Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T20:27:06.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Zulu women's bow songs: ruminations on love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Rosemary M. F. Joseph
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The existence of a tradition of bow-playing is recorded in some of the earlies written accounts of the Zulu people. Captain Gardiner in 1836 (pp. 104—5 and p1. 1) notes the presence of a gourd-resonated musical bow. It is not, however, clear which of the two Zulu gourd-resonated bows Gardiner encountered. He provides an illustration of a simple bow with undivided string and gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave but does not note its name. the instrument would seem to be a cross between the Zulu ugubhu, a simple bow with undivided string, but with the gourd resonator attached near the lower end of the stave, and the Zulu umakhweyana, a simple bow with the gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave, but in which the string is divided by means of a loop which is secured within the centrally-located resonator. Angas (1849:p. 111 and p1. 25) also seems to have confused the two instruments. Plate 25 is an illustration of a young man playing what appears to be the ugubhu (although the gourd resonator is situated higher up the stave than is usual), but the drawing in the text (p. 111) in explanation of plate 25 shows a young man playing the umakhweyana. Thus, while the ugubhu is generally regarded as the older and more authentically Zulu of the two instuments (the umakhweyana being thought to have been borrowed from the Tsonga of Mozambique around the turn of the nineteenth century), it is apparent that, from at least the time of the first documentation of the Zulu, both instruments were in current usage.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 1987 , pp. 90 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angas, George F. 1849. The Kaffirs illustrated. London.Google Scholar
Richard, Bauman. 1975. ‘Verbal art as performance’, American Anthropologist, 77: 290–311.Google Scholar
Paul, Bohannan. 1964. Africa and Africans. Garden city, N.Y.: The Natural History Press.Google Scholar
Jean, Buxton. 1963. ‘The significance of bridewealth and the levirate among the Nilotic and Nilo-Hamitic tribes of the southern Sudan’, in Schapera, I. (ed.), Studies in kinship and marriage: dedicated to Brenda Z. Seligman on her 80th birthday. London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Gt. Britain and Ireland, 66–75.Google Scholar
Johnny, Clegg. 1981, ‘The music of Zulu immigrant workers in Johannesburg-a focus on concertina and guitar’, Papers Presented at the Symposium on Ethnomusicology. Grahamstown: Rhodes University, Printing and Duplicating section, 2–9.Google Scholar
Remi, Cligent. 1970. Many wives, many powers: authority and power in polygynous families. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Cutrufelli, Maria R. 1983. Women of Africa: roots of oppression. Trans. Nicolas Romano. London: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1965. ‘The position of women in primitive societies and in our own’, in The position of women in primitive societies and other essays in social anthropology. LOndon: Faber and Faber, 37–58.Google Scholar
Ruth, Finnegan. 1970. Oral literature in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ruth, Finnegan. 1977. Oral poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Allen F. 1836. Narrative of a journey to the Zoolu country. LOndon: William Crofts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Max, Gluckman. 1958. ‘The nature of African marriage’, The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend, 11/3: 61–3.Google Scholar
Goode, William J. 1953. ‘The theoretical importance of love’, in Winch, F. and Goodman, W. (ed.), Selected studies in marriage and the family (New York: Rinehart and Winston Inc., 468–80).Google Scholar
Hilman, Eugene. 1975. Polygamy reconsidered. New York: Orbis Books.Google Scholar
Joseph, Rosemary. 1983. ‘Zulu women's music’, African Music, 6/3: 53–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, Percival R. 1934. THe musical instruments of the native races of South Africa. LOndon: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kirge, E. J. 1936. THe social system of the Zulus. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter.Google Scholar
Kuper, Hilda. 1950. ‘Kinship among the Swazi’, in Radclifee-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (ed.), African systems of kinship and marriage. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kurian, G. (ed.). 1979. Cross-cultural Perspectives of mate-selection and marriage. Westport: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Lienhardt, Godfrey. 1963. ‘Dinka representations of the relations between the sexes’, in Schapera, I. (ed.), Studues in kinship and marriage: dedicated to Brenda Z. Seligman on her 80th birthday. LOndon: Royal Anthropological Institute of Gt. Britain and Ireland, 79–92.Google Scholar
Lowie, Robert H. 1920. Primitive society. New York: Liveright.Google Scholar
Mair, Lucy. 1958. Freedom of consent in African marriage’, The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Frien, 11/3: 635.Google Scholar
Mair, Lucy. 1969. African marriage and social change. London: Franck Cass.Google Scholar
McHardy, Cécile. 1968. ‘Love in Africa’, Présence Africaine, 68: 52–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paulme, Denise. 1963. ‘Introduction’, in Paulme, D. (ed.), Women in Tropical Africa. London: Routlede and Kegan Paul, 1–16.Google Scholar
A. R., Radcliff-Brown 1950. ‘Introduction’, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (ed.), African systems of kinship and marriage. LOndon: Oxford University Press, 1–85.Google Scholar
Rycroft, David K. 1971. ‘Stylistic evidence in Nguni song’, in Wachsmann, K. (ed.), Essays on musis and history in Africa. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 213–41.Google Scholar
Rycroft, David K. 1975. ‘The Zulu ballad of Nomagundwane’, African Language Studies, II: 61–92.Google Scholar
Rycroft, David K. 1975–76. ‘THe Zulu bow-songs of Princess Magogo’, African Music, 5/4: 41–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rycroft, David K. 1977. ‘Evidence of stylistic continuity in Zulu “town” music’, in Essays for a humanist: an offering to Klaus Wachsmann. New York: Town House Press, 216–20.Google Scholar
Simons, H. J. 1968. African women: thier legal staus in South Africa. London: C. Hurst.Google Scholar
Southall, Aidan W. 1961. ‘The position of women and the stability of marriage in Tropical Africa’, in Southall, A. W. (ed.), Social change in modern Africa. LOndon: Oxford University Press, 37–58.Google Scholar
Tracey, Hugh T. 1948. ‘Lalela Zulu’: 100 Zulu Lyrics. Johannesburg: African Music Society.Google Scholar
Tracey, Hugh T. 1963. ‘Behind the Lyrics’, African Music, 3/2: 17–22.Google Scholar
Whyte, Martin K. 1978. The staus of women in preindustrial societies. Princeton: University Press.Google Scholar