Songs the essential element of native dances--Indian
imagination and poetry--Music entirely ceremonial--Indian
singing--Simple melodies--Words without meaning--Sense
of time--Limitations of songs--Instrumental
music--Pan-pipes--Flutes and fifes--Trumpets--Jurupari music and
ceremonial--Castanets--Rattles--Drums--The _manguare_--Method of
fashioning drums--Drum language--Signal and conversation--Small
hand-drums.
In considering the native dances it must be remembered that the
accompanying songs are essential elements of the entertainment: they
mark the character of the dance; and equally, in considering the songs,
it must be remembered that the imagination of the native never goes
beyond the relation of the sexes. The Indian’s poetry is an inverted
form of romanticism. Instead of seeking to give rhythmical expression
to an idealisation, to find in the beauties of Nature an analogy to the
realities of Life, he reverses the process. For instance, he views a
ripe fruit, and it only suggests to him a pregnant woman. In all such
natural phenomena as he recognises he notes but the crude, if possibly
the scientific, origin. In the most ordinary conversation he refers to
conditions that appear indecent in common print; they are, however,
undetachable from him.
So it is that in his songs he debases idealism, does not elevate realism.
His poetry is on a par with that of the music-hall comedian who conceals
a mass of filth under avowedly innocent words--but the intention is very
different. The Indian possesses no other verbal vehicle, knows no other
source of inspiration. His imagination is bound by his vocabulary, as his
vocabulary is limited by his imagination. Curiously enough the effect
upon his audience is gained by the same means as those employed by the
red-nosed singer in the places of entertainment south of the Bridges,
and is almost identical in degree. Some of the Londoners of the County
Council schools have advanced ethically but little beyond their naked
brothers of the Amazonian bush.
These Indians cannot be said to love music for its own sake. The use of
music in any form is almost entirely ceremonial. They neither sing nor
play instruments as a rule merely for pleasure. On the occasions of their
festivals and dances, though, they give evidence of the possession of
voices of considerable flexibility. They also display much ingenuity in
the manufacture of their instruments, and, next to their weapons, the
pan-pipes, flutes, and drums are most carefully fashioned and preserved.
In fact, these take precedence over all domestic implements, and even
most ornaments.
The native singing voice is loud, high, and shrill. The male leader--as
a rule it is a man who is appointed, and he may be any one who knows
the old songs--sings the solo, to give the chorus their cue, in a high
falsetto which is very penetrating, and marks both time and tune for the
others to follow in canon. The song is started softly, and gradually
increases both in volume and speed. According to the circumstances, the
subject, and the occasion, the men sing alone, the women sing alone, or
the men and women combine as in the tribal dances. Most of the singing
is done in unison, with a regular drone accompaniment from those not
actually articulating the words. The songs are sung in regular time, to
the accompaniment of stamping, but not with hand-clapping. The melodies
are simple, and in the definite tribal songs consist of little more than
a single phrase that seems to admit of no variation, and is repeated _ad
libitum_, as, for example, _Mariana Keibeio_, a Boro tribal song. The
tune of this, notated from memory, and in part from a phonograph record,
runs approximately, so far as it can be rendered in our notation:
[Illustration]
What this implies no Indian now knows, for with all tribal songs the
natives offer no explanation of their meaning or their origin. They are
the songs that their fathers sang, and one can find no evidence of the
amendation or emendation of the score on the part of their descendants.
These tribal lays are so old that the words are obsolete and no longer
understood by the singers; what is of importance is the rhythm, and
to that, as is common with uncivilised peoples, the music is largely
subordinated. It is but an accompaniment to the dancing. “The sense of
time” in the Indian, as Stevenson noted among the South Sea Islanders,
“is extremely perfect,” and one might complete the quotation and add, “I
conceive in such a festival that almost every sound and movement fell in
one.”[335] It is not an easy matter to discuss, because the English and
the Indian standpoint are so diametrically opposite. So far as I could
judge the tunes are usually in a minor key, both melody and harmony being
of the simplest.
There are no love-songs among the Indians, for the poetic conception of
love does not exist. Sacred songs and nursery songs are equally lacking.
A mother never croons to her baby; she does not understand a lullaby.
War-songs are merely the expression of the war-dance; they depend for
their significance upon the words and for their ferocity upon the grim
accentuation of the chorus.
At the time of the harvest of pine-apples, when the great dance is held,
the men sing the challenge, and the women reply in their own defence. The
songs are similar to that sung at the manioc-gathering dance, and I have
previously tried to give some idea of such a song.
Apart from the traditional songs of the tribes, which are sacred and
unchangeable, the Indians are very fond of a form of song which is
really a game rather than a musical effusion. More correctly, perhaps,
it should be called a ballad.[336] A leader of acknowledged fertility of
imagination and fluency of expression is appointed, as for the Muenane
riddle dance, and will collect the members of the tribe for what is
actually an impromptu dance. He, or she, will chant to an improvised air
with a simple rhythm, while the chorus repeat each line or its burden as
a refrain. Such songs give opportunity for all the wit of the tribe. They
are designed either to honour or to ridicule the subject of the ballad.
In reality a composition of this description takes hours to sing. The
first wit propounds the question, the chorus repeat it, and the second
wit then suggests the answer, which is again repeated by all amid much
laughter, and the repetition is continued not once but twenty times,
until the first wit breaks in with a new query. This is a very favourite
game among the women.
The following is an attempt to suggest the song-words of a dance
performed by some Witoto for my benefit, though I do the Indians too much
justice, give too great an idea of continuity, in this version. There is
no cohesion in their productions, and reiteration is the salient feature
of all. The sound and the rhythm suggested to me at the time the metre
of _Hiawatha_, so I give this song in an attempt at Hiawathian measure.
But the adaptation is really too varied for the Indian original. I was
outside the _maloka_ when the women started--no men took part--and they
danced in front of me. After a time I went inside, and the performers
promptly followed me, and continued to dance in the central space of the
house. Naturally not one word would have been sung if these dancers had
known it would be interpreted to me.
To our tribe there comes a stranger,
Comes a welcomed, honoured stranger.
And whence comes to us this stranger?
From what far and foreign country?
Wherefore comes this friend among us?
What the quest that brings him hither?
Are there in his native country
Empty fields and unkind women,
That he comes to seek among us.
So to satisfy his wishes?
By what name is called the stranger?
Tell us what his people call him.
Call him Whiffena Ri-e-i;
Call him Whiffena, the White Man.
Partly, too, his name’s Itoma.
But--his friends and bosom cronies--
Tell us, how do they address him?
He is nicknamed by his cronies
Ei-fo-ke, the Turkey Buzzard.
Ei-fo-ke, the Turkey Buzzard,
Is this, then, the name endearing
That his lovers whisper to him
When of him they grow enamoured?
No, not good! The Turkey Buzzard
Is a bird with beak of scarlet,
Yes, a long sharp beak of scarlet.
And a loose and hanging wattle.
No, his name is not Ei-fo-ke.
Let his love-name be Okaina!
This went on _ad nauseam_. The true object in all such songs is to bring
in and discuss sexual matters, and no song has advanced far before it has
become essentially carnal in idea and thoroughly licentious in expression.
Although instruments are always employed at the dances they do not seem
to be introduced with any idea of organised accompaniment, but only to
help swell the body of sound. The natives, being ignorant of the use of
metal, have been forced to make their instruments entirely of vegetable
substances; the only other material used is bone, human bone, _bien
entendu_, and judging from a specimen presented by Robuchon to the
British Museum, the shell of a small land tortoise. Their instruments of
percussion are drums, castanets, and rattles: their wind-instruments are
flutes and pan-pipes. Very rarely a solitary Indian may be found playing
the flute, apparently for his personal amusement and solace. As a rule,
it is merely used in combination with its fellows to increase the volume
of sound without heed to its proper place in harmony.
[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.
PANPIPES]
The pan-pipes are the simplest of all instruments of Amazonian music
to make, and are the most universally popular. They consist of a
bundle of reeds--three, five, six, seven, ten, or even seventeen in
number--bound together with palm-fibre, or, on the Napo, with finely
split cane. Although the pipes are cut to lengths yielding the necessary
musical intervals, the number seems to be purely arbitrary. They are
used in concert with all other instruments, and mark so much of tune
as the Indian orchestra strives to attain. The pan-pipes shown in the
accompanying illustration are Witoto instruments contrasted with the
neater finish of one made on the Napo. The latter has the greater number
of pipes, and all relatively smaller. There is nothing complicated about
the make of either set. The cane pipes are cut immediately below the
natural joint, and the node is thus made to serve as a stop.[337]
The ubiquitous bamboo also furnishes the material for a larger flute,
and flutes or fifes are made out of the arm-bones of prisoners taken in
battle. After the victim is killed and eaten the humerus is cleaned, its
extremities opened, and the soft matrix scooped out. Finger-holes are
bored in the shaft of the bone, usually three in number, but occasionally
five. When human bones are not forthcoming the tribesman uses the
leg-bone of a jaguar. This is opened at the end and furnished with a
wax stop that leaves a small canal open to a three-cornered air-hole.
Occasionally one of these flutes is made with both ends open, in which
case a square or semicircular hole is cut out from the upper rim. The
flute is held against the lower lip, and commonly has three, or more
rarely four, sound-holes. Flutes are also made of heron-bones, open at
the lower end, with a square air-hole, and generally four sound-holes.
These have mouthpieces made of leaves, and their tones are exceedingly
shrill. But the most curious instruments of which I have note are
flutes made from skulls of animals, by covering them with pitch, and
only leaving open the holes of the nose and the occipital bone. One
hole is blown through, the other is the sounding-hole. Many of the
Indian instruments, especially the bone flutes, are gaily ornamented
with elaborate incised patterns that are dyed black and red with
vegetable extracts. The flutes are also adorned with tassels of cotton or
palm-fibre.
The flute or fife is played from the extremity that is rudely fashioned
into a mouthpiece. No native trumpets are provided with sliding tubes
like the familiar trombone, and there is no plug in the mouth-hole. Nor
are any of the Amazonian wind-instruments fitted with a vibrating reed.
There are no bagpipes, and, in the regions I traversed, no stringed
instruments. Certain tribes north of the Japura, notably the Desana, use
whistles made of clay, which they employ both as alarm signals and as
adjuncts to the dance.
Trumpets of bark and bamboo have an irregular distribution. Many tribes
dispense with them on all ordinary occasions, and confine their use to
Jurupari music. These sacred instruments constitute one of the most
profound mysteries of the Amazon. They are lengthy affairs, made from the
hollow stem of a palm, and fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece. The note
is akin to that of the bassoon. These trumpets are tribal possessions,
and are kept concealed at a distance from the _maloka_, in a hut which
the women are never permitted to enter, and where the various secret
paraphernalia connected with boy initiation--such as the whips of tapir
hide--are stored. It is a capital crime for any woman even to set eyes
upon them. The Jurupari trumpet is as tabu to Indian women as the
bull-roarer of the Australian native is to his women-folk.[338] The
Indian girls are brought up in the belief that the music of the trumpets
is an essential element in the exorcism of the evil spirit from the
body of the youthful initiate, and that any interference on their part
must lead to the eternal residence of such spirit in the novice, to the
consequent disaster of the tribe, and this belief holds good all their
lives.[339] No sooner is Jurupari music heard approaching the _maloka_
than all the women and uninitiated hurry to the bush, and remain in
hiding until the ceremony is concluded and the trumpets have been
returned to their tabernacle. What the ceremony may be is held a profound
secret, and the punishment for infringement is death.[340] As a rule two
of these sacred trumpets are used, and they are tuned to the same pitch,
though differing in their tone according to their length. They are only
used north of the Japura; south of that river the tribes have no Jurupari
music and only know them as employed ceremonially by their neighbours in
connection with initiation secrets to frighten their women.
The Tukana when dancing use a trumpet alternately with their rattles; and
the Indians north of the Japura have regular castanets, made of blocks
of hard wood, which are manipulated with one hand, much in the manner
that the nigger-minstrel plays the “bones.” All the tribes make rattles
of small gourds by the simple method of partly filling the calabash
with dried seeds, or fruit stones, and inserting a wooden handle so
that they can be shaken in time to the dance. Some of these are of the
roughest, the stick of the handle quite untrimmed; others are more finely
finished, and the polished black surface of the gourd may be ornamented
with designs in colour, or incised patterns. But these are by no means
the only rattles used at a dance. The Indians have them of many kinds
and descriptions. The smaller are worn as armlets, wristlets, leglets,
and anklets. These are made of nuts, strung with coloured beads on palm
fibre, and very carefully fashioned. The leg rattles are frequently
handsome ornaments, the rich brown of the glossy nutshell making a
splendid contrast with the blue or red of the Brummagem beads. The finest
are made from a nut not unlike the Brazil nut of commerce in shape, but
less angular. That shown in Plate XLIII. has natural groovings and marks
which give the polished sections the appearance of being engraved. A
section of the shell is cut off, thoroughly cleaned and polished, then
attached by a short string of beads to the main leg- or arm-band from
which these nut sections hang bell-like. The arm rattles are made of
smaller nuts, some are not unlike an oval hazelnut, flat on one side,
cut in half and highly polished. The nut is, roughly speaking, some
three-quarters of an inch across and long. These also are hung on threads
of beads pendant a quarter of an inch apart from the connecting beaded
string. Leg rattles are made of larger nuts, and one variety is made in
the form of a bunch, not a band or chain. The beads used for these are
blue and red in colour, and the bunch of nuts on their beaded strings is
fastened with plaited palm-fibre beneath the knee. The whole effect is
most distinctly ornamental. The jangle of two or three of these nutshell
bells is not unpleasant: there is almost a tinkle in their clatter, but
the volume of sound obtainable from a number of them is remarkable, and
so is the precision with which they accentuate the rhythm of movement.
The Indians have no cymbals, gongs, or bells; but the drum is an
important factor not only in native music, but in native life. The drum
is the telegraph of the Amazons. In fact, the most remarkable of all the
native instruments is the _manguare_ or signal drum. Although the primary
use of this drum is to signal, it is utilised on great occasions as an
addition to the aboriginal orchestra. To make this important adjunct
of the _maloka_ two blocks of hard wood are chosen, some six feet in
length, and about twenty-four inches in diameter. These blocks are very
carefully hollowed out by means of heated stones that are introduced
through a narrow longitudinal slit, and char the interior. Instead of
endeavouring, however, as would be the case with an ordinary drum, to
contrive as nearly perfect a cylinder as possible, the object of the
signal-drum maker is to obtain a husk of varying thicknesses, so as to
secure differences in note. Accordingly, with his rude implements, hot
stones, capybara-tooth borer, and stone axe, he fashions the interior
of the drum in such a manner that the outer shell, the sounding-board,
varies in thickness from half an inch to four inches. Two blocks are
used; the smaller is called the male, and the larger the female. The ends
are simply the wood of the tree which is not removed, all the hollowing
being accomplished by means of the grooved slit. When finished these are
suspended by withes at an oblique angle, one end much higher than the
other--say six feet and three feet respectively from the ground. They
hang from the rafters of the _maloka_, or from an upright frame, and
present the appearance of two barrels surmounted by a narrow slit.[341]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
The musician takes his stand between these drums and, with a wooden
mallet headed with a knob of rubber, beats out his message or his
tune. Altogether he has a range of four notes--two low ones on the
female _manguare_, and two high ones on the male. On these he rings the
changes with great rapidity, and produces a sound which, though not
startlingly loud, has such penetrating qualities that it can be heard
twenty miles away. He beats very quickly in short and long strokes, not
unlike the Morse Code. By means of the _manguare_ a skilled signaller
can carry on a conversation as accurately as a telegraph operator at
St. Martin’s-le-Grand, or a soldier with a heliograph--but how he
does it is another secret of the Amazonian bush. When used for its
proper purpose as signal drum, the Boro and the Okaina can carry on
conversations upon almost any subject within their ken. Other tribes are
only able to distinguish between a warning of danger and an invitation
to a dance. Brown could use the drum for small matters--he could hurry
the bearers out of the bush for example. He said there was no code,
but that the signaller tried to represent the sound of words with the
drum, and Indians invariably told me that they made the words with
the drum. However, with a language dependent on inflection, as theirs
unquestionably is, there must be a code of some description.
India-rubber, which has added a new and awful terror to the life of the
forest Indian, is only employed by these tribes to make the drum mallet,
used with the _manguare_, and the latex for depilatory purposes. The
Witoto call the mallet _ouaki_, the drum is _hugwe_.
These great signal drums have designs worked upon them in which the
organs associated with the presumed sex of the instrument are prominent;
and, after the manner of the natives, both instruments are invariably
distinguished internally with the proper sexual characters, the female
drum having two breasts pendant inside.
Even in the construction of a small playing drum much time and ingenuity
are expended. First an aeta palm[342] is selected, cut down, and a
section of the trunk laboriously hacked off. This section in turn is
carefully hollowed, until only a thin shell remains. Some tribes use
a section of bamboo in place of the hollowed palm, but these never
secure so fine an instrument or so fine a note as the palm trunk
makes. Over the two ends of the cylinder dried monkey skin is tightly
stretched--preferably that of the howler monkey, as it is popularly
supposed to produce a louder and more rolling sound. Some tribes then
fasten across one end of this drum a very tight cord, into the centre of
which has been tied a fine sliver of wood. By this means two notes are
obtained--the open note where nothing interferes with the vibrations of
the drumhead, and the closed note where the vibrations of the splinter
intersect those of the skin. A very inferior instrument is made with
agouti skin over a bamboo cylinder. The drums made on the Napo River
look very much like an English child’s toy drum, rather high and narrow,
and, of course, made entirely without metal. The sides bulge slightly,
and have crossed threads of fibre string. The vellum of the drumhead is
kept in its place tautly by a close-fitting ring. These drums are usually
decorated, and are objects of barter among many of the tribes. They are
played with the fingers only, not with drumsticks or mallet.