831 MASAI, TUEKANA, SUK, NANDI, ETC. 



sing in a disagreeable falsetto. The women's voices, though powerful, are 

 extremely shrill— shriller than the highest soprano that ever made me 

 shudder in a European opera-house. It struck me that the Masai women 

 had extraordinary range of compass. They were able to produce very 

 deep contralto notes as easily as an upper C. Singing usually means a 

 chosen songster or songstress yelling a solo at the top of his or her voice, 

 and being accompanied by a chorus of men or maidens, women and men 

 often singing together. The chorus does not usually sing the same air 

 as the soloist, but an anti-strophe. I took down a record on my phonograph 

 of some of these Masai songs. One of these I have attempted to reduce 

 to our notation, and it is as follows: — 



Solo. (Chorus. 



-^¥^^^.--~ 



'^^ ^^^ ^i^^^^^SI^E^-EE ^^^ EE^^^E ^^^S^ 



The Masai have few industries. The smelting and forging of iron is 

 done for them usually by a helot tribe of smiths related to the Andorobo 

 and the Nandi, and generally called the Elgunono. This people not only 

 smelts the iron (which is usually obtained as a rubble of ironstone from 

 the beds of rivers) by means of a clay furnace, heated with wood fuel and 

 worked with the usual African bellows ; but beats out the pig iron with 

 hammers into spears, swords, tools, and ornaments. The Masai women 

 make a small amount of earthenware. The agricultural Masai are much 

 more industrious, and employ themselves in all the usual industries of 

 basket-weaving, mat-making, and other simple arts practised by the Bantu 

 Negroes, from whom, no doubt, they have learnt a good deal. The pastoral 

 Masai are greatly indebted to the Bantu and Nandi tribes for their 

 adornments and implements, though they are increasingly dependent on 

 the European, Asiatic, and Swahili traders for many of their requirements 

 in the way of iron and copper wire and beads. They must, in fact, have 

 adopted much of their present style of adornment in relatively recent 

 times, since they became acquainted with the manufactured goods of 

 Europe and Asia. 



To the Andorobo they look to provide them with colobus monkey 

 skins and ostrich feathers, and perhaps with ivory. 



About 150 years ago, as far as one may reckon by native tradition, the 

 pastoral Masai were well established in the country immediately to the 

 north of Kilimanjaro. The Kikuyu held the (then) forest-clad heights 

 along the eastern escarpment of the Rift Valley, but the Masai throve 

 and became completely dominant wherpver the forest afforded no refuge 

 to their foes. About that time a powerful medicine man arose amongst 



