Showing items 1 - 20 of 24

The Mbira of the Ndau: Mozambique and Zimbabwe in 1972

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481764 , vital:78583 , https://doi.org/10.21504/ajhece.v1i1.2481
  • Description: The article, arising from research done in 1972, follows on the author’s series of analyses of the instrumental music of the Shona and Sena peoples of the Zambezi Valley. The analyses in this article focus on the relatively unknown mbira of the Ndau. The article describes its hexatonic note layout, highly variable tunings, and its variations among the Ndau-and Shangana-speaking groups in Southeast Zimbabwe and adjacent regions of Mozambique and South Africa. It includes the historical effect of the Shangana invasion of the nineteenth century into Mozambique. The article further discusses the transcription of the mbira’s music, in staff or the author’s own tablature, with detailed description of the latter. It compares Ndau with Shona concepts of ownership of songs, the practice of kubempa as used by Ndau travelling musicians and the difficulties of working in pre-independence Mozambique. The article presents songs in tablature, some by Bonisa Sithole, the author’s field assistant.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

The system of the mbira

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 2015
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59720 , vital:27642 , http://dx.doi.org/10.21504/amj.v10i1.1229
  • Description: The existence of a harmonically-based system of the mbira in Africa should be of great interest in itself, in comparison with modern African musical preferences, and for Afro-American music studies, where the blues sequence is another highly generative harmonic system. It demonstrates a unique method of getting harmonically “from here to there”, and offers an almost endless potential for Shona composers. In fact, the special tinge, the appeal, of modern Shona popular, church and school music comes in large part from the principles of the system which fortunately persist even when composers are working in Western harmony.This is a re-edited and updated version of the paper presented at the 7th Symposium on Ethnomusicology (Venda University) in 1988, published by ILAM in “Papers presented at the 7th and 8th Symposiums in Ethnomusicology” (1989). It is reproduced here because of the worldwide interest which has developed in mbira and its system in recent decades.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Predicted mbira found

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 2013
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59732 , vital:27643 , http://dx.doi.org/10.21504/amj.v9i3.1908
  • Description: This article is written as a follow-up to my article “The original African mbira?” (1972). I can report that an instrument which I predicted to have existed in that article actually did/does exist! In the original article I compared the tuning layouts of two related present-day members of the mbira family, hera, also called matepe, (found in northern Zimbabwe and northeast Zimbabwe into Mozambique) and nyonganyonga (found in central Mozambique, from Mutare, Zimbabwe to Beira, Mozambique and also into southern Malawi).
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  • Date Issued: 2013

Transcribing the Venda tshikona reedpipe dance

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew , Gumboreshumba, Laina
  • Date: 2013
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59744 , vital:27644 , http://dx.doi.org/10.21504/amj.v9i3.1909
  • Description: Starting with the end result, the above transcription is the conclusion I came to after sitting with Laina Gumboreshumba for many hours, watching the videos she made during her recent doctoral research on the tshikona reedpipe dance of the Venda of Limpopo Province in the extreme north of South Africa. The transcription shown in Figure 2 is a skeleton version of the full pipe sound that contains all the information needed to grasp the structure of the sound and teach it or play it. There are always seven different pipes. A full tshikona group has far more than the seven pipes (nanga) shown, because all seven pipe numbers are doubled in every octave present in a group, so there may be up to four or more Pipe 1s, Pipe 2s, etc, of different sizes. All the Pipe 1s play the same pattern together, all the Pipe 2s etc. There are usually four octaves in all, with an incomplete octave of a few higher pitched pipes at the top (phalana). A popular size for a group according to group leaders (malogwane) is twenty eight pipes, which may include some pitch duplicates. A festive performance can number well over one hundred players. The music is heptatonic as you can see from the transcription, and hear for yourself from CD track 1 accompanying this issue of African Music. A chart showing the tuning is included as Figure 1 1 at the end of this article. This article does not address the pipe names; they are simply numbered Pipes 1 to 7, in the order of entry in Mr Netshivhale’s groups. The pipes are end-blown, closed tubes made of a special bamboo, or increasingly today of electrical or other tubing.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

Chopi Timbila Music

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 2011
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481687 , vital:78576 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v9i1.1756
  • Description: It is surprising that Chopi timbila xylophone music, one of the complex and organised musics of the world, has attracted so little ethnomusicological attention. Its sound hasbeen known to the world since Hugh Tracey's recordings in 1942/3, published first on 78rpm discs in the late 1940s, and his book Chopi Musicians, 1948. Portuguese and other written descriptions from as early as 1560 focus on the visual impression andthe instruments. Recent research by Chopi writers focuses on ethnography and the analysis of the lyrics (Munguambe 2000; Jopela, pending). But the music itself?
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  • Date Issued: 2011

The Nyanga Ngororombe Panpipe Dance 2. Some Dance Steps for the Nyanga Panpipe Dance

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1992
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481775 , vital:78584 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v7i2.1947
  • Description: These dance steps were collected during the last week of November 1990 at Moya Aliya Malamusi's home, Singano Village, Chileka, Malawi, from a small group of Nyungwe refugees from Mozambique. The leader of the group of six players was Sakha Blond, whose original home was Goba. They came across from Chifunga refugee camp, Mwanza, near the Malawi-Mozambique border, at Moya's invitation to stay for a few days. We all stayed together in Donald Kachamba's compound while I recorded and worked with them. I am grateful to both Moya and Donald for their hospitality.
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  • Date Issued: 1992

Kambazithe Makolekole and His Valimba Group: A Glimpse of the Technique of the Sena Xylophone

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1991
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481709 , vital:78578 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v7i1.1932
  • Description: The valimba xylophone of the Sena people of Malawi has been described by several writers, notably Kubik in his recently published two-record collection "Opeka Nyimbo". This article aims to amplify these descriptions, by discovering what it is that the young virtuoso players are actually doing on their huge xylophone, with its shimmering patterns of sound at breakneck tempo, its sudden repeated notes, and its rich harmonic sequences that are clearly related to those of the Shona in Zimbabwe and then- neighbours in Mozambique and Northern Transvaal, and by providing descriptions of the actual playing technique of the instrument to demonstrate something of its unique style.
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  • Date Issued: 1991

Chaminuka

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew , Dargie, Dave
  • Date: 1988
  • Subjects: Folk music , Field recordings , Africa, Sub-Saharan , Africa Namibia Gobabis f-sx
  • Language: Chishona
  • Type: sound recordings , field recordings , sound recording-musical
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/308242 , vital:58896 , International Library of African Music, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa , Dave Dargie Field Tapes, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa , DD116-48
  • Description: Traditional Shona song accompanied by the mbira.
  • Full Text: false
  • Date Issued: 1988

Hom!awab go !Khub Kristuba

New World

Raising of Lazarus

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew , Dargie, Dave
  • Date: 1988
  • Subjects: Folk music , Field recordings , Africa, Sub-Saharan , Africa Namibia Gobabis f-sx
  • Language: Mbukushu
  • Type: sound recordings , field recordings , sound recording-musical
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/308314 , vital:58904 , International Library of African Music, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa , Dave Dargie Field Tapes, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa , DD116-49
  • Description: Church song accompanied by the mbira.
  • Full Text: false
  • Date Issued: 1988

Title Not Specified

The ‘Henrique Preto’ Samba

  • Authors: Nascimento, H , Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1982
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481742 , vital:78581 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v6i2.1121
  • Description: Henrique Preto was a black, son of slaves, born in Santana de Parnaiba, and a cook by trade. He died at the age of 85 on the 1st of April, 1973, but still everyone in the city speaks about him, and even the children who did not know him refer to him with admiration. He is the most remembered figure on this night of the Parade of Fantasmas. The music of the parade is called the Samba of Henrique Preto. What you see in the dance performed in the streets is not properly speaking a samba. The rhythm is samba, but it is a crowd of people dancing as they like, shaking their arms, body and legs in a samba-like step and following the beat given by the music.
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  • Date Issued: 1982

African Harmony

African Harmony 2

Rows of Squares: A Standard Model for Transcribing Traditional African Music in Cameroon

  • Authors: Ngume, Pie-Claude , Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1980
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481731 , vital:78580 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v6i1.1095
  • Description: Transcribing traditional African music is an arduous undertaking. On the one hand the musicians, composers of the music, stem from a long line of generations whose only way of passing their art to posterity was by word of mouth. They had no technique of preserving their art in writing. On the other hand, these oral traditions have been subject, for unforeseeable ecological reasons, to the often unpleasant after-effects of pollution, which, instead of helping them to develop greater vitality, often deal the final blow which leads to their disappearance. Yet these musics, as products of man’s artistic and spiritual progress, embody messages of wisdom directed at all generations of our humankind. As such they convey not only well- crafted material forms capable of affecting our deepest feelings, but also modes of thought which can richly nourish and dynamically stimulate our creativity. It is in this sense that these musical traditions are worthy of interest and deserve our close attention.
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  • Date Issued: 1980

Karigamombe

The Original African Mbira?

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1972
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481798 , vital:78586 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v5i2.1421
  • Description: It may be possible to show, one day, that all the different mbiras of Africa are descended from one another, and that all stem from one particular type, which can then be assumed to be the form of the instrument as it was originally invented. I would like to present here some evidence to show that in one large part of Africa at least all the many types of mbiras can be traced back, with greater or lesser degrees of probability, to one type which must, at least, be very ancient, and at most, if connections with, or distribution to other mbira areas of Africa can be proved, may be the nearest we will get to knowing the earliest form of the mbira in Africa.
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  • Date Issued: 1972

The Nyanga panpipe dance

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1971
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481787 , vital:78585 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v5i1.1152
  • Description: Reed pipe dances are popular in Southern Africa, the instruments usually being single-noted, one man - one note. Kirby has described those of the Hottentots, Bushmen, Tswana, Venda, N. Sotho and Ndebele1 , and this has been confirmed, for the Venda, by Blacking2, and for the Tswana by Ballantine3• Others are the chimveka boy's dance of the Chopi of southern Mozambique, and the I!Jele dance of the valley Tonga of southern Zambia. Some of the panpipe ensembles known ~re the ngororombe of the Tonga, and the tryere of some of the Shona, of Rhodesia, the mishiba of the Luba/Songe of the Congo, and also, exceeding all these in complexity of musical organisation and richness of sound, the magnificent '!'}anga pan pipe ensembles of the Nyungwe people of the region around Tete, on the Zambezi river in Mozambique.
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  • Date Issued: 1971

The Matepe mbira music of Rhodesia

  • Authors: Tracey, Andrew
  • Date: 1970
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/481753 , vital:78582 , https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v4i4.1681
  • Description: Reed pipe dances are popular in Southern Africa, the instruments usually being single-noted, one man - one note. Kirby has described those of the Hottentots, Bushmen, Tswana, Venda, N. Sotho and Ndebele1 , and this has been confirmed, for the Venda, by Blacking2, and for the Tswana by Ballantine3• Others are the chimveka boy's dance of the Chopi of southern Mozambique, and the I!Jele dance of the valley Tonga of southern Zambia. Some of the panpipe ensembles known ~re the ngororombe of the Tonga, and the tryere of some of the Shona, of Rhodesia, the mishiba of the Luba/Songe of the Congo, and also, exceeding all these in complexity of musical organisation and richness of sound, the magnificent '!'}anga pan pipe ensembles of the Nyungwe people of the region around Tete, on the Zambezi river in Mozambique.
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  • Date Issued: 1970
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