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Ancient Traditions, Future Grooves By Peter Reale 2 Introduction Perception of rhythm varies from culture to culture. In the West we focus on music that is written in four or three pulses with equal value. We feel that four provides a “danceable rhythm,” and to dance or feel the groove in music from a culture with a different rhythmic system feels awkward. If you have ever been to a Greek wedding or a Klezmer dance party you may have been in awe of how people were dancing in rhythms in time signatures such as seven and five or found yourself unable to predict the dance as you could with the fox trot. This course is designed to help western high school age musicians understand rhythm in the way that the people of the Ewe and Shona cultures understand it. Often times when music of different cultures is interpreted by western ethnomusicologists and musicians, they try and mold it into a western system for which the music was not designed. This causes misconceptions among students. To notate music of these cultures in the most effective way possible, one should use a system in which all notes and their relationships to each other are shown. The Time Unit Box System (“TUBS”) was developed by Philip Harland and James Koetting as a simpler way to notate African music.(Reid, 1977). It uses a series of boxes each of which have an equal value in time. This will be explained in further depth within the Ewe and Shona sections of the paper. This course is to be discussion-based although there will be lectures and notetaking. Ideally the classroom should be set up in a large band room with a large circular table for discussion and note-taking, a chalk board or any kind of writing board, and percussion instruments which I will discuss later. The class size should not exceed 15. 3 This small class size allows every student to participate in every discussion, and allows for a more intimate learning environment. Grading will be divided into three parts. The first section will be class participation. The grade should not express the frequency of contributions to the class but should focus on the content of discussion and how students participate in the learning and playing of rhythms. Some students tend to dominate conversation but do not contribute meaningful points to the discussion; this should be discouraged. Students should be reminded to be fair in allowing other students to voice their opinions. Friday presentation grades will also be part of the class participation grade. The second part will be process. Students must document their process in learning the material in notebooks or “processfolios.” This can be either a composition book or a sketchpad because some students like to add drawings or their own artistic flair to the “process-folio.” Students should write entries biweekly as well as take notes in this book. The entries can be reflections on the classes of the week or independent work that applies to the class. At the end of the course the students must hand in these process-folios for grading. The third part of the grade is papers and projects. There will be one paper which will be assigned at the end of the Ewe unit then revised to include Mbira at the end of that unit. There will also be a final project that I will explain later. Students should be notified and reminded of this final project quite frequently, to avoid the inevitable, “I wasn’t here when you assigned that” or “I never heard you say that.” The choice of which cultures to use in this curriculum was based upon the idea that I needed a musical culture which was strictly rhythmically based, having no notational scale within the drumming and a culture which applied polyrhythmic concepts 4 to an instrument which uses a notational scale. The Ewe music was chosen because of my previous study of it, along with the large amount of published materials on Ewe music. The music comes from an area from which Africans were captured and brought to America as slaves. Ewe music is a drumming-based music in which rhythmic time comes from distinct bell patterns. The choice of Shona music was suggested by my mentor Kenneth Sacks, who showed me the rhythmic motifs and how they are used in the duet style of the Mbira music; and how each part plays melodic lines, which are complete and incomplete at the same time. I found the Shona music very interesting and felt that the ideas used in Mbira music could be applied to contemporary arrangement and composition. 5 An Overview of Rhythm The first section of this course is an overview of rhythm. The first two classes will focus on answering the first essential question, “What is Rhythm?” A basic understanding of what our preconceived notions are about rhythm will open up a discussion of the ambiguous nature of the term. The students should come to a consensus on a definition of rhythm; this definition should be on the first page of the students process-folio. This allows for students to look back in the middle or end of the course to judge their progress as they work towards a deeper understanding of rhythm. The second day of the class the teacher should bring in music that is rhythmically challenging to the students. Some examples of music that could be used are Gagaku music from Japan. This is the traditional imperial court music. Another example could be Balinese Gamelan music, which works in long rhythmic cycles only determined by the composer of the song. The songs can range from 12 beats a cycle to over 100 beats in a cycle. Mrdangam music from southern India is another good example of challenging rhythm. After two or three of these selections are played as well as recordings of Ewe and Shona music, the teacher should play an example of music uniquely western, such as Mozart, The Beatles, or Barbra Streisand. Students should discuss the similarities and differences. This should help them rethink their original definition of rhythm. 6 Ewe Music After the brief overview of rhythm in the first week, the class starts its first endeavor, which is learning how to play Ewe music. Gahu is one of the most basic and well-known rhythms from the Ewe culture, but it shows all of the themes that are important to this course. This unit will be broken up into two sections: the first being the history, geography, and cultural context of the music. The second section will consist of actually teaching the rhythm. The context is as important to learning the music as the music itself. It explains why each part falls in the place that it does and what the music means in the eyes of the African performer. The history and social context should only take one week. This should consist of lectures and discussions for the first four days of the week. Every Friday, to break things up a bit, one or two students should do 5-minute presentations on music they find rhythmically interesting, and allow students to discuss it. The presentations will be assigned to the students the Friday before. This is a good way to add to the musical vocabulary of the students as well as hone their skills at rhythmic dissection and analysis. The essential questions for this unit should include the following: “What is rhythm for the Ewe people?” and “How does the Ewe view of rhythm differ from the initial definition of rhythm put together by the students?” Students should understand the three parts that make up the Ewe style of rhythm, “The Call,” “The Response” and “The Time.” These terms are explained in depth on page eight. 7 The Ewe people are located mostly in Ghana, Benin and Togo. Due to the fact that early African history is only handed down through oral traditions, much of it is vague. The history of the Ewe is much debated, but most stories state that the group migrated from the north after some kind of conflict. It is generally believed that they were from east of the Niger River and eventually settled down in what is now Togo and Ghana. It is hard to tell what actually happened leading up to their final destination in the Volta region of Ghana, but by the early 1700’s they had finally settled. (Ladzekpo, 1994) Ewe society is patri-lineal, which means property is passed down from father to son. Because of this, men mainly do drumming, unlike in other Ghanaian societies in which women have larger roles in society. Men mostly take Ewe political and leadership roles, as well. Present day Ghana achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1957, the first in sub-Saharan Africa. Before its independence it was called Gold Coast. Its first trade contact with Europe was through the Portuguese in 1482 when the Portuguese built their first castle with the aim of trading gold. During the colonial era different ethnic groups would take sides in colonial wars. This caused a lot of tension between tribes in Ghana that did not exist before colonial rule. During colonial rule, Ghana’s gold was mined, major coco plantations were started and the slave trade increased. Ghana was the center for European slavers: most of the European slave castles are located on the coast of Ghana. Ghana’s current population is 22,931,299 and its territory comprises 239,460 sq km. Ghana has the largest man made lake in the world, Lake Volta. It is a constitutional democracy with a multiparty system. The country is 68 percent Christian. (CIA, 2007) 8 Ghana currently is one of the most powerful nations in sub Saharan Africa, and Ghana has recently been making headlines as it is becoming more of a player in international politics. it is currently head of the African Union and at the forefront of the movement to label the Darfur conflict a “genocide”. Students should keep an eye out in the media for news stories about Ghana because they can add a lot to the classroom discussion during the learning of the music’s social context. In Ewe tradition, musical performance is beyond that of just a music performance. It is as much about the dance and costumes as it is about the music. David Locke refers to these performances as “multimedia events.” The music varies siginficantly from piece to piece; each has its own aesthetic. Some pieces are for specific events or ceremonies, others such as Gahu are social music for festivals, weddings and just good times. Gahu is a fairly recent piece of music only coming into being in the 1950s. Kobla Ladzekpo claims that Gahu was actually made by Yoruba speakers from Nigeria and Benin as a satire of the modernization of Africa; it is a social commentary on Africans who abandon their traditions and try to become as western as possible in an attempt to be successful. The name “Gahu” directly translates as airplane or iron vehicle, which is a sign of modernity. Gideon Alorwoyie, a professor at the University of North Texas, has traced Gahu back to a single man from the town of Anlo-Afiadenyigaba. He also claims that Gahu became popular due to the “playfully erotic, fun loving quality of its music and dance and the gorgeous style of its costuming.”(Locke, 1998) The important themes of Gahu that the students must understand are: musical “conversation,” polyrhythm, and repetition. Musical “conversation” is how each part interacts with one another. All instruments as a whole respond to the atsimevu master part 9 and the bell pattern. The problem with teaching this is you cannot explain it without either an aural or visual model. For the visual model, one must use the TUBS notation system. To understand polyrhythm and musical conversation, the stacking of parts is important. When the parts are stacked on top of each other, you can see the different uses of rhythm and the calls and responses, see figure 1.1. Students should be able to hear the conversation. David Locke divides the parts into sections he calls “The Call,” “The Response” and “The Time.” “The Call” is made up of the master drum part, either the Atsimevu or the Boba because it signals to the other drums to start, stop, or move into a different part of the song, as well as sends and receives signals to and from the dancers. “The Response” is made up of the Kidi and Sogo parts. These parts respond to the master drum parts and change according to those actions; their emphasis is during the unemphasized or rest notes of the master part. Kidi and Sogo are midrange drums. They are lower than the Kaganu, but higher than the Atsemivu. The bell, rattle, and Kaganu parts make up “The Time.” These parts are unchanging throughout the song and keep the steady pulse from which all other drums follow. The interplay between these three parts is what creates the polyrhythmic features of the music. The Kaganu is the highest pitched drum in the ensemble; it should cut through the other parts and be steady, as it is an important aspect of the time keeping. Like most African music, Gahu does not have a fixed length as a song. It is cyclical; it repeats for however long the master drummer feels is necessary or however long the dance lasts. The repetition, however does not get monotonous because of the depth of the music. The drum interplay is what stimulates the audience. 10 Many people who try to teach world music try to force the music into western notation and apply a western view of rhythm. Often teachers explain African music as having a “hidden beat” which is a fixed pulse that western music with time signatures has. The only reason westerners hear a “hidden beat” is actualy because due to their musical training they innately try and find it, when in fact Ewe music is based upon a bell pattern. “The Time” section of the music is based around the time given by the bell, not an unheard count of four or six. The problem encountered when giving something a “hidden beat” is that because the music is polyrhythmic, it cannot have only one way of counting it. For that reason the only true time comes from the bell pattern. The teacher should only play the improvisatory parts of the master drum. It is hard for younger students to see improvisation as a way to enhance other parts as opposed to bring attention to themselves. Also, there is not enough time to teach the students the traditional forms of improvisation; if there is time left over at the end of the course, the teacher can show basic master parts to the students. The teacher should do more studying beyond this course description. Recommended reading for the teacher would be Drum Gahu by David Locke. After reading this book the teacher should have a grasp of traditional improvisation. The learning of the rhythms themselves should take around two weeks. Ideally the class would have a full Ewe drum setup, but alas this is hard to come by. This problem, however can be overcame very easily. The music might not sound exactly like a traditional group, but it still can show the rhythmic motifs necessary for the course. First, the teacher must get together as many drums as possible from snare drums to congas. The only requirement is that they can be tuned. Second, the drums must be organized from 11 lowest tone to the highest tone. Finaly assign the parts to the drums based on their tone. The best replacement for a Kaganu would be a snare drum with the snares turned off due to its ability to cut through the lower tones of the other drums. One could also use a highpitched Djembe for this. The Kidi Sogo and Atsimevu parts could all be played on differently tuned congas. The classroom should be set up with the drums in a crescent shape. The teacher should be in front of them with the Atsimevu. The parts should be taught to the students through call and response with the bell always playing so students understand the interaction between the part and the bell. On the first day of playing the students record the notation of the partsin their processfolios. The notation should be on a black board in plain sight during practice, so students can look up at it and see how the part is fitting in with the others. It helps students understand the positive aspects of this form notation. After learning the different parts through a call and response technique, which is when the teacher plays the part and every one else plays it back, the students should rotate through the different parts so they have learned all of them. By the time all of the students have learned all of the parts, the two weeks should be up. This is when students should start to reflect. They should write their first essay comparing and contrasting Ewe views of rhythm to the western views. There are similarities in jazz in structure and time, but there are also many differences. This should get the students thinking and they should be able to produce some interesting work. 12 Shona After working strictly on rhythm, moving to the Mbira music of the Shona people is a logical step to take. Shona music uses polyrhythms in a similar way: the music is cyclical, and to the western ear there could be multiple interpretations of time. Shona Mbira is an important part of being able to use polyrhythm in music because it brings use of tones and melody into play. I found it fascinating because the Mbira duets complement each other rhythmically and the arrangement adds to the melodic features. Each player plays three independent melodic lines: bass, tenor, and alto. The use of these parts can be applied in a similar duet style to any instrument that has multiple octaves. This allows application to contemporary western music. The Shona people live in present day Zimbabwe, and parts of Mozambique and Zambia. There are roughly 7,000,000 people who speak the Shona language. The Shona live in the southwest of the Zimbabwean Plateau. They are bordered by the Kalahari Desert and the Indian Ocean. In the first half of the 19th century Nguni warriors from the south invaded the Shona land. The Ndebele invaded in 1838 and carved out a large chunk of land from the Shona on the plateau for themselves. To this day there is still tension between the groups. In the 1880’s the British took over what is today Zimbabwe, and named it Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes who was a British politician and founder of De Beers diamonds. The nation was a colony of the United Kingdom until Ian Smith, who 13 was the prime minister, declared independence in 1970 but by 1979 the nation reverted to a colonial holding. Then, in April of 1980, the nation of Zimbabwe was created and became independent once more. The main instrument of the Shona is the Mbira Dzavadzimu (referred to from here as the Mbira). There are other kinds of Mbira but the Dzavadzimu is the most popular. Mbira Dzavadzimu translates to “Mbira of the Ancestral spirits.”(Sacks,1992) Mbira is an instrument that most westerners would describe as a thumb piano, or if you went to grad school, a plucked idiophone. The Mbira is much more than a thumb piano. It is made up of twenty-two metal keys attached to a wooden soundboard. For the sake of simplicity I will refer to each row based on its tonality, alto, tenor, and bass. The left side of the Mbira has two rows on top of each other. The tenor is on the top and the bass is below it. The left side is played with only the left thumb. The right side has the alto keys, which are played with the right thumb and forefinger. The right pinky is placed in a hole in the soundboard. The Mbira is played inside of half of a large dried out gourd as a resonating chamber. Around the gourd and sometimes on the soundboard bottle caps or snail shells are attached to add a buzzing sound. The traditional and most significant use of the Mbira in Shona culture is at the Bira ceremonies. It is an event, which is organized by a family to consult with deceased ancestors. The point of the Bira ceremony is to evoke a spirit to come through a medium so the family can consult with the ancestor. The sprits of these ancestors are called “Vadzimu”(Sacks,1992). It is incredibly important in the traditional beliefs to honor the memory of your deceased parents or grandparents. If the spirits feel that you are forgetting them they can cause you or your children to become sick and possibly die. It is 14 determined that a Bira needs to be held when a child’s illness cannot be cured by traditional medicine. The family members must plan the Bira ceremony for weeks in advance, musicians, mediums and attendants need to be gathered as well as brewing a ritual beer which is a time consuming process. The location of the Bira is generally in the largest Banya in the village, which may accompany around 50 people. The amount of time it takes to channel the spirit depends on the quality of the music and if the music played is that of the spirits musical taste. The ceremonies start at sundown and generally end by sunup. When the spirit that has been upset is channeled the spirit will request for some form of appeasement such as to brew a pot of beer in its honor. Before the spirit may talk the people in the Banya test if the medium is faking by making them drink a mixture of beer and snuff, if the medium vomits they know he is faking and is kicked out of the Banya.(Sacks,1992) This is the basics of the Bira ceremony if the teacher or students want to learn more about this I recommend that they read from Paul Berliner’s Soul of Mbira. Mbira can be played as a solo instrument but, for the sake of developing intertwining polyrhythmic phrases I am making this course focus on the group style of Mbira playing. The group style is generally two or three Mbira’s accompanied by a Hosho (rattle) player. Hosho are two hollowed out gourds filled with buckshot and kept in with plugs made from dried corn. The Hosho are the timekeepers in this music keeping a steady rhythm through out the piece much like the role of the bell in Ghanaian drumming as Kenneth Sacks points out in The Dialectic of Shona Mbira Dzavadzimu. Mbira pieces are made up of a cycle of 48 beats. The cycle is divided up into segments of 12 beats that are slightly different from each other. The cycle is continually varied and 15 repeated. The lead part of the group is called the Kushaura. The second part, or the following part is called the Kutsinhira. The Mbira music uses a style in which each player plays three independent melodies at once, bass, tenor, and alto. When both players play their parts at once there are an incredible amount of melodic lines being created. In Mbira music no part has any priority over the other so when played new melodies are being created between different parts of the instrument by ones mind that are not heard when the instrument is played solo. Kenneth Sacks recalls when he first understood the power of the relationship between the Kushaura and Kutsinhira parts. Nothing in my musical experience has been equivalent to the disorienting effect of my teacher suddenly playing a Kutsinhira part along with my rendition of a Kushaura part that I had just mastered. Initially, I would do my best to ignore the intrusion while focusing on my own part. Soon, however, I would face up to the fact that in light of the Kutsinhira part…my ears would begin to hear something entirely new coming from my Mbira. Perhaps the main beat which I had been hearing in correspondence with the bass notes would suddenly coincide with the alto pattern; or a melody which I believed was carried by the alto register alone would be shared between alto and bass…Mbira patterns can simultaneously carry diverse meanings. This interplay between parts adds a melodic depth similar to that of the rhythmic depth of Ewe drumming. This further expands on the idea that David Locke states in his book Drum Gahu that repetition does not need to be monotonous. This is an overarching understanding that students should leave the class with. Unfortunately most schools don’t have Mbiras to teach students on, so in working with my mentor Kenneth Sacks we came up with a way that the ideas can be expressed and heard by students. A group of six students would be assigned to two keyboards with at least three octaves on each keyboard. We worked together in notating the Mbira so that 16 the song Nemamusasa, Figure 2.1, which translates to “building houses”, can be played on this set up. The set up does not have the true Mbira sound but it does help students understand the themes discussed. Each student will play one register of the Mbira. Each keyboard would play the one of the two parts of the song. Two other students should play the Hosho part, which can be played with maracas or shakers. The key that we chose was D. the tenor part would be normal d, the alto in d+1 and the bass in d-1. In total teaching the history and the students learning each part and how they fit together should take four weeks. The final assignment of the Mbira unit is for students to add Mbira into the paper they wrote previously about the differences between Ewe and western music. 17 Course Wrap up: Contemporary Application The last two weeks will be devoted to the final project. The final project can either be a group collaboration or a solo effort. Students are given the option of either creating there own piece of music that follows the rhythmic ideas that were taught over the course and also includes contemporary influences, or writing an effective 3 to 5 page rhythmic analysis of a form of music of their choice. Only the creation of music can be a group effort if the piece is intended to be preformed. If it is just a score it should be done by only one person, this is the same with the essay. Students will have class time the last two weeks to work on this project, this should be supervised by the teacher to make sure the kids are actually doing work. This amount of time allows critiquing by the teacher and multiple drafts. the final project should be graded fairly harshly due to the large amount of time students are given. 18 Boamah, E (1999). Akom and adowa bell patterns in a traditional west African region. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Wesleyan University Hartigan, R (1995). West African rhythms for drumset. Miami, FL; Manhattan Music Holmes, M (1984). The pulse of adowa. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Wesleyan University Ladzekpo, K (1994). anlo-ewe history. Retrieved December 17, 2007, from dancedrummer.com Web site: http://www.dancedrummer.com/history.html Locke, D (1998). Drum gahu: an introduction to african rhythm. Gilsum, NH: White Cliffs Media. Montfort, M (1985). Ancient traditions- future possibilities. Mill valley, CA: Panoramic Press. Nketia, J.H. (1953). Funeral dirges of the akan people. Exeter, UK: James Townsend and Sons LTD. Sacks, K (1992). The dialectic of shona mbira dzavadzimu. Unpublished Masters Thesis, University of California Los Angeles 19 Wiggins, G (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Ccurriculum Development