MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Rock painting copied by G. W. Stow, showing a Bushman using seven shooting bows as a musical instrument. From the original coloured drawing in the South African Museum, Cape Town. Photograph by SOUTH AFRICAN MUSEUM.
PERCIVAL R. KIRBY
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
THIRD EDITION OF
THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE NATIVE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
Third Edition © Anthea van Wieringen 2013
Photographs © As credited
Published edition © Wits University Press 2013
Third edition printed in 2013
ISBN (print) 978-1-86814-605-5
ISBN (EPUB - IPG) 978-1-86814-828-8
ISBN (EPUB - ROW) 978-1-86814-829-5
ISBN (PDF) 978-1-86814-606-2
The original edition (printed and published by the Oxford University in 1934) was made possible with the assistance of a grant received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York through the Research Grant Board, South Africa; and the reprint in 1953 by grants from the National Council for Social Research (Department of Education, Arts, and Science), Pretoria, and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The second edition was published by the Witwatersrand University Press in 1965.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Cover photograph by A.M. Duggan-Cronin
Text design and layout by Hybridesign
Cover design by Hybrid Creative
Printed and bound by Interpak Books
To
CHARLES SANFORD TERRY
Emeritus Professor of History, University of Aberdeen
‘He wos wery good to me, he wos.’
Charles dickens, Bleak House.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO THIRD EDITION
4 BULL-ROARERS AND SPINNING-DISKS
5 HORNS AND TRUMPETS
6 WHISTLES, FLUTES, AND VIBRATING REEDS
7 REED-FLUTE ENSEMBLES
8 THE ‘GORA’, A STRINGED-WIND INSTRUMENT
9 STRINGED INSTRUMENTS
10 BUSHMAN AND HOTTENTOT VIOLINS AND THE ‘RAMKIE’
11 SOME EUROPEAN INSTRUMENTS PLAYED BY NATIVES
APPENDIX
ADDENDA
INDEX
FOREWORD
THE publication of Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa represents an impulse to re-animate the Scottish-born Percival Robson Kirby’s important early text in southern African music studies. The changes to the revised third edition include reworking the musical examples, designing the layout so that the discussion and photographs of instruments are near each other, and changing the title; Kirby’s original phrase ‘native races’ has been replaced by ‘indigenous people’. This revised third edition affords an opportunity to reconsider a classic, stimulating early study of the material culture of indigenous southern African musics nearly 80 years after Kirby’s book first appeared on bookshelves in 1934, and 45 years since it was last published.
Starting as early as 1923, Kirby turned his erudition and powers of observation to studying the music cultures of indigenous South Africans through a series of field trips during university vacations. He developed a project to collect, document and describe examples of each kind of musical instrument in southern Africa south of the Limpopo. He employed photography, ably assisted by Dr W. Paff, and made wax cylinder sound recordings of many performances as part of his method, and also learnt to perform the music. This practice later became standard in ethnomusicology, but was uncommon at the time. The tremendous energy he expended in this work resulted in a series of articles and the first edition of book. He displayed many of the instruments he collected in his ‘museum’ in the music department at the University of the Witwatersrand, using them in his teaching.1 On retiring from Wits, Kirby