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Therapeutic Efficacy of Music-Making: Neglected Aspect of Human Experience Integral to Performance Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Diane Thram
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Extract

This paper is based on field research (1993, 1994-95, 1998, 1999) with a ngoma drum-dance group called Mhembere Dandanda, who live in Mhembere Village, Murewa, a rural community an hour northeast of Harare in Zimbabwe. Dandanda is an indigenous form of ritual dance with its own song repertoire and distinctive ngoma (drum) and hosho (gourd rattle) style. It is practised among the Zezuru, the largest sub-group of the Shona, in sacred contexts of ceremonies for the ancestral spirits and secular contexts of dance competitions and government sponsored events. The word dandanda itself is an ideophone that evokes the sound of deer rushing into nets during the hunt. Song lyrics make reference to strength for battle and the hunt, to nature, family and the ancestral spirits. The designations of sacred and secular for the contrasting contexts in which dandanda is performed are used because this is the way participants in the events differentiate them. Communication with ancestral spirits is considered sacred because the ancestral spirits are the people's conduit to communicate with the creator, Mwari.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 34 , 2002 , pp. 129 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 By The International Council for Traditional Music

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