case of Ancient Egypt, which also has the advantage that many actual instruments survive (Hickmann 1962; Krah 1991). (There is some information to be derived from the accounts of Arab geographers and early travellers which has yet to be fully exploited. Generally, though these accounts so imprecise that the relation between scholarly ink spilled and useful data is highly disproportionate.) In specific cases, the Egyptian data is illuminating, but it has sometimes tended to obscure the larger patterns by placing undue emphasis on a particular data point. Typically, the ancient presence of an instrument in Egypt was taken to show that it ‘spread out from’ Egypt.
Reconstructing African cultural history through the distribution of material culture or related practices such as musical forms is of course deeply unfashionable. Its real exponents were the German ethnologists of the Kulturkreislehre school (e.g. Ankermann 1901; Sachs 1927) and their Swedish successors, notably Lagercrantz. Detailed and painstaking as much of this work was, it made little real impression of scholars from other disciplines, largely because of their lack of an interpretative framework. One exception to this was A.M. Jones, a highly individualistic scholar who contributed significantly to the study of African drumming, but whose major scholarly obsession was the notion that African xylophone culture was of SE Asian origin (Jones 1971). Apart from the fact that Jones was almost certainly wrong (Blench 1982), his approach, the haphazard compilation of cultural traits based on shaky ethnography was probably significant in deterring other scholars.
Evolution of the Xylophone
The origins of the vibraphone can be traced to the early African balafon [BAH-lah-fohn], from which the xylophone evolved. Oral histories of the balafon date it to at least the rise of the Mali Empire in the 12th century CE. The original balafons were made with hardwood bars (mahogany or rosewood) and used hollow calabash gourds as resonators. Although the balafon is an indigenous production, prior to colonization, it was simply known as bala. In the middle of the sixteenth century early explorers found the instrument in an already elaborate form, fully resonated and very similar to the instrument in present-day use. Father Joao dos Santos describes such an instrument in a record of his visit to eastern Ethiopia in 1586 (Virgil. Aeneid viii, 696). There are many different kinds of balafons all over West Africa, and throughout Mali, which can be distinguished by the size, number of keys, tuning, and function.
The vibraphone was invented in the U.S. toward the beginning of the 1900's and was popularized by the great jazz musicians Lionel Hampton, and Milt Jackson of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Some other notable vibraphonists are Gary Burton (who popularized the use of playing with four mallets), American Latin jazz musician Cal Tjader, and Bobby Hutcherson jazz vibraphone and marimba player.
Figures with Xylophone, 16th–20th century Mali; Dogon Wood, metal
The balafon has special significance in Mande culture due to the accounts that have been passed down over the centuries about its origins. According to oral tradition, the Mande received their version of the balafon when its original owner, Soumaoro Kante, the king of the Sosso, was defeated by Sunjata, marking the beginning of the Mali Empire (1235 AD). The instrument said to be Soumaoro’s own balafon, known as the Sosso Bala. The Sosso Bala is the oldest balafon in the world - an 800 year old instrument that has been played and preserved by the Kouyate family in Niagassola, known as the Dokala association, and is still carefully preserved and guarded in a small, remote village in Guinea near the Malian border called Niagassola. In 2001 UNESCO recognized it as one of the 90 outstanding examples of the world’s intangible cultural heritage ( Proclamation 2001).
The instrument is a type of xylophone of about 1.5 metres in length, made of 20 bamboo slats carefully cut into different lengths and under each of which are fixed several calabashes. According to written and oral histories, the balafon was either manufactured by the king himself or given to him by a jinni (genie). The Balatigui, the patriarch of the Dokala family, is the guardian of the instrument. He is the only one who is allowed to play the Sosso Bala on important occasions.
posted
I have read several internet articles on the Internet about surrounding the controversial origins of the marimba. They say it originally came from Asia, spread into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and then to Ghana and elsewhere. They are not really sure if they evolved independently or whether they did.
Posts: 603 | From: Mobile, Alabama | Registered: Jan 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Ebony Allen: I have read several internet articles on the Internet about surrounding the controversial origins of the marimba. They say it originally came from Asia, spread into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and then to Ghana and elsewhere. They are not really sure if they evolved independently or whether they did.
According to Vienna music ethnologist Gerhard Kubik, the word "marimba" (or its variation "malimba") is a term of Bantu origin from the root rimba or limba, meaning "flat protruding object" with the prefix ma-, and thus designates an instrument with a succession of bars or flat keys. The Bantuist Yeves Monino relates the term to the kikongo Bantu language. The arc marimba, with resonators of tecomates (gourds), used in Guatemala is built with surprising similarity to the Chopi Bantu timbila of Mozambique, and with the balafons of the Mandinga of western Africa. The African origin of the marimba had been known to academics for several decades (Pellicer 2005: 71).
Guatemalan marimba
The xylophone do not appear in Thai manuscripts until about 1730 AD, about a thousand years after the latest possible date for Indonesian voyages to Africa. In the case of xylophone, one might expect African instruments to show morphological similarities to their South-East Asian counterparts if the two are connected. But the xylophones of the Asian mainland, whether Burmese, Cambodian or Thai are all trough, suspension-xylophones. This form of xylophone does not occur at all in Africa (Blench 2002).
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Posts: 1549 | From: California, USA | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Thank you Myra. It appears that by way of the Griot, the people of Mali were a profoundly musical people. This information on the evolution of the Xylophone is admittedly new to me, so I appreciate it. Had no idea that it can also be traced back the the Mali empire. I had to do a bit of research on the Kora not that long ago (which also had its origins in Mali) and this would have been particularly useful then but is very informative now for future reference.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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