MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. 



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African look so serious and so full of earnest purpose. 

 Yet with all this thoughtfulness, " poor human nature 

 cannot dance of itself." The dance has already been 

 described as far as possible : as may be imagined, the 

 African Thalia is by no means free from the reproach 

 which caused Mohammed to taboo her to his fol- 

 lowers. 



Music is at a low ebb. Admirable ti mists, and no 

 mean tunists, the people betray their incapacity for 

 improvement by remaining contented with the simplest 

 and the most monotonous combinations of sounds. As in 

 everything else, so in this art, creative talent is wanting. 

 A higher development would have produced other 

 results ; yet it is impossible not to remark the delight 

 which they take in harmony. The fisherman will 

 accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the 

 housewife her task of rubbing down grain, with song ; 

 and for long hours at night the peasants will sit in a 

 ring repeating, with a zest that never flags, the same 

 few notes, and the same unmeaning line. Their style 

 is the recitative, broken by a full chorus, and they 

 appear to affect the major rather than the interminable 

 minor key of the Asiatic. Their singing also wants 

 the strained upper notes of the cracked-voiced Indian 

 performer, and it ignores the complicated raga and 

 ragini or Hindu modes, which appear rather the musical 

 expression of high mathematics than the natural 

 language of harmony and melody. 



The instruments of the East African are all of foreign 

 invention, imported from various regions, Madagascar, 

 and the coast. Those principally in use are the fol- 

 lowing. The zeze, or banjo, resembles in sound the 

 monochord Arabian rubabah, the rude ancestor of the 

 Spanish guitar. The sounding-board is a large hollow 



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