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Migrating Patterns of Melody among the Berbers and Jews of the Atlas Mountains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Edith Gerson-Kiwi
Edith Gerson-Kiwi*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
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Extract

In the vast territories of Northwest Africa, there are some remarkable islets of the aboriginal Berber civilization, notably in Morocco, where the Berbers form approximately 45 per cent, of the population, and in Algiers, where they reach some 30 per cent. In addition, one can meet them in the Kabylie, in some Tunisian villages and on the Isle of Djerba. The Berbers are generally recognized as one of the indigenous tribal groups of “White” Africa who call themselves “Imazighen” (noblemen) and use their own language, a Hamito-Semitic dialect of great antiquity which spreads intermittently from the Oasis of Siwa, at the Egyptian-Lybian frontier, to the Atlantic Ocean. The main local dialects spoken in Morocco, are the ‘Tashelhit’ in the South- West and around Marrakesh, and the ‘Tamazirt’ spoken in the North-East.

Type
The Migration of Folk Music
Information
Journal of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 19 , 1967 , pp. 16 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © International Council for Traditional Music 1967

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References

Notes

* A recording was played in illustration.

1. Clarke, Bryan, Berber Village, London, 1959, p. 50.Google Scholar For historical and anthropological aspects of the Berbers, see: Bousquet, G.-H., Les Berbères, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1961.Google Scholar

2. von Hornbostel, E. M. und Lachmann, R., “Asiatische Parallelen zur Berbermusik,” Zeitschrift fuer vergleichen.de Musikwissenschaft, Vol. 1, 1933, pp. 4–11.Google Scholar

3. Schneider, Marius, “Nochmals asiatische Parallelen zur Berbermusik,” Ethnologica, Vol. 2, Köln, 1960, pp. 433–438.Google Scholar

4. Among the rich literature on pentatonics, some important studies are: Bartók, Bela, Hungarian Folk Music, London, 1931 Google Scholar; Kodaly, Zóltan, Die ungarische Volksmusik, Budapest, 1956 Google Scholar; Szabolcsi, B., Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Melodie, Budapest, 1959 Google Scholar—see especially the chapter on “Kulturgeschichte und Pentatonie,” pp. 236-66. Also: Szabolcsi, B., “Five-tone Scales and Civilization,” Acta Musicologica, Vol. 15, 1943 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gombosi, O. J., “Key, Mode, Species,” JAMS, Vol. 4, 1951, p. 20 Google Scholar; Brailoiu, C., Sur une mélodie russe, Paris, 1953 Google Scholar; Danckert, W., “Der Ursprung der halbtonlosen Pentatonik,” Festschrift Z. Kodaly, Budapest, 1943, pp. 9–18 Google Scholar; Járdányi, Pal, “The Determining of Scales and Solmization in Hungarian Musical Folklore,” Studia Memoriae Bela Bartok Sacra, pp. 301-06Google Scholar; Wiora, W., “Aelter als die Pentatonik,” ib., pp. 185–208 Google Scholar; Crossley-Holland, P., “Tibetan Music,” Grove's Diet., 1954, Vol. 8, pp. 456 ffGoogle Scholar; Emsheimer, E., The Music of the Mongols, Stockholm, 1943.Google Scholar

5. These Jews of the Atlas Mountains are to be differentiated from those of Northern Morocco who are mainly descendants of the Spanish Jews. As refugees after the pogroms of the Spanish inquisition (1492), they resettled in North Africa. As a community highly urbanized and cultured in the Hispanic way of life, Christian as well as Muslim, they settled mainly in the coastal towns and made little contact with their “berberized” brethren of the Anti-Atlas. For general literature on Moroccan Jews: Chouraqui, Andre, “North African Jewry Today,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 1, London, 1959, pp. 58–68 Google Scholar; Flamand, Pierre, Les communautés Israělites du Sud-Marocain, Casablanca (ca. 1961); Willner, Dorothy and Kohls, Margot, “Jews in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco: A Partial Reconstruction,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, London, 1962, pp. 207-41Google Scholar; Hirschberg, H. Z. J. W., Inside Maghreb. The Jews in North Africa (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1957.Google Scholar

6. Gerson-Kiwi, Edith, “Zur Interpolation sakraler Gesaenge,” W. Wiora Festschrift, 1967.

7. See: Brandel, Rose, The Music of Central Africa, The Hague, 1961, pp. 17–18, 58 ft.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For further discussions on African pentatonicisms, see: Nketia, J. H. Kwabena, African Music Ghana, Northwestern University Press, 1963, p. 34 ff.Google Scholar

8. During a recent expedition to the Kabylian and Tunisian Berbers, Marius Schneider could not any longer find a pentatonie melody (see note 3), whereas Robert Lachmann had recorded many dozens of them less than forty years ago.

9. For the liturgical music of North Moroccan Jews see: Idelsohn, A. Zwi, “Gesaenge der Marokkanischen Juden,” Hebraeisch-Orientalischer Melodienschatz, Vol. 5, Berlin, 1929.Google Scholar See also, for their secular music: Palacin, Arcadio de Larrea, Cancionero Judio del Norte de Marruecos, 3 vols., Madrid, 1952 ff.Google Scholar

10. For the possible sources of influence, see: Herzog, Avigdor, The intonation of the Pentateuch in the Heder of Tunis, Jerusalem, 1963.Google Scholar

11. For further evidence see: Szabolcsi, B., “About five-tone scales in the early Hebrew melodies,” in: I. Goldziher Memorial Volume, Budapest, 1948.Google Scholar

12. In this respect, an interesting rediscovery has been made by Hanoch Avenary (Herbert Loewenstein), referred to in his articles: 1. “Eine pentatonische Bibelweise in der deutschen Synagoge,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 12 (1930), p. 513 ff. 2. “The role of the pentatonie idiom in Jewish music,” The Jewish Music Forum, New York, 1946-47.