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Von Hornbostel (1928), Herzog (1936), and others have emphasised that the melodies of music outside the Western harmonic tradition must be analysed as 'pure melody', unrelated to a harmonic framework or to scales (in the sense of a 'fixed store of notes' on which melodies are based). It would indeed be unscientific to try to explain the logic of African melodic patterns in terms of the harmonic relationships of Western music. But I see no reason why all other music must necessarily be built on 'pure melody', and why it may not have its own scales and harmonic progressions. Von Hornbostel (1928:34) claims that non-European melodies have traits that are "'natural', i.e. rooted in the psycho-physical constitution of man," but admits that "pure melody, too, has 'tonality'," which is "established by the function and the mutual relations of the notes" (:36): the tonality, therefore, grows out of the melody rather than the melody out of the tonality, as in Western music. Von Hornbostel, in this passage, tends to forget that even the 'simplest' music is a product of man's culture: Venda music is not 'natural' but highly artificial, and it has to be learnt by aural experience and physical participation. When a Venda sings, he is expressing cultural particulars, rather than psycho-physical universals. Although the Venda cannot explain the theoretical framework upon which they build their performances, they know very well, by training and not by instinct, what is right and what is wrong, and what is acceptable or unacceptable according to the canons of Venda music.

There is evidence that different traditions of African music have their own scales and harmonic characteristics, and that these structural foundations may influence the form of melodies as much as, say, the speech-tones of the texts. Professor Kirby discussed some problems of 'primitive harmony' as early as 1926, and I have more recently drawn attention to other aspects of the same problem, as illustrated by Venda ocarina music (Blacking 1959). The broad principles of tonality, and the relationship of a people's music to other aspects of their culture and social life, are important features which give a musical tradition its intrinsic character; and in this particular discussion I want to show that, apart from the rhythmic patterns, the language, and the thought process of the texts, there are certain melodic characteristics that make some songs distinctly Venda, and mark some as more typically Venda than others.

Some different musical styles are included within the corpus of Venda music: some have been acquired in recent years as a result of contact with Sotho, Tsonga, European, and other peoples, and others seem to have been brought to Vendaland by the clans who have at different times come to live in the Zoutpansberg region, and who now call themselves Venda. There are some melodies and rhythms which appear to be more Venda than others. The music that we may regard as truly Venda is that which has the unqualified sanction of the ruling clans, though little, if any, of it was brought in by those clans when they invaded Vendaland. It is chiefly hexatonic and heptatonic, and I suggest that many melodies in the Venda repertoire are derived from its 'scales' and 'harmonic' progressions, even if they employ only four tones.

Although the Venda have no word for scale, the word mutavha refers to a set of twenty-four heptatonic reed-pipes, twelve pentatonic reed-pipes, or a row of keys on the xylophone or hand-piano. Whenever I asked uneducated Venda, and even some who had been to school to sing me a scale, they were unable to do so. On the other hand, if I specifically asked people to sing the melody of the tshikona, the national dance, I often received responses such as those shown in Figure 1.

In Figure 1, the structure of modes D and E are different, as are the melodies of A, B, and C; but for the Venda there is no difference between these patterns: They are all tshikona. The total musical pattern can be heard in many ways, particularly since each note of its continuously descending melody, repeated at intervals of the fifth and fourth, is played by a different dancer, who is always moving anti-clockwise in a circle. The combination of the hocket technique and the dance movements provides a variety of related melodies both for audience and players. We should remember that the hearing of different aspects of the same music occurs in Western classical music: the members of an orchestra might sing separately their own parts of, say Brahms Third Symphony, and they could reasonably argue that they were singing the same piece of music: but to one who did not know the symphony it would seem that they were all singing different music. Most Venda play tshikona many times a year, and spectators sit amongst the dancers, so that they hear the music as members of the orchestra.

Figure 2 shows the overall pattern of sound made by the fifteen highest-pitched pipes of a tshikona set, and the way in which the melodies in Figure 1 are derived from it. Owing to minor local variations in the tuning of the pipes, in some districts of Vendaland melody C may lie at the 'top' of the pattern and be more prominent than B.

The praises and counter-melodies which spectators and dancers improvise during performances of tshikona agree 'harmonically' with the total pattern of the music. Passing-notes can be used, but the 'harmonic' equivalence applies, so that a derived melody may switch from one descending scale to another. On several occasions I heard Venda sing well-known beer-songs while tshikona was being played.

It is not hard to imagine Venda composers humming tunes during performances of tshikona, or on any occasion when the music of tshikona comes to their minds, because tshikona is the most important item of all Venda music. There is, for instance, a Venda cleaner at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who frequently hums tshikona, or tshikona-like melodies while he works: he is neither a composer nor an outstanding musician, but it seems that the music is often on his mind. Because tshikona means much to the Venda, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the numerous variations inherent in its musical pattern may become the seeds of new melodies in several styles of Venda music.