260 REV. FATHER FKANZ MATR. 



melody or rliytlim. Except in the case of the di'um, the 

 vohime of sound produced is very small, and practically the 

 performer himself is the only person who derives any enjoy- 

 ment from the music. 



II. Vocal Music. 



Zulu songs may be either of a public or private character. 

 Among the natives anyone may invent a song, text and air ; 

 and most of them have their own private songs, made at some 

 important moment of their lives, or after some event. 

 Children when playing invent nursery rhymes and songs ; so 

 also do boys when herding their father's goats or cattle, and 

 girls when occupied in their homes or at field work, or when 

 sitting round the fire in the evening hours. 



Special songs are composed when young people reach 

 puberty, and particularly when marriage arrangements begin. 



A Zulu will invent a mournful song in remembrance of the 

 death of a near relative. A witch-doctor has his or her own 

 lamentations to the spirits of the dead — amadhlozi. 



The arrival of a European neighljour, the opening of a 

 railway, a war, famine, a plague of locusts, a disease, etc., etc., 

 may become subjects for semi-public songs, which may attain 

 a circulation, more or less wide, among the people. 



Songs of a specific public character are those which are 

 used at the public functions of chiefs (e. g. at the feast of 

 the first fruits — ukwetshwama, or at royal marriages), war 

 songs and the tribal songs which are possessed by every chief 

 and tribe. 



At marriages and other public ceremonies it is a Zulu 

 custom for not onlv the sons's of the livino- chief to be ren- 

 dered, but also those of his father and grandfather. It is for 

 this reason that songs used at tlie time of Tshaka and Dingane 

 are known by the present generation. 



Songs among the Zulus are composed more or less in the 

 following manner : Anyone who feels able and inclined to 

 compose a song invents one or more sentences appropriate to 



