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Music Alone Shall Live - Dan Callard

Page history last edited by Henry Hamburger 10 years, 5 months ago

 

TEAers, after returning from their service in East Africa, often acknowledge that they have come away from their experience richer for it than their African students. Sometimes we are not even sure we have enriched anyone’s life at all, though it takes at least four beers to arrive at that sorry conclusion!


Like many other TEAs who needed a teaching diploma and went to the Faculty of Education at Makerere to obtain one, I spent some time at the Makerere Demonstration School. I taught clarinet there that year, and during this time I tried to learn to play some local instruments—the harp, the lyre, the flute, pan pipes, the one string fiddle, the long drum, and above all, the xylophone—the glorious madinda. More important, I tried to figure out Kiganda music, which is mostly very fast and full of counterpoint. A typical tune I remember, Ssematimba, has 18 notes. The countermelody also has 18 notes, but they fall exactly between the notes of the melody, creating a 36 note tune. Out of all this rapid fire musical line played on a madinda a third player sits on one side of the instrument and picks out the actual tune of Ssematimba, a song about a famous man. Madinda composers write the first two parts in such a way that the tune emerges from some of those 36 notes, and, then a singer sings along with this third madinda player. It takes a little while to get to this point! Then, one by one, other instruments find their cues from this bouillabaisse of rampaging melody: two pan pipes, the fiddle, the bass drum, the long drum, and finally the rattle. This corps of about ten musicians is actually a setting for a dance, and so the final musical element glues it all together.


The only European I knew who knew how to do all of there things was the music master at MDS, Peter Cooke. I learned how to play all of these instruments from him a bit, and I learned to take the counterpoint and orchestration seriously, and I learned how to make harps, lyres, and madindas.


Once I was posted to Western Kenya to teach, I found similar instruments, though they were played singly or in very small groups. The court of the Kabaka could afford to pay many musicians, as well as the lesser officials in the countryside, but most of the people in East Africa didn’t know about this amazing Ugandan sound. Also the missionaries had warned the locals to give up their pagan sounds, and many of my students at Kamusinga were ashamed of their musical culture.


The Baganda and the Basoga have managed to maintain their music. They often sing of bicycles, banana lorries and nylon, but the instruments are vintage. My point is that their music along with other elements in their culture stayed put, and evolved on their own terms. The British government saw that the Kabaka and the ubiquitous Ggombolola structure would save the Crown a lot of bother, and perhaps the missions didn’t hammer the locals to give up their pagan habits as relentlessly as they did in Kenya.


I’m afraid I was tarred by the brush of colonialism as well. All choirs in Kenya had to sing “Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green” in order to enter the annual contest; biology students likewise studied English frogs, not the local species. The Cambridge Overseas Exam had yet to be relevant to the African student, and the weight and dominance of western culture was felt throughout the land.


We all tried so hard to distance ourselves from colonialism. I hope we succeeded. I was so crazy about madindas that I built a madinda shelter in the garden Dennis Huckabay and I looked after in Kenya. Actually the man I bought the materials from built it, the local Sikh hardware store owner, who said he wanted “to do something for the school.” I forget his name.


I didn’t have to make the music club members play it—they were as amazed at the speed and complexity of Kiganda music as I was. My wife-to-be Judith, who taught at a nearby girls’ school, also learned how to play this instrument, and when we got married in Welwyn Garden City we hauled out the logs that the school carpenter back in Kenya had shaped out of lusambya wood, laid it out in the Friends Meeting garden, and entertained all the guests. For years after we settled in Cincinnati and then Philadelphia we took all of our instruments around to schools and summer camps and libraries.


The son of the Makerere Demonstration School’s music master has become proficient in all music Ugandan, and is spreading the word in Britain. In my home state of West Virginia the university has a music department that studies the madinda. I have nothing against Polly Perkins, but it is nice to see the tables turn, if only a little bit.

 

 

 

Comments (3)

Henry Hamburger said

at 6:51 am on Oct 28, 2013

Thanks, Dan, for this story of your marvelous success with music in East Africa. Reading it brought joy to my imagination and a bit of self-reproach for how limited were my own faltering little steps down the path you have described; see Music at Kakamega (http://teaaki.pbworks.com/w/page/61372164/Music%20at%20Kakamega%20-%20Henry%20Hamburger).

Ed Schmidt said

at 4:56 pm on Nov 3, 2013

Dan, for anyone wanting to view the instrument being crafted or played, it seems that the instrument you refer to is spelled "akadinda" on YouTube.

Clive Mann said

at 5:31 am on Jan 6, 2017

I used to think that this type of Kiganda music was like a fast-flowing river.

I Teso District the most common instrument was the mbira/malimba or "thumb piano". I have seen "orchestras" of them, each ranging from a few inches across to over two feet. All my instruments that I collected for their beauty and sentimental value, I don't play, suffered badly from many moves and storage. My last thumb piano had to be discarded because of wood worm. I still have a few photos fortunately.

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