AFRICAN NATR'E MELODIES. 



By Rev. \\\ A. Norton, B.A., B.Litt. 



I had the privilege of reading a paper on this subject before 

 the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at its meeting at Bloemfontein in 1909.* On that occasion I 

 merely discussed the (juestion in general, mentioning some of the 

 material which 1 liad at hand to prove my points. I have long 

 been wanting to publish the songs I have at various times col- 

 lected, but have waited until now, partly from want of leisure, 

 partly hoping that someone more adept musically than myself 

 might do the work better. Rut time is going on, and every 

 year I tind that native custom and language become more and 

 more corrupt, and the true old African ring more and more 

 obliterated by the flood of foreign modes. I feel, therefore. 

 that no time is to be lost. If the ideal musicianK- student of 

 native arts arrives, my own work may be of use to him — at any 

 rate, it will be no drawback. If he does not arrive, there will 

 be some record of what is passed away. How glad we should 

 be to find remains, however imperfect, of the music of our 

 heathen Teutonic ancestors, or even of the Keltic or pre-Aryan 

 tribes which preceded them! Even so I venture to think that 

 the Africander of the future, and still more the Bantu of the 

 future, will be glad of some records such as these, and if someone 

 can correct these, where they ma\' very well be astra>'. I shall 

 only be too thankful. 



But here let me utter a warning. Primitive Bantu music, 

 as Professor Meinhof and other workers have pointed out, 

 depends not on the melod\-, which is often poor, and to our 

 ears often unpleasing, but on rJiythin, which explains why the 

 Suto word for a circumcision song corresponds with the Swahili 

 word for a drum, the meaning apparently in original Bantu also ; 

 and whv the Sechwana word for a hymn sc-opclu. is from the 

 verb opa. originally meaning to clap, or beat a drum. Bantu 

 music is pre-eminenth" percussive, as some of us maw have 

 found to our cost when wanting to sleep o" nights, withotit 

 realising the extremely elaborate character, artistic after its kind 

 (if properlv performed), of what we may call the " drumnody." 

 The amateur pianist or songster, the "' musical person" in the 

 vulgar sense, is apt to ignore the art of drumming, as under- 

 stood in militar\- music, and used with such effect with the organ 

 in funeral marches, etc. It is natural, therefore, for those who 

 are narrow-minded enough to suppose that no good thing, 

 artistic or otherwise, can come out of the African native, to miss 

 the artistrv of native rhvthm. Those who have =;een a really 

 good war-dance at the mines, for example— the opportunity is 

 rare elsewhere in the Union— or heard a good Chopi piano per- 



*Rept. S.A.A.A.S.. Bloemfontein (1909), 314-316. 



