Musical expeditions of the Venda

The Venda tribe, who live in the Northern Transvaal on the middle Limpopo River, mostly on the south bank in the region north of Louis Trichardt, are noted for their Reed-flute ensembles. Professor Kirby has given us a detailed description of them. The ensemble consists of a set of from nineteen to twenty-six stopped bamboo pipes: they are end-blown, and as each produces only one note, a separate player is needed for every pipe. The pipes are each tuned to a different pitch and together yield a heptatonic scale covering from about two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half octaves, according to the number of pipes in the set

Música, cultura e experiência

.A “música” é um sistema modelar primáriodo pensamento humano e uma parte da infra-estrutura da vida humana. O fazer “musical”é um tipo especial de ação social que pode terimportantes conseqüências para outros tiposde ação social. A música não é apenas reflexiva,mas também gerativa, tanto como sistema cul-tural quanto como capacidade humana. Umaimportante tarefa da musicologia é descobrircomo as pessoas produzem sentido da “músi-ca”, numa variedade de situações sociais e emdiferentes contextos culturais, distinguindoentre as capacidades humanas inatas utilizadaspelos indivíduos nesse processo e as convençõessociais que guiam suas ações

Patterns of Nsenga Kalimba music

The recordings on which this analysis is based, were made between July 24th and August 7th, 1961, in the Petauke District of the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia. Some of them appear on Side 1 of Volume II in the series of three long-playing records, Music from Petauke, published by Ethnic Folkways Library, New York. Dr. Raymond Apthorpe, in his capacity as Research Sociologist of the Rhodes- Livingstone Institute, Lusaka, had already done several months fieldwork amongst the Nsenga, when he suggested to the acting director of the Institute, Mr. C.M.N. White, M.B.E., that I should be invited to make a brief, but concentrated, study of Nsenga music. I am most grateful to all those who have made this study possible, and especially to the Council of the University of the Witwatersrand, whose Research Committee made a most generous grant to enable me to have a Nagra IIIC Portable Tape Recorder, and to cover some of the costs of preparing this analysis. Above all, I should like to thank the Nsenga musicians who responded patiently and graciously to my enquiries about their art

Music in Uganda

I visited many parts of Uganda, with the exception of West Nile, and almost everywhere I was struck by the vitality of musical traditions. Even the music played on Western instruments was usually African in idiom. There is, however, an urgent need to co-ordinate research into Ugandan music; to ensure that efficient methods and high standards of scholarship are maintained; to centralize research materials, so that they are readily available to students; and above all to utilize to the full the talents and enthusiasm of the many Ugandans who have already begun to investigate their own music

Problems of pitch, pattern and harmony in the ocarina music of the Venda

This paper aims both to describe some features of Venda ocarina music and to relate these findings to a problem of method in ethno-musicology