- Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:15 am
#3519
Not to detract from anything in your most recent post, bubudi, but I have a few thoughts on this.
I believe some people (like John Miller Chernoff, author of African Rhythm and African Sensibility, which is regularly used in university-level "world music" courses here in the US) have done a great disservice to the study of African music by taking statements that may well be true about the music they studied in X country (in Chernoff's case, Ghana) and applying them to the entire continent and its music.
In Chernoff's case, that includes sweeping statements that African languages are tonal - by which he means (AFAIK) all of them, or close to all of them. (Though I have to add that his book is really good; just take the generalities with a grain of salt!)
Personally, I believe it's important to avoid this kind of broad-brush treatment and find out as much as possible about the culture(s) and languages of the places where the music comes from... And although I'm no linguist, I have my doubts about all languages in Guinea, Mali, Senegambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, etc. being tonal by default.
So, as far as I'm concerned, the jury's out on that one, until someone shows convincing proofs of this, and not just anecdotes applied in a too-general way.
Not long ago i was reading about talking drum "language" in (I think) Senegal - but it may have been Mali-style ntama, or Ghanian music, or Nigerian. At any rate, one of the main points that the author made was that the music was not comprehensible as a replication of spoken language to anyone but the drummers who were playing it. (Like bubudi's sabar illustration above.)
Make of that what you will. (i really need to dig up the source on that, so you guys can check it out, too.)
Sometimes I think we hear what we want to hear, especially when it makes for a good story. (And that's not to say that there's no relationship to spoken language, either, but I just want to urge us all to be careful not to jump to conclusions...)
[As an aside, I've recently seen someone make a 1:1 correspondence between spoken American English and jazz drumming that had me wanting to tear my hair out! The person who was on about it has an overriding belief that jazz soloing is about "telling a story" and insists that at least one 20th-c. drummer was actually playing phrases that translated into English as "dirty motherf*cker" and such. I have this sneaking feeling that the drummer in question might have done this for master classes by way of illustrating some things about repetitive rhythms in both music and speech, but as an absolute thing, no way.]