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The Ethnology of African Sound-Instruments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

E. M. von Hornbostel
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Extract

Ankermann has confined his investigations to the distribution of instruments within Africa, and the only idiophones of which he takes account are slit-drums, bells, the xylophone, and the sansa. Sachs arrives at his strata I-II by considering the length of the eastern dispersal-radius (from Asia by way of Oceania to America), without including the African occurrences; though, conversely, he arranges some later strata according to the African distribution. In accordance with the methodological principle that distribution over the whole world must be decisive for any system of grouping adopted, I have attempted in what follows to arrange the African sound-producing instruments according to their distribution both within that continent and outside it. It is not meant that all instruments now united in the same group necessarily belong to one and the same culture, but only that, in all probability, they are nearer to each other in time and more closely related in origin than they are to the members of any other group. A closer examination, especially if undertaken with a view to including consideration of all other cultural phenomena, will in many cases lead to subdivision into smaller groups, perhaps also to different arrangements, or even to a change in the entire scheme. The designations of the several groups are not meant to suggest a prejudice of any kind; they were added post factum, principally because it is convenient to have a name for everything. Those borrowed from the nomenclature of Frobenius and Struck should not be taken to mean that their notions of African ‘cultures’ necessarily coincide with our groups; they are only intended to suggest the directions in which contacts can be sought. The names of the instruments have been taken over from Sachs; the numbers appended to them refer to his strata.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1933 , pp. 277 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1933

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References

page 278 note 1 See also the Appendix. I am indebted to Dr. H. Balfour for suggesting suitable English equivalents.

page 278 note 1 The numbers in brackets are those of Sachs's strata.

page 279 note 1 Specimens from Nias, Java, Flores, and Alor in Het Land's Musikologisch Archief in Batavia. Information obtained by Dr. J. Kunst.

page 279 note 2 Information obtained by Dr. Germann.

page 279 note 3 Völkerkunde-Museum, Leipzig.

page 279 note 4 Information obtained by Dr. Herzog.

page 280 note 1 Even the bone flute of the Bushmen has (notwithstanding what is said by Sachs on p. 24) no block—cf. Passarge, , Die Buschmänner der Kalahari, Berlin, 1907, p. 97.Google Scholar

page 282 note 1 Cf. VI.

page 282 note 2 Cf. under ‘Peculiar Forms’, p. 295, infra.

page 284 note 1 We owe to B. Struck (Koloniale Rundschau, 2, 1922) a detailed monograph on the African globular flute.

page 284 note 2 Recently doubted by Nordenskjöld, E. von: Ethnologische Studien, 1, 1929.Google Scholar

page 286 note 1 Schebesta, P., Anthropos, 21 (1926), 484Google Scholar; Frobenius, L., Atlas Africanus, 2, 7Google Scholar; id. Erythraea, pp. 40 seqq.

page 286 note 2 Hornbostel, E. M. v., Zeitschr. f. Ethnol, 43 (1911), 601Google Scholar ; P. W. Schmidt Festschrift (1928), 303.Google Scholar

page 287 note 1 Hornbostel, E. M. v., Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., 43 (1911), 601.Google Scholar

page 287 note 2 J. and Kunst, C. J. A., De Toonkunst van Bali, Weltevreden, 1925.Google Scholar

page 288 note 1 Frobenius, L., Und Afrika sprach, III, 1913.Google Scholar

page 288 note 2 Congo Museum, Tervueren.

page 289 note 1 Bolinder, G., Die Indianer der tropischen Schneegebirge, 1925, pp. 189 et seqq.Google Scholar

page 292 note 1 See note on p. 300.

page 297 note 1 Montandon, G., in Archives suisses d'Anthropologie générale, 3, 1919.Google Scholar

page 298 note 1 Journal of the R. Anthrop. Institute, vol. 37 (1907), p. 80.Google Scholar

page 300 note 1 A lute in which the neck is tanged into the resonator, but does not pass right through the latter. (Balfour).

page 303 note 1 Hornbostel, and Sachs, , Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., 46 (1914), 553.Google Scholar

page 305 note 1 See Johnston, H. H., George Grenfell and the Congo, ii. 717, 722.Google Scholar