Tape Recording Magazine - AmericanRadioHistory.Com

Photo © Barbara W. Merriam
Court musicians of the Batwa tribe, Nyanza, Ruanda, perform for the Mwami (king). The drum choir (center foreground) supplies percussion
while horn -players (left) blow one or at most two notes on the vegetable gourds at specified intervals. To keep the melody going, each
horn must be blown at precisely the right moment; individual notes are "hocketed" into the melodic line. This takes tremendous skill and
practice, especially at fast tempos. Mike is an Electro -Voice 635.
may be built on three or four or more time signatures
operating simultaneously) that it defies classification under
a single meter system like ours. One rhythm seems to predominate,
then another. Nobody agrees where, which
or when.
Music is timbre or tone -color -rich, dry, reedy, harsh,
shrill, brassy -and it is dynamics -relative loudness and
softness. These give West African music much of its
color and vitality. They are just as important in jazz. Tonal
and dynamic subtleties, instruments played to imitate
human voices, flexible intervals are aural phenomena; they
have to be heard.
So this was above all a study in sound. My committee
knew it when we met to discuss the project.
Prof. Grant ( musicologist) : "You're aware, of course, of
the difficulties involved in transcribing African music ?"
Prof. Long ( jazz authority) : "And of faithfully transcribing
jazz ?"
Prof. Grant: "You'll have to use recordings. I don't
think you can get authentic renditions of traditional tribal
music. Some of the best is on cylinders in private collections.
Many of the recordings from earlier expeditions are
in libraries."
Prof. Long: "Same with the earlier recorded traditional
jazz. Collectors' items scattered here and there."
A number of other questions. Then the 64- dollar one:
"You must have thought of these problems. How do
you propose to solve them ?"
I thought fast. "With a tape recorder."
A thesis was born. Tape was the father. And I happened
to own a portable machine, the Revere T -I00.
We made many trips, the Revere and I -to the homes
of jazz collectors, who would never let me out of the door
alive with their precious platters, but who in the interests
of research were willing to let me tape their treasures in
Photo by A. Alberts
Young Malinké girl dances to the music of a balaphon group in
the village of Sidi Djelli, central French Guinea. Rows of gourds
under the hardwood keys act as resonators. Bells and rattles on
the player's wrists are typical. The balaphon, in various forms, is
found throughout the Niger Valley and elsewhere in Africa.
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