THE INCREDIBLE SURVIVAL OF THE HARPS AND LYRES OF ANTIQUITY IN AFRICA TODAY!
Posted on November 21, 2011 with 0 commentsTHE INCREDIBLE SURVIVAL OF THE HARPS AND LYRES OF ANTIQUITY IN AFRICA TODAY!
Of all the continents in the world, Africa is unique, as in many parts of this incredible continent, the actual lyres, harps & lutes of the ancient world are still being made & played...
THE MESOLITHIC MUSICAL BOW
The Mesolithic ancestor of both the harp & lyre, was the basic musical bow. This is basically the archaic archery bow, on which musical tones can be produced, either by plucking or striking the string of the bow, using either the ground or a gourd held against the chest as a resonator. From the first pictorical evidence so far discovered, the musical bow has been played since at least 15,000 BCE, but could date back to the Mesolithic Era, around 60,000 BCE, when the archery bow was probably first invented! Below is a delightful video I recently found, which demonstrates how the the musical bow was played:
The very earliest cave etching of a musican dates back to about 15,000 BCE, from engravings on the right-hand side wall in the cave of Les Trois Frères at Le Tuc d'Audoubert, Montesquieu-Avantes, Ariège, French Pirénées, and seems to show a dancer dressed in animal skins, playing a musical bow by using his mouth as a resonator - one of the techniques used to play the musical bow still practiced in Africa today:
Incredibly, the musical bow is still being played in Africa in modern times - an incredible musical legacy, stretching back in time maybe as long as 60,000 years! The African musical bow (commonly known as the Xitende) can be played either by plucking or hitting the string, either with a gourd resonator held against the bow or using the mouth of the player as a resonator, or without any resonator - just holding the bow against the ground.
THE MUSIC OF THE SAN BUSHMEN - A PRECIOUS REMNANT OF THE FIRST MUSIC EVER CREATED BY MODERN HUMANITY!
Recent genetic research has revealed that the genetically most diverse and therefore the oldest ancestors of all the modern human races on Earth today, are the San Bushmen (also known as the Basarwa) of the Kalahari Desert, Namibia and Botswana, South Africa. It was the Mesolithic ancestors of the San, who migrated from Africa between 70,000 - 50,000 years ago, and as testified through their DNA), the San people are the original Africa ancestors of all modern humans, from whom every other human race on the planet today is descended from!
It was the ancestors of the San Bushmen who eventually replaced the Neanderthal populations of humanity, whose earlier African hominid ancestors in turn, also migrated from Africa, hundreds of thousands of years earlier...
It therefore follows that the wonderfully diverse culture of the San must be one of the oldest on the planet! The music of the San could therefore be a precious remant, of the first music ever created by modern humans - and part of their incredibly ancient musical culture includes the playing of the musical bow. In the fascinating video below, a San Elder uses a percussive style of playing the musical bow, holding a melon against the bow to act as a resonator...
For further fascinating information on the incredibly ancient living musical legacy of the San people, please see:
TECHNIQUES FOR PLAYING THE MUSICAL BOW
These next two videos demonstrate the plucked & percussive techniques of playing the African musical bow, the second video showing how the mouth of the player can be used as a resonator (the same playing techinque which also appears to be depicted in the cave etching from 15,000 BCE)...
THE AMAZING AFRICAN LYRES!
By around 1000CE in the West, the lyre was totally replaced, not by the even more ancient harp, but by the evolution of more versatile string instruments with a fingerboard - the fingerboard meant less strings were required, and a greater range of pitches became available, in contrast to the open strings of the lyre. The last lyres played in Europe were the Anglo Saxon Lyres of the kind found at Sutton Hoo, as will described in detail later in this section of the website.
Thankfully, in many parts of the African contintent, particularly Ethiopia Eritrea, Uganda & Kenya, the lyre of antiquity was not replaced, and a precious remnant of the lyre-playing techniques and the actual sounds of the lyres of antiquity, have been amazingly preserved!
Why might this be?
BEER, AFRICA, AND THE LYRE OF THE ANCIENT SUMERIANS?
One of my "Klezfiddle1" Youtube Channel subscribers (by the name of "leftysergeant") passed on this remarkable gem of information to me, reagarding evidence of ancient cross-cultural influences between Mesopotamia and Africa, which may suggest a Mespotamian origin of the lyre in or around Ur, in Sumeria, and why thousands of years later, the lyre is still being played in many parts of the African continent to this very day...
"I think I have another bit of evidence that the lyre got to Africa from Ur or elsewhere in Mesopotamia or Israel. It has to do with beer.
The Sumerians drank beer through a straw. I do not see any sign of this practice from Egypt. I did, however, stumble across several referrences to it, and saw one YouTube video (which I cannot now retrieve) referring to the practice in Kenya and others of the Swahili States, all of which also have the lyre in some form.
If you Google "kaffir beer" you will come across this site:
The Sumerians drank beer through a straw. I do not see any sign of this practice from Egypt. I did, however, stumble across several referrences to it, and saw one YouTube video (which I cannot now retrieve) referring to the practice in Kenya and others of the Swahili States, all of which also have the lyre in some form.
If you Google "kaffir beer" you will come across this site:
which has a picture way to the bottom of a group of Kenyans around a common beer pot with a bunch of reeds. Finding two such distinct cultural artifacts together is probably pretty good evidence for a common origin"
The more I dig, the more fascinating evidence of these strands of ancient cross-cultural connections can be found - the Ancient Legacy of the Lyre, in Africa, lives on...
THE ETHIOPIAN BEGENA
The most fascinating of all the African lyres, according to Ethiopian folklore, this lyre was brought to Ethiopa (along with the Ark of the Covenant!), by Menelik I - none other than one of the sons of King Solomn himself, following his marriage to the fabled Ethiopian Queen of Sheba!
The most intriguing aspect of this bass lyre which seems to support this incredible folklore, is its' 10 strings - exactly the same number of strings used on the Biblical Kinnor (as described in both the Biblical text and further verified in the writing of the 1st century Jewish Historian, Flavius Josephus)...
COULD THE ETHIOPIAN BEGENA BE IDENTIFIED AS EITHER THE BIBLICAL KINNOR OR THE BIBLICAL NEVEL?
The only difference I can think of, between the contemporary Begena, and the ancient Jewish Kinnor, may be one of pitch - the Begena is a bass instrument. This leads me to believe that the Begena could maybe regarded as a relic of the Biblical Nevel lyre, rather than the Kinnor. As discussed earlier, according the the Mishnah, the Biblical Nevel had thicker strings made of the sheep's large intestines, whereas the Kinnor's thinner strings were made from the small intestines.
Another clue to the hypothesis that the Nevel was a bass instrument, also comes from the number of Nevels which were used in comparision to the number of Kinnors used in the Levtical Ensemble - according to the Mishna, the use of the Nevel in th Levitical Ensemble was limited to "no fewer than two and no more than six", whereas "never fewer than nine Kinnorot, and more may be added" (Mishnah, Arak 2:5)
This implies that the Nevels provided the bass, over which the softer, treble/alto Kinnors provided the melodic lines - just as in a modern string orchestra, where the number of violins greatly outnumbers the number of double basses/cellos.
Further evidence in my attempt at identifying the Begena with the Biblical Nevel, can also be deduced from the playing style itself - according to the contemporary observations and records by Josephus Flavius, who actually witnessed the Levitical Ensemble in the 1st century CE, the Nevel was played with the fingers, whereas the Kinnor was played with a plectrum (Antiquities, vii.12.3). The Begena is always played with the fingers...just like the Biblical Nevel!
Quite often, the Begena has a soundboard of taut leather, as in the video clip - this could be evidence of the interpretation mentioned above, of the elusive Biblical Nevel as having a skin membrane.
However, what of the twelve strings of the original Biblical Nevel, which Josephus also informs us of in his Antiquities vii. 12.3? The modern Begena has ten strings, like the Biblical Kinnor. This anomaly can be explained by the Biblical reference to another type of Nevel - the "Nevel Asor". This name literally means "A Nevel With Ten Strings"!
Here is John Wheeler's thoughts on this fascinating possibility: "The ten-stringed wooden lyre I've seen from Ethiopia might well be a descendent of Egypt's version of what the Bible calls kinnor al - ha-Sheminit. SHV thought that might be like the Greek magadis with ten pairs of strings, but another possibility is that it was simply a bass lyre - a kinnor tuned an octave lover, "upon the Eighth" in Hebrew. Whereas the nevel `al -alamot "upon Maidens" or of "maidenly pitch" was more numerous and thus apparently of higher pitch than the specialized kinnor (all this referring to 1 Chronicles 15). The regular kinnor and nevel likely had a reverse pitch relationship, with the kinnor higher than the nevel (given the latter's thicker strings).
As far as I've ever seen in archaeology, bass versions of the kinnor and other bass lyres were only played with the fingers - that practice going back to ancient Mesopotamia. Lyres with plectra are at lowest of about high tenor range. I can play my Celtic harp with a guitar pick readily enough all thtext-decoration: underline;span style=div style=font-size: medium; div style=/spanfont-size: small;span style=span style=span style=e way down, but it sounds a whofont-size: medium;text-decoration: underline;span style=font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;/spanle lot better on the upper monofilament strings, again from high tenor range up."
If this hypothesis is true, then the Ethiopian Begena, therefore, could be quite literally described as the elusive Biblical Nevel...unchanged, in over 3000 years! A truly fascinating possibility...
THE STRIKING SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE SOUND OF THE BEGENA AND THE SOUND OF THE RESTORED BULL LYRE OF UR...
It is also fascinating just how similar the contemporary Begena Lyre sounds, compared to the playable reconstruction of the famous 47500 or so year old "Lyre of Ur". Mark Hammer has posted some simply fantastic videos on Youtube, of this lyre being played:
A POSSIBLE REASON FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW WORD FOR "MELODY"?
It is particularly interesting to hear the same "buzz" the gut strings make, in both the replica Lyre of Ur, and the Begena - maybe, the reason the Hebrew word for melody; "Zemer" (זמר), sounds like it does, is because originally, the word was onomatopoeic - the actual sound of the word "Zemer", sounds like the buzzing of the gut strings as they would have sounded on the original, ancient Jewish Kinnor Lyre? Yet another fascinating possibility!
THE ENDONGO LYRE OF UGANDA
Special thanks, to "leftyseargent" again, for the following gems of information about this fascinating African Lyre, which appears to be very similar to the Ancient Greek "Lyra":
"The Edongo [sometimes spelt Ndongo], is a Royal Court instrument of the Baganda people of Uganda. It is constructed rather like the Asherroo of Somalia, with the posts inserted through the covering skin from the top.
The Banganda people are not sure where it came from, but it employs leather straps to hold the strings like a traditional Ethiopian Begena, rather than tuning pegs like the typical Udungu or most Egyptian instruments"
THE BAGANDA & BASOGA LYRE OF UGANDA
This lyre appears very similar to the Baganda & Basoga Lyres of Uganda. Here is some fascinating information about these lyres, which I found at:
"The Baganda and the Basoga lyre is made of lizard skin and laced with to a non-sonorous skin in the same manner as the harp and drums.
The strings are tied into a piece of wood and inserted into a hole where the two arms meet of the lyre meet. The 'Ganda lyre' (endongo) has one hole, the 'Soga instrument (entongoli) has two pieces of cloth, barkcloth or banana fibers wrapped around the yoke. The strings are wound round and round this material until it acts as a tuning peg.
The strings on the bowl lyre are not arranged in progressive order, as they are on the arched harp and the zither.
The highest note in the scale is third from the left and the lowest, fifth. Strings 7, 2, 4, 1 and 5 are octaves"
More information can also be found at:
http://www.dambe.org/education.html
http://www.dambe.org/education.html
VIDEOS OF THE LYRES STILL BEING MADE & PLAYED IN AFRICA TODAY
The final selection of videos below testifies to this unique phenomenon, and for me, the survival of the ancient lyre-playing techniques in East Africa provides a tantilizing taste of how the music of the ancient world, was actually played...
THE OBUKANO LYRE FROM KENYA
THE LITUNGU LYRE FROM KENYA
THE NYATITI LYRE FROM KENYA
THE SHERRARA LYRE FROM SOMALIA