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AFRICAN MUSIC. 263 |
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oath of fealty.* The time keeping is said to be very exact, and the drummers burst forth again and again during the night. The war drum of the Karague is beaten by women.
A kind of guitar exists among this people, and six of the seven strings which it possesses accord perfectly with our own diatonic scale, the seventh string only, being discordant. Their wind instruments are flageolet and bugle, or at least similar to them.
Among the nations adjacent to those already mentioned are the Bongo.
"We again quote from the valuable work of the most musical traveller who has visited this section, —Schweinf urth. f
"The Bongo, in their way are enthusiastic lovers of music; and although their instruments are of a very primitive description, and they are unacquainted even with the pretty little guitar of the Nyam-Nyams, which is constructed on perfectly correct acoustic principles, yet they may be seen at any hour of the day, strumming away and chanting to their own performances. The youngsters down to the small boys are all musicians. Without much trouble and with the most meagre materials they contrive to make little flutes; they are accustomed also to construct a monochord, which in its design reminds one of that which (known as the Gubo of the Zulus) is common throughout the tribes of Southern Africa. This
•Captain Speke's Journal, p. 222. t Haart of Africa, t. 1, p. 287. |
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