"If the roots of your art are firmly planted in your own Soil, and that soil has anything to give you, you may still gain the whole world and not lose your own soul." RV Williams.

Hugh Tracey was born in 1903 in England . His father was a country doctor and preacher. In 1920 he came to Southern Rhodesia to join his brother on a tobacco farm. His brother was an ex serviceman in the second world war, he was awarded the farm by the British as compensation for being wounded in the war. The farm was near Mashvingo. By working in the fields with the Karanga, Hugh learned to speak their language fluently. He learnt their songs too and published his first book ‘Songs of the Kraal.'

Hugh Tracey was an all-rounder. His greatest achievements were as a pioneer in documenting and recording indigenous African music. He made recordi ng an art in communicating and understanding the expression of the musicians; this he did by translating the languages of the song lyrics and folktales into English; and the music into high quality sound recordings.

In his career spanning 40 years, he lead 19 field excursions throughout sub-Saharan Africa . These were long trips with a crew, several vehicles and a diesel generator to power the recording equipment. He kept not ebooks detailing the environment and circumstances in which the communities were living. He recorded over 3000 musical items and collected over 400 musical instruments, published several books and wrote countless essays, presentations and scripts.

Tracey writes of his recording tours, “Accomplished musicians the world over belong to a kind of a guild which can be detected in their manner and bearing – regardless of social, racial or economic background. It was largely on this account that I managed to discover so large an elite of musicians at all levels of African society during the course of the tours. ”

He published as much as he could in his own lifetime through the establishment of the International Library of African Music (ILAM) and it's scholarly journal, African Music. ILAM was established in 1954 and it is known as, “one of the greatest deposit ories of African music. ”

“The immense majority of all this music has been not so much composed as remembered. It is folk music. It may well be that local folk music is one of Africa 's most important social assets,” Hugh writes. “Folk musics are handed on from father to son, from musician to musician. Folk music is always alive in the minds of the people. It requires the immediate response of the folk around to participate in a form which they can manage.”

Hugh Tracey draws an interesting comparison between African music (which he describes as dynamic) and Western music (as aesthetic). All African music shares practicality in common. “Every piece of folk music works for its living,” he notes. The social implications of African mus ic are more important than style! And indigenous instruments are such a valuable asset to any community. For one the price of these instruments is relatively little, making them very accessible.

Hugh Tracey was fascinated by the mbira and kalimba (thumb pianos). These instruments are unique to Africa . Using the indigenous kalimba as a model, he created an instrument which was ‘a blend of the traditional African idea of the mbira and a western scale.' The company African Musical Instruments (AMI) was born to accommodate the demand for this instrument that came initially from America in the late 1950 's.

Hugh Tracey was known as magadagada, like a sewing machine that never stopped. He achieved to put African music on the map. And alas “the bush will not grow across our paths and cut us of f from our ancestral minstrels, ” as he writes.

After Hugh Tracey's death in 1977, his son, Andr ew Tracey became the Director of ILAM. In 1978 he moved ILAM to Rhodes University . Andrew Tracey grew up with an African music lifestyle.

“My best moment of my life,” he say s, “was when I went up to the Chopi's in Mozambique to learn to play Chopi xylophone. Chopi music is tremendously impressive. A Chopi mgodo performance needs 50/60 people. I also went to Zimbabwe to learn to play several types of mbira and came back playing Ndonda, a song for the matepe mbira. This song was one of my fathers favourite rec ordings. He was knocked out. ”

“Knowledge of this kind is the very stuff of education,” wrote Hugh Tracey. A PLAN FOR AFRICAN MUSIC IS COMING TOGETHER : Here pictured grandson Geoff Tracey and dog.

Hugh Tracey presented a paper on the 24th Septe mber 1965 at Liverpool University entitled ‘A Plan for African Music.'

Here he quoted Sir Herbert Read as saying “art is a token of mutual understanding,” and then saying himself that “Art is identical with Education.”

Hugh Tracey's ideal was “to bring indigenous Af rican arts and particularly African music into the normal curriculum of African schools, colleges and eventually into the Universities themselves. ”

“We are to codify the logic which lies behind the creation of indigenous styles of music a nd thus to bring it naturally, without prejudice, into the realm of African education, ” said Tracey.

Thousands of his recordings have been locked away for decades on old recording media such as acetate, shellac and vinyl discs, ¼" tape (since 1948), and cassette.

Fortunately in 1999 ILAM commenced with a digitization project with funding from the Norwegian Government (NORAD). By 2011 the entire Tracey archive will be available through the internet for public access.

“Patriotic and nostalgic considerations apart, there should always be room in formal education for a study of one's own national music, and today more so than ever, with radio entertainment making unparall eled demands upon musicians, and “majority rule” in music threatening to make Americans of us all,” writes Hugh Tracey.

The internet gave everybody the chance to be heard.

A collection of the music he recorded is currently available to listeners in an extensive ‘Afric an Music Series. '

Here one can truly bathe in the beauty of indigenous music....like the sensitive sound of the Makweyana musical bow, the Arab lute of Dar-Es-Salem ; or songs like ‘Kundo nati pala bako' (Dance for the forefathers) played on loose note Kpo ningo xylophone from Northern Congo and ‘Hinganyengisa masingita' (listen to the mysteries) performed by Movement of the Mgodo orchestral dance, of Zavala (Mozambique) and the Prayer for Africa sung by the boys of Dombashawa School, near Harare.

Such healing music! An important aspect of the Tracey archive of indigenous African music is that it takes the audience into another dimension . Hugh's grandson, Geoff is a practicing sangoma and facilitator of dance workshops, he describes this realisation as ‘sacred geometry' which relates the form of the music to the form of nature, mother earth, the universe, god.

“The musical arts of Africa provide a channel, a veritable fiord, into the heart of African spiritualities…”

It is believed that ancestral spirits mediate between the living and the ‘Supreme being.' They are watching over their families like a ‘cloud of witnesses.' Music is a calling.

"If the composers know their own hearts, they become our mouths," says Hugh Tracey.

All information is extracted from the ILAM library and the many thousands of musicians whose music lives on the MUSIC OF AFRICA series and the material still to be released on digital format.

"The dead become stars and when the new children are born these stars come down and become these children's souls. The souls can come from another planet of our solar system, or very distant celestial bodies and the souls of the most evolved children may come from even the most distant celestial bodies or stars. Ancient understood that we are connected into the mind of YO, that we are spiritual beings."

BUSHMEN were expert at animal identification and animal behaviour and could read tracks with uncanny accuracy. Women were superb field botanists. They could identify plants individually.

Knowledge was shared.

The Bushmen were joined in Southern Africa by the Khoi tribes along the Western coast, the Bechuana tribes from the central North, Bantu from the Eastward and the Europeans from the sea. They became known as Khoisan.

"The Xhosa got all their clicks and music from the Bushmen."

"Goods in themselves were not an end in themselves, but a means to a wider, social end - to create and solidify bonds of friendship, which may also become bonds of mutual help," Bushmen term is XARO.

Harmony was the way of life.

"When I play my instruments, the idea is to tell the people that without nature there is no life and without life there is no music. These are the foundation stones for humanity." Madosini

This is music completely rooted in the body of the performer as much as in the body of the universe.

The creation of this sound is a communication of the passing of time, birth, death, evolution.

Ancestral spirits mediate between the living and God, the supreme being 'Mulingqangi'. His/Her pleasure is music and dance.

The term music is expressed by 'ingoma' to mean songs :

'izicaba' are the sung text lines of a song. The bow performs izicaba which means it is singing the texts of the song.

Melody is (umculu) and this means footpath.

Isangoma when broken down means that which is like music / dance.

Common to each healing situation are the healer, the sick and the song.

Divination is a musical event

In the case of Nosinothi Dumiso she became ill, and began to go blind in one eye. This was interpreted as a call from the ancestors that she must become a diviner (thwasa). The way she chose to become a medium was to take up playing the uhadi.

"The sound of the bow dissipates moving further and further into the atmosphere, releasing the performer into the universe, from the foundation of their deep seated centre in the physical world."

"Playing the bow is a relief, a means of relaxing ones body and mind from tensions." Thandile Mandela

The prophet, Isaiah Shembe, would overcome physical fatigue and spiritual depression through long hours of meditation, an act which would involve singing to the accompaniment of his ugubhu musical bow throughout the night.

The bow is popular amongst maidens.

It is a transport instrument.

"The bow is solitary and meditative because the player cannot talk or sing whilst playing. Her thoughts are free to wander as her walking feet become absorbed in the rhythmic complexity of the overall musical process."

From the sacred order of the interconnectivity of all living things came music.

The bow provides the scales of all Southern African music.

Bows produce two fundamental notes. An open note (the player not touching the string) VU and a closed note (the player touching the string) VA :

All the other notes of the scale are there - within the fundamental note. These are the partial vibrations known as harmonics.
Changing the shape of your mouth, or moving the opening of the calabash too and from the breast will bring out these harmonics. Harmonics are over and above the fundamental note.

Harmonics lead to melody.

Construction of the bow took into account

String thickness and tension

The fundamental note of the string yields an harmonic series

The resonator is the means with which the musical instrument gets a grip on the air, and thus amplifies the frequency of the sound.

The mouth was used to amplify the sound of the string.

Hollowed out objects such as the calabash (pumpkin) is ideal as a resonator to amplify the sounds produced by the string.

When you strike the string of the bow and watch it vibrate, you will notice that the string moves most in the centre and least where it is tied to the bow.

A variation of the bow (known as braced bow) is to tie the string or the calabash in the centre. The player can therefore play either portion of the string therefore producing two sets of fundamental notes.

For example :

The tinkling sound of the string of the hunting bow attracted the attention of the hunter.

A Bushmen rock painting was copied by a British soldier in the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho. It shows a man tapping on the strings of seven hunting bows which have been fixed into the ground (probably by the other men) who are in the background dancing.

/Ka/Kanasi is a primitive instrument played only by old women. It consisted of a long string of twisted sinew, looped round a knobkerrie which was stuck in the sand. The string passed through her toes and up to her chest where she secured them to a length of 'riem' which passed round her body and was knotted behind her. Between the riem and her chest she placed a roll of dried hide to serve as a resonator.

The Kalinga resembles a musical bow, it is often referred to as a ground bow or earth bow. More like a harp, it is a very old instrument. A calabash is secured in the ground and a string from this is attached to a growing sapling. Bebey called the sound "a curious voice that seems to emanate from the earth." It was mainly a children's instrument. In Pygmy culture it was said to 'make the ants dance!' The Bushmen call this instrument !gamakha:s.

Among the Venda, the making of the string was a long process. It involved removing bark fibres from a broken branch, the continuous rolling of the fibres between the palms of the hands until a strong string had been formed.

An Ndebele man by the name of Zulu Monge used the hair from the tail of a giraffe for his string. He added to his performance by whistling through the sides of his mouth. He carried a plectrum of thorn and carried a spare one in his brother-in-laws hair. (as he was bald).

air vibration

"Ever take a piece of grass between your lips and blow it to make noises?"

The Bushmen gora evolved a method of extracting sound from the string by air vibration, by fixing a spatulate piece of quill taken from the feather of a korhaan. By applying the quill end to the mouth, the lips surrounding but not touching the quill, the player could produce quite powerfully by inspiring and expiring vigorously, certain harmonics of the string.

There is the tale of a boy, who as it rained, lay on the ground, playing upon the t'ha (gora) in the manner of //kunn, a famous rain doctor, who was in the habit of threatening to use his enchantments to stop the rain from falling when he was angry with the people. As the youth played, the storm became more violent and the mother of the youth screamed out in pain as the rain beat upon her. The tale ends in the conclusion of the youth that he was wrong.

"You play it by yourself. It makes you forgetful of things, and you can be your own company."

Sotho adopted gora and called it lesiba (feather). It is their national instrument.

clapping and stamping

Umngqungqo is a womens circular dance whose principle use is at the ijaka gathering at girls initiation. Men do not join in. The women form a circle and move around slowly, without clapping. They hold sticks in their right hands in imitation of men. They raise their feet well off the ground, and the feet meet the ground with a resounding thump.

The followers of composer, leader, and prophet Isaiah Shembe come together to perform a slow stamping dance to the accompaniment of giant drums and lengthy bulls horns. This is the sacred dance of ukusina.

Drums are the most important channel to express a societies shared values, knowledge and experience.

Of the Bushmen it is the women who made and played the drums for the men to dance. The Bushmen had a friction drum made from a clay pot or wooden cylinder covered with a thin membrane, with a tiny perforation in the centre through which a straw was passed and secured on the under side. The performer wetting his fingers, drew them along the straw, and the strong vibration gave forth a roaring sound.

The Shangaan xigubu drumming school teaches (1) drum manufacture (2) drum instruction (3) learning of didactic ideophones (4) learning of drum and voice conversations (call and response between voice and drums) (5) the learning of a special body of songs (6) the organization of a xifase competitive dance team which visits other villages.

Exorcism (macomane) is one of the more important musical practices among the Shangaan, involving possession dance, playing the special ncomane tambourine, from which the rite obtains its name. The distribution of this tambourine is as far as Siberia and Mesoamerica, usually with a medicinal use.

The percussion drum used by Xhosa and Zulu diviners and Zionist church musicians are bass drum types, developed from the example of the bass drums used by the British military in the 19th century.

One of the Zulu words for shield is ihawu and is one of the principle drums of the Zulu. Pedi drum is called moropa, hollowed out of a single block of wood. The moropa is used to summon the girls of the tribe to the gathering place which has been appointed for the Koma, or girls initiation ceremony. The drum of the Venda is ngoma. It has considerable weight. Before the skin is stretched over the Drum, one or two stones, called mbwebi, are dropped into the shell. These have been supplied by the doctor and have come from the stomach of the ngwenya or crocodile, which is the totem animal of the Venda.

The ngoma is beaten by the chief himself in order to bring rain. The sound of the drum is like thunder, and thunder preceeds rain. Invocations would be chanted and two or more of the men 'inspired by the spirits' would play a squeker 'Sitlanjani which represented the voices of the Gods'.

The flute, umtshingo is very popular with the herd boys. It is a zulu cultural norm that when a boy brings the cattle home, he must hide his flute somewhere outside the homestead. He literally thows the flute away where he is sure to find it again. The root of the word flute - tshinga - means to throw away.

A heritage of the Bushmen are the ditlhaka reedpipe sets played today by only one Tswana group, the Lete.

Nyanga panpipe made from bamboo or river reed are tied together after tuning. Most panpipes consist of four pipes, some three.

Tshikon was the Venda national dance used for solemn occasions such as the installation of a new chief, the first fruits ceremony and prayers to the ancestors of the royal clan. In tshikona the men move in file anti clockwise around the women who play the drums, each dancer plays a single reed pipe.

Uphondo is the general term for the horn. Impempe or unondonga is a police whistle. The siren whistle is called isikhona (name for an owl). A whistle called utwi-twi-twi is made from the stalk of a red petal flower.

The traditional ox horn isigodlo yields one tone and was used as a signal horn to announce an important event in the community, a war, a meeting of the chief in council, or a hunting expedition.

The Venda ocarina (tshipoyoliyo) is a hollowed out monkey-orange with three holes drilled through. The largest is used as embrouchure, and the two smaller holes are stopped in one of two ways. The songs are compared to bird calls.

A famous horn ensemble was from the Valley Tsonga people recorded by Hugh Tracey before their forced removal from Kariba District.

The xylophone is known as mbile in Venda, mohombi in Shangaan and dibila in Lobedu. It is on the Chopi of Mozambique's TIMBILA that the Shangaan model their mohombi xylophone. The xylophone is constructed from the mutondo tree which is of special significance to the Venda. The mbila maker always tries to find a dead tree.

In earlier times the xylophone maker planted his own crop of calabashes. The growing and collecting of calabashes is apparently the task of Venda women. The Venda national dance tshikona uses xylophone. The first fruits ceremony (theuhula?) is closely associated with the dancing of tshikona.

The marimba was brought to South Africa in 1980. It was developed in Zimbabwe. Robert Sibson was an electrical engineer, flautist and the moving spirit behind this. He wanted to promote African music. Sibsons friend Nelson Jones (mathematician) designed the marimba. In 1980 Dave Dargie and the Catholic Church brought them to South Africa. They began to be made by a Catholic Brother in Umtata and broke out in schools. One group in Cape Town, Amampondo were the first group to become famous with marimba. Limba is the singular of Marimba. It is a one note xylophone.

"Mbira is the family of small plucked reed instruments. It is unique to Africa and is widely spread throughout the continent. They have been played in large ensembles since at least the 15th century, when they were observed by Portuguese explorers on their way to India. The average instrument of this family is small, about the size of a book, with reeds of hammered iron, or sometimes of cane or bamboo. It is found under a large number of names, the most common in Central Africa being variations of the name Likembe. In the region of the Zambezi River Centre mbira shows its greatest development. Together with the xylophones, the mbira family is perhaps the most musically important of all African instruments, although now falling seriously into disuse."

"400 years ago there were musicians playing the Timbila and the mbira for the chiefs. King Kitiwe makes use of great musicians and dancers, who have no other office than to sit in the front room of the kings palace at the outer door, and round his dwelling playing many different musical instruments and singing to them a great variety of songs and discourse in praise of the king, in very high and sonorous voices. The best and most musical of them is called ambira (mbira)."

"The minstrels know the importance of weight in the keys of the mbira. If they cannot make a key quite long enough to make a great note they fix a little bees wax on to it instead. The extra weight of the wax gives them the great note they require."

"They strike the keys as lightly as a good player strikes those of the harpsichord. Thus the irons, being shaken, and the blows resounding.. they produce altogether a sweet and gentle harmony of accordant sounds." Joao Dos Santos 1586

"The oldest known example is called "mbira dze midzimu" (notes of the ancients). Mbira used ritualistically in connection with the rites of ancestor worship, the Madzimu spirits, but never with those of the Mashavi souls."

As an adjunct to the dance , rattles of different kinds are almost invariably used. These are also known as idiophones as the initial vibrator is solid material that vibrates by virtue of its own rigidity.

Primary rattles are held in the hand and played. Secondary rattles re worn on the body of performers and activated by their movements, or attached to other instruments as modifiers.

The Bushmen Nxonxoro consists of a bow bent under the tension of the string. Notches are cut into the bow and a stick is rubbed along these notches and causes the whole instrument to vibrate powerfully, while the mouth acts as a resonator.

The Venda use monkey oranges with stones inside for the rattle. They call it Tshizambi: The Shangaan / Tsonga name is xizambi The Zulu name is derivative, it is xizombi.

In the Venda exorcism ceremonies there is a special official called maine vha tsele (the diviner of the rattle). This diviner is responsible for singing the special Malombo song of exorcism.

The departed are not far away and they are believed to be watching over their families like a 'cloud of witnesses'.

The most common form of musical instrument is the human voice. We use our voices for making musical notes and also for expressing thoughts in words. It is the combination of notes and words which makes the voice such a wonderful instrument. The producing of any sound in the voice is controlled by the same five factors we find in musical instruments which turn energy into sound.

Umngqokolo is overtone singing in a gruff style. "to sing in a hoarse bass voice, producing the sound far back in the throat, and keeping the mouth open." The singer uses shaping of the mouth to select and amplify overtones for the performance of melody, as in playing the umrhubhe bow. One of its leading exponents, Nowayilethi Mbizweni of the Ngqoko group calls her version Umngqokolo ngomqangi - overtone singing in the style of umqangi. Umqangi is the name of a certain beetle which naughty boys impale on a thorn, and then use the mouth to resonate overtones from the loud buzzing noise as it tries to fly away.