In Africa XIV

XIV

Music

I was talking to an American Doctor who is here working with the CDC. We were talking about the experience. We somehow got to music and I told him that our oldest son Rick is in Malawi now working on his Doctorate in Ethnomusicology, and that he had spent a lot of time in Malawi working with and making music. I told him that Rick’s wife is from Malawi although they met and married in South Bend, Indiana. He then reminisced about having worked in Malawi in the late sixties with the Peace Corps. He was talking about the drumming. He would always hear drums particularly in the late afternoon and evening. All traditional rhythms; sending messages, accompanying dance, or just simply soothing the soul. He wondered if the drumming – traditional drumming - still existed in Malawi. He hoped that was the case, although we talked about the fluid nature of everything especially music and especially in this age of computers, television, the internet and social media.

Tuning drums by the fire

Watching the fire

Checking the drums

A few weeks ago I was at the Police College in Kidatu attending a function to close a particular training session. As part of the activities for the day, they had two groups of local dancers and drummers. As we waited for the event to begin, well, actually waiting for the arrival of a local political dignitary, I was watching the dancers across the road in the edge of the woods standing around several fires. I asked the official in charge what they were doing. She said that they were heating the drumheads. Normally they let the sun heat them to the proper tension, but since this was fairly early in the morning they were using fires.

The dancers

The drums themselves are very traditional, made from metal drums and buckets and some from wood, all with hides stretched over the ends. It is the hides that were being heated to give the correct pitch. The drummers tended the fires keeping them at a certain level. They tested the drums, tapping in the center, then on the edges, then putting them back in front of the fire; later tapping the heads again. Finally the drums were tuned appropriately. The drummers brought them out and placed them in the sun to wait the final minutes for the performance.

Young but professional

I can’t say that the dress was particularly traditional; enough to convey the idea of what the dress in this region had been perhaps in Livingstone’s time. One of the traditional accessories the dancers wore were ankle cuffs made from nutshells and worn to add a rattle type of sound as the dancers moved. One of the groups had a young boy of perhaps 10 years old as the focal point of their performance. He was in fact quite talented and proved to be a real “trooper.” As he began his performance one of his ankle cuffs came loose. He, without hesitation, bent over picked it up, moved to the back of the group and laid it out of the way, and went back to the front and continued dancing. The show must go on.

But the doctor and I have now speculated that music is much different in Malawi than it was when he was there in his youth. Our son is testament to that fact. He has spent a lot of time in Malawi, from his college experience as an exchange student, to operating a recording studio in Malawi, to promoting a CD of his style of African music, to finally his doctoral fieldwork. As I listen to what he and his Malawian colleagues have done, even in my untrained ear, I note the incorporation of the influences that the “internet age” makes so available to the most remote parts of the globe today. He speaks of the interdisciplinary nature of ethnomusicology. I only observe that the world is ever shrinking even as the population of the planet increases. There is a homogeneity emerging that always existed, it is just now, because of the speed of communications, expressing itself in ways that we can all easily feel affinity with regardless of our place of origin. The drums still beat. If it is in fact a less exotic rhythm, it is one to which we can all relate.

Until Next Connection,
Dan