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TO VENDA MUSIC SOME BASIC DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS OF VENDA MUSIC The term 'songs of the Venda' (nyimbo dza Vhaven Venda music is therefore concerned primarily with virtual time, as opposed to actual time. It consists of repetitions of basic patterns, with melodic variations that depend on changes in the speech-tone of the words of a song; with rhythmic variations that depend on the changes in dance-steps; with a 'harmonic' framework that remains stable, like the chord-sequence of a jazz number; and with extended forms that depend on factors such as the social situation, the number of good musicians present, and the response of the audience. Music is essentially a social activity. Singers can indicate the metrical patterns of songs by clapping their hands, and they can sing either the solo or the chorus part alone and know exactly where to come in. They cannot isolate a pattern, nor do they seem to appreciate that there are points in time when a pattern is repeated. They simply refer to the correct melody or rhythm of a song as "the way in which it is sung" (kuimbele), or "the way in which it is played" (kulidzele). They are, however, fully conscious of mistakes in performance, though they rarely state precisely what is wrong: they just know that it does not sound right. For instance, people said "you have gone astray" (vho khakha), both when I failed to observe the minute melodic changes which accompany variations in the words, and hence in the speech-tone patterns, of children's songs, and when I failed to maintain a metronomically accurate tempo while playing one of the drums at a possession dance. In the first case, I had to find out for myself why I was wrong, and why I sang 'like a Tsonga'; and in the second, they eventually qualified their criticism by saying that I was 'hurrying' (- Because their music consists of repetitions of basic patterns, they have no concept of rests in performance. For instance, although there is a considerable gap in time between each beat of the tenor drum in the rhythm of the domba initiation song (see Figure 1), the player's arm is constantly moving up and down in such a way that the beat of the stick on the drum is not a sudden jerk but part of a continuous body movement. Less skilled players divide the beat into two by tapping the wooden edge of the drum between the two beats on the skin. When the players of the alto drums beat only one in every four quavers (rhythm 1c in Fig. 1), they raise their arms to such a height and at such a speed that the hands fall regularly on the drums as part of a total movement; when they beat in groups of two (rhythm 1b in Fig. 1), they often sway their trunks slightly round and round, from right to left, and rub one hand over the drum-skin between beats. In the domba song, and in other contexts, this movement is referred to as 'washing the drum with the hands' (murumba u I tried, without success, to find out how the Venda think of the patterns of words and music of which their songs are composed. The concept of a 'line' of verse or music obviously cannot exist where there is no tradition of writing, so that they are unlikely to think of it in terms of patterns moving horizontally and vertically in space. The repetition of short patterns, with only minor variations within the total structure, gives to Venda music the character of a waterfall: it is for ever moving, and yet its overall pattern never changes, and from a distance it even appears as solid and immovable as a stone statue. This effect is well illustrated by the difference between the sound of domba music, when heard from distances of a mile or a few yards. The word - Quality of tone and phrasing (which is invariably legato) are not specifically taken into account: people either 'play well' and 'sing well', or they do not. Great vigour and energy, precision and virtuosity, are expected of the good performer. A person may sing so well that he 'nearly bursts his diaphragm', and dance so that he 'digs a hole in the ground', 'licks the clouds', or leap so high that 'three people can crawl underneath him'. People like to see and listen to a dynamic, almost destructive performance, when hand-rattles are 'shaken so that they nearly break'. Quite often a drum-skin is torn and a ritual postponed for some hours while it is replaced, or until another drum has been borrowed; leg-rattles disintegrate during a dance; the leather supports of xylophone keys break; and people grow hoarse and lose their voices. Such accidents during a performance do not upset people, since they are usually evidence of good, vigorous playing and the intense excitement that goes with it. The Venda have no word for 'scale'. They have the word mutavha, which is used for a complete set of divining dice, of metal amulets, or of reed-pipes, and also for a row of keys on a xylophone or hand-piano. Thus a mutavha may include more than one octave of a heptatonic or a pentatonic scale since, for instance, hand-pianos may be tuned to either of these scales and have more than five or seven keys. The Venda recognise that heptatonic and pentatonic sets sound different, and they appreciate the interval of the octave; but they do not express the difference in terms of the division of the octave into seven and five intervals. They attempt neither to incorporate pentatonic pipes in a heptatonic set, nor to play pentatonic music on a selection of heptatonic pipes. Venda melodies employ anything from two to seven different tones, but the Venda themselves are not concerned with such aspects of their musical tradition. They prefer to classify their music on the basis of its social function, which in some cases indirectly affects its structure, and especially its rhythmic pattern, since the ritual function of a dance may affect its form, and hence the music that accompanies it. |
) includes all tunes that 'are sung' or 'played on instruments', as well as patterns of words that are recited to a regular meter. It is its rhythm, therefore, that distinguishes 'singing' (u imba) from 'talking' (u amba), from 'reciting praise' (u renda), or 'narrating' (u anetshela). Nevertheless, although it may have no rhythm and is sometimes called u 
mukosi (raising the alarm with a long, loud yell), a single tone blown on a stopped pipe or horn comes into the Venda category of music: the performer 'plays' it (-lidza), or more literally 'makes it cry', since -lidza is the causative of lila (to weep, cry). Musical instruments are thus known as zwilidzo, 'things that are made to cry'.
). Although they distinguish between 'hurrying' or 'delaying' (-lenga) the tempo during performance, they do not classify the tempi of the dances tshigombela and tshikona respectively as fast or slow: they merely say that they "are different", and "go in opposite directions" (-fhambana). Time signatures and note values are not recognised, though they do use the word -kokodza (to drag, pull) to describe a note that is prolonged, especially at the end of a song.
zwan
).
(small, young) and -hulwane (important, senior) are generally used to refer respectively to tones that are high and low in pitch. The word -hulu (big, visibly large in size) is more often used to describe the number of performers and the corresponding loudness of the sound, probably because intensity of tone is not recognised in musical terms: a performer either plays or sings with confidence, and hence with uniform loudness, or indifferently because of shyness, laziness, or ignorance of the music. Thus, assuming that the performers are doing well, loud music is at the same time 'big', and vice verse, because there are many performing it. A few people distinguish the sound of female and male voices by calling the former 'thin' (-sekene) and the latter 'thick' (-denya); and pitch within the female and male ranges is further subdivided into high, which 'closes the throat' and low, which 'snores'.