Small Voices Doomed: A Keynote Author(s): Gerhard Kubik Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 40 (2008), pp.

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SMALL VOICES

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byGerhard Kubik

"Small Voices Doomed" "Soft Voices Doomed"

is the symbolic titleof my presentation. I could have said to express the fact thatwe are living in an era inwhich

loudandpersistent voices tendtoprevail. Technologies fortheamplification and

i.e., by a

multiplication of messages were, of course, developed by "soft voices,"

But their withextraordinary talents. fewindividuals scientific inventions havebeen

hijacked by others who neither match up to the talents of the former,nor would they share theirprofitswith them. The pertinent question therefore is how to deal

with the ensuing pollution.

So far,there is one place known to me, where something has been done recently to diminish at least the impact of visually encoded pollution, ifnot auditory pollu tion. It is the mega city of Sao Paulo, with 11million inhabitants,South America's largest and most prosperous metropolis. A new "Clean City" law approved by the City Council

neonsigns, andelectronic billboards, panels.

last September prohibits all kinds of outdoor advertising, including

Encounterof the BrasilianAssociation of Ethnomusicology (III Encontro 21-24 November Internacional da Associa9ao Brasileirade Etnomusicologia),
2006, thebillboards were still in the streets,except for some green enclaves such as a tinypark near our hotel where we would relax. But the new law has taken effect, starting 1 January 2007, and I hear from colleagues that it is being implemented, and Sao Paulo has become more tolerable (Rohter 2006). Excessive amplification of visual and aural messages can become self-propel ling, thereby erasing all othermessages. In 1977, themusician-composer Donald Kachamba and I,while on tour in theCongo, met a young Luba-speaking guitarist

When we were playing with our jazz band there at the Third International

thecontemporaneous different from popular, electrically amplified guitarstyle,

guitarmusic by groups such as Rochereau Tabu Ley or Franco's 0. K. Jazz. The young man told us thathis music had no chance on the recordmarket which was controlled and monopolized by a small group of entrepreneurs. "The market does not honour dissident behaviour," he said tome. Even one of thegreatest historical guitarmusic composers in theCongo, the late Mwenda JeanBosco, when invited by festival organizers toKinshasa in the 1970s, found himself competing with junior groups struggling to cover up their lack of instrumental skills with excessive amplification. He told me inVienna in 1982

inKinshasa, Kalabo Mupanwa

was his name, who had developed a very personal

thatFranco had personally ordered the technicians to switch off themicrophones shortlybefore he was supposed to play. Obviously, Franco was feeling threatened. When Bosco appeared with his acoustic guitar fora solo performance, simply noth ingwas heard of his music through the loudspeakers by some ten thousand people in the stadium. Very soon some youngsters became angry, not even realizing who
Yearbookfor Traditional Music 40 (2008)

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2008 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

this man was, and they demanded that the incompetent,mute performer should be removed from the stage. We can tentatively divide the planet's musical universe today into two cate gories: commercially promoted music and music not disseminated by themass media. Of course, these are the extreme points on a scale that is, in fact, graded, and the commercial value of a performance or a piece of music is also unstable; it can change by the second, just like thevalue of some shares on the stock exchange. In 1994 Charlie Parker's estate including the saxophone he had played in a 1953 concertwith Dizzy Gillespie was sold atChristie's inLondon for some 150,000 US dollars (Zwerin 1994). I cannot predict forhow much it would sell today. Earlier, by the mid-twentieth century, musicologists were still dividing the musi cal universe into artmusic and folkmusic. "Folk" was later replaced by the lexical item "traditional." Jazz and blues were somehow on the fringes.The idea was that folk or traditionalmusic was essentially a community product, orally transmitted, while artmusic was the (written)work of (great) composers. I did not partake of those beliefs when I started research. Nor did I believe that music in some cultures should be studied exclusively as a community product, let alone as an ethno-specific expression. I didn't even believe that society was capa ble of teaching us anything. I rejected the idea thatcreative individuals represented a society, or a culture or a nation. Society was forme just an abstraction. Itwasn't an agent capable of action,

capable of triggering reactions. Individuals were the agents who would then teach me, answer many of my questions, and even anticipate other questions thatwere not yet on my lips. Such observations are probably anathema to political scientists and sociologists who think theyhave privileged access to theunderstanding of society, like parapsy chologists believing in a special ability for extra-sensory perception. Imyself lack any such abilities. I interact and exchange informationwith physical entities such as persons, dogs, colleagues, even the little mosquito sitting on my arm while I'm Thelonius Monk's "52nd Street Theme" on the clarinet.What to do about playing If I the will mosquito? chase it away, I'll miss the-bridge, if I leave itunharmed, it spoilMonk's main theme. me now to communicate with So that is a real dilemma! And a good reason for you through images, giving the lefthemisphere of our brains a little rest. DVD example: Dena Pikenien, c. 35 playing the pluriarc. Video-recorded 25 November 1991 (figures 1-2). 1 at

Strydom farm, near Gobabis, Namibia,

This was Dena Pikenien with her pluriarc or bow-lute, a Ko-speaking woman in her thirties, who was working as a housekeeper on a farm northeast of Gobabis inNamibia in 1991, on the edge of theKalahari semi-desert. In her free time she used to sit under a tree in the compound playing her instrument in solitude, with 1. CopiesoftheDVD examples shownduringthelecturehavebeen depositedattheInstitute of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology at the University ofMusic and Performing Arts in Vienna.

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KUBIK

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video recording,1991) Figures 1-2. Denia Pikenien playing thepluriarc(photo from no audience. We found her by mere chance. The evening before we had recorded various group performances, then, late in the morning, inour quarters on that farm, we suddenly heard strange sounds from a distance. So the three of us fieldwork ers,Moya A. Malamusi (1 994), his five-year-old son, and I rushed there and asked whether she would allow us to videotape her performance. She agreed, but insisted first. upon retuningher instrument detected You may have by ear the kind of tonal system that is behind her sing ing and the tuningprocess. It iswhat the so-called Bushmen discovered thousands of years ago, before European polyphony was developed: the sound relationships based on the use of the natural harmonic series. Percival R. Kirby (1961) and my good friendDavid Rycroft (1 981-82) could have told you much more about that, if theywere still alive. The discovery was made on hunting bows converted to

musical bows. Dena uses a range of tones, produced alternately with head and chest voice over a single fundamental up to the tenthpartial. Most prominent inher melodic movement between notes voice line is the disjunct interval resulting from 969 and 386 cents, respectively), in and fifthpartial (at representing the seventh downward direction. Tonal systems are interalized by the learer, and yet her individual style was quite unique and developed under difficult circumstances. The generation before had been able to carve a resonator from suitable wood, usually African teak (Pnrocarpus angolensis). Dena could not do that,because the treeswere gone. So she took an old oil can to function as a resonator. I predict thather children will not will be online and use the iPod or a similar need any resonators at all, because they device to satisfy theirneeds. DeVD example: A walk to Times Square, Manhattan, New York with Ken Moore of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Moya A. MalamusL Sunday, 7March 1993. Discovery of the itinerantguitarist Sammy Coleridge (figure 3). i am now taking you to a differentpart of theworld. On 7March 1993, Moya A. in these pictures with Ken Moore of theMetropolitan Museum Malamusi-seen

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2008 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

video recording,1993) SammyColeridge (photo from guitarist Figure 3. Itinerant I (hidden behind the camera) were on a research fellow of Art, New York-and MET. In contrast to the standard academic procedure, inwhich one first ship at the formulates a problem, thenworks out a strategy for its solution, the threeof us on that Sunday evening had no problems. So we decided to do fieldwork at random round Times Square in Manhattan, with temperatures still close to freezing point. method We were strolling fromplace to place to see what would happen. I call this "floating" (Kubik 2007). It's like flying a plane by autopilot; you relax, you may go out for a spacewalk, ifyou care, but you don't focus on anything specific. Then, all of a sudden, something happens ... The lonelyman with a guitar, his facemasked, was singing and playing in front of a construction site. Though he did have a can to collect money frompassers-by, it wasn't really his concer. He was playing more or less forhimself alone, chang ing places. Passers-by would sometimes drop a coin, sometimes mock his songs, as heard in the video extract. When Ken Moore asked for.hisname, he said thathe was "Sammy Coleridge" probably a reincarnation. we were trying hard to find him again. In vain! There was now a huge Years later building at that site, not far fromCarnegie Hall. The place had become hostile to itinerant musicians. We have never met Sammy again. He has vanished in the sea of New York City. In the 1970 issue of the journal African Music, musicologist Atta Annan Mensah startled readers with a somewhat unusual classification of musical traditions. In contrast to other ethnomusicologists who often discussed musical performance in for example terms of community contexts or socio-cultural contexts-speaking of "court music," "initiation music, "religious songs," "work songs," "topical songs," "chantefables," "self-delectative songs," etc.-Atta Annan Mensah classed musical traditions according to their momentary position on a fictitious scale rep resenting their life-span. He had worked out his scheme during fieldwork in a small village, Zumaile, in Petauke District, Eastern Province of Zambia, with a Nsenga-speaking population.

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KUBIK

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was theway some of the 350 people in The scheme, he wrote, was not his, but it

Zumailevillage were themselves their classifying musicalactivities. tions; c) activetraditions.

So, Mensah arrived at three categories: a) passive traditions; b) moribund tradi

He then enumerated several of these traditions under each heading. For exam ple, he mentioned thatkalimba, a small lamellophone with a gourd resonator,was "moribund." The last performer in the village was a person who had settled there,

originally from coming Mozambique.

Atta Annan Mensah

ble for Growth, Change, and Decline ofMusical

thenattempted an analysis of the causes that were responsi Styles. He stressed that many so stated:

called traditionswere, in fact, externally borrowed, remaining popular for a while until people got tiredof them,borrowing something else. Mensah

The causes of decline in inZumaile lienot only in their musical traditions becoming or in thedeclining importance of the ceremonies in hackneyed, in creative inertia, which theyoccurred,but ratherin theirloss of prestige. (Mensah 1970:101) We have confirmed thismany times; last year also in Mozambique when we recorded Rosairio Madautha, one of the last players of a fourteen-note fan-shaped karimba in theTete region. He was also known as a technical expert for repairing cellphones, radios, cassette players, all sorts of gadgetry involving metal, wires, and to an extent electronics. He said that therewere two causes for the disap pearance of lamellophones as musical instruments inAfrica: one was thatyoung men associated this music with old and uneducated people; some guys would even him if had not achieved a certain reputation in thevillage because of his at he laugh expertise in repairing cellphones. The second reason was that iron-working tech nology had been lost; no one was able tomake new instruments that would sound as good as the ones theirgrandparents had made. The lost culture is now only on record inmuseums with theirmagnificent collections of African lamellophones and theirnineteenth and early twentiethcentury proliferation into a hundred differ ent types, especially in and Angola (Kubik 1 Mozambique 999a, 2002). Our research team has repeatedly studied endangered technologies, not only in instrument manufacture, but also in performance. This concerns even imported, A case inpoint is the technique of fluteembou factory-manufactured instruments. chure in kwela, the jazz offspring thatoriginated in South Africa around 1950. I'd like to show you a final cinematographic document that takes us to theyear 1967 in Malawi, southeastAfrica. You will see the fluteplaying technique and jazz style variations by the young Donald Kachamba, then about fourteen, in the band of his brotherDaniel on guitar,with eight-year-oldMoya on rattle,and Bulandisoni Kapirikitsa on bass (cf.Kubik 1995, 1999b; Malamusi DVD example: Kachamba Brothers 1967. Filmed Chileka area and inBlantyre, Malawi (figure 4). 1994). (originally in 16 mm) in the

Daniel Kachamba died in 1987, and Donald we lost in 2001, after his tremendous success as artist in residence at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. There

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2008 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC

- -

-~~~~~~~AN

filmrecording,1967) Figure 4. Kachamba BrothersBand (photo from is a CD in his memory thathas just been released by theUniversity of California, about his work with UCLA students in 1999. The problem today is that the flutes are no longermanufactured. Only a few specimens survive. But luckilyDonald's music has not vanished. In time he was trainingyoung relatives inhis home village, notably Sinosi Miendo and Christopher Gerald who-guided continued Donald's band. Sinosi's guitar by Moya-have chords are rooted in jazz, and he also sings the blues. Donald Kachamba's Kwela Heritage Jazzband is available on CD. You can hear some of the new directions this music is taking. Thank you verymuch foryour patience! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper was prepared in the context of the ethnomusicological research project P 17751 -G06, financed by the Wissenschaftsfonds, Vienna, and directed by the author. REFERENCES
III Encontr? 2006 Internacional Universos Paulo. Kirby, Percival R. 1961 "Physical Phenomena Which to Have Determined and the Bases Appear Hottentot and Bantu." Sense among Bushmen,

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CDs Donald Kachamba sKwela Heritage Jazzband.The Sargfabrik Concert,Vienna, 10 December 2004, with SinosiMlendo, Moya A. Malamusi, GerhardKubik, and Christopher Gerald. Vienna Series inEthnomusicologyCD Tol 60011. (available from: DepartmentofMusicology at the UniversityofVienna, Spitalgasse 2-4,A-1090 Vienna, Austria) Donald Kachamba at UCLA Fall 1999. Featuring the music ofDonald Kachamba with and friends. UCLA Ethnomusicology. ArtistSeries, 3. 2007. (avail UCLA students UCLA EthnomusicologyPublications,2539 Schoenberg able from: Music Bldg., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1657, USA) From Lake Malawi to the Zambezi.Moya Aliya Malamusi. Aspects ofMusic andOral amMain: popular Africa in the1990s. Pamap 602. Frankfurt Literature inSouth-East african music. 1999. Os Herderos da Noite. Documentos Sonoros: Brasil eAfricaMeridional. Selecao e edicao: Tiago de Oliveira Pinto. Sao Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo. 1994.

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