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262 CURIOSITIES OF MUSIC.
instruments; they are blown through a hole in the * side, and not at the end; therefore the mode of performing upon them, rather resembles our style of flute playing.*
Another musical nation of Central Africa is the Karague; travellers who have visited them have given more or less detailed accounts of their instruments and festivities. Capt. Speke had the unusual honor of a serenade from the royal court band. The king after receiving a present of some beads, cloth wire, and a tin box, was so delighted that he sent his own band to give Speke a tune.
The performers used reed instruments (made in telescopic fashion) and marked the time by hand-drums. At first they marched and countermarched, playing meanwhile much in the manner of Turkish regimental bands; but this was soon changed to a species of " horn-pipe," which all the musicians danced, playing furiously meanwhile, f
Another bit of musical ceremony which Speke witnessed, will at once remind the reader of the great " Zapfenstreich " or grand tattoo practised sometimes in the German army. At the new moon the king surrounds himself with numerous drummers (Speke saw thirty-five); these strike up together, gradually increasing to a deafening noise; this is followed by a milder kind of music, similar to that described above. The object of the ceremony is to call in all the king's warriors to renew their
•Wood's Nat'lHistory of Man, t. 2, p. 498.
t Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, by Capt. Speke, pafe 210. |
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