171. The Pygmy/Bushmen Nexus -- Part 11 -- African Offshoots

(. . . continued from previous post.)
While P/B style in its most fully developed and complete form is almost exclusively limited to certain African Pygmy and Bushmen hunter-gatherers, musical practices employing certain characteristic features of P/B are not uncommon among other indigenous peoples, in various corners of the world, with very different histories, traditions and modes of subsistence. In my paper on the Kalahari debate, I present statistical tables drawn from the Cantometrics database, to illustrate the manner in which two of the most distinctive characteristics of P/B, interlocking parts and yodel, are distributed, both worldwide and in Africa. For now, I'd like to concentrate on the African picture, to give us a better sense of how this style may have evolved on that continent during the earliest phase of its development and diffusion. To that end, let's take a look at Table 3 from the paper, which presents an overview of the distribution of interlock and yodel in the Cantometric sample from SubSaharan Africa, followed by some excerpts from my discussion of this table:

	Sample Size	No. Interlock	% Interlock	No. Yodel	% Yodel
Pygmies (Aka, Baka, Bedzan, Binga, Mbuti)	47	32	68%	27	57%
Twa Pygmies	4	0	0	0	0
Ju’hoansi Bushmen (including “Kung”)	21	15	71%	15	71%
“Khwe” Bushmen	6	0	0	0	0
Mikea (Madagascar)	8	4	50%	4	50%
Wayto (NW Ethiopia)	2	1	50%	0	0
All other hunter-gatherers (El Molo, Hadza, Sandawe)	10	0	0	0	0
All other groups in Sub-Saharan African	873	88	10%	44	5%
All other groups coded as interlocked	257	88	34%	24	9%

The first seven rows represent hunter-gatherers exclusively. The last two enable us to assess the degree to which interlocked vocalising and yodel is found among all other sub-Saharan groups sampled. As can be seen in row eight, from a total of 873 performances representing these groups, only 88, or 10%, employ interlock. Row nine represents a subset of the above, all songs from all such groups with at least one instance of interlock coded for each. While the great majority of performances in our Pygmy and Bushmen samples are interlocked, this type of vocal interaction is found only 34% of the time among those farmers and/or pastoralists where any instances of
interlock have been coded. Interestingly, most such groups are located in areas adjacent to or in the vicinity of, Pygmy or Bushmen populations. . .
From rows eight and nine we see that yodel is found in only 5% of our non-hunter/gatherer groups and not much more, 9%, among all such groups using interlock. Clearly, the use of both interlock and yodel is characteristic of most Pygmy and Bushmen vocalising, yet rare in either Africa or anywhere else (p. 9).

I'd like, at this point, to add another quotation, from my most recent, as yet unpublished, paper, in which I speculate further on the very interesting distribution of certain characteristic P/B traits in Africa. Please forgive these extensive quotes, but they contain much that is germane to the present discussion:

Certain aspects of P/B link the style quite closely to many types of vocal and instrumental practice in Africa, from simple call and response antiphony, which often resembles hocketed interplay, to polyrhythmic drumming, interlocking instrumental ensembles, etc. The many hocketed vocal, pipe, panpipe, trumpet and horn ensembles so commonly found in Africa may well have originated as an early derivation from P/B hocket-interlock. Interestingly, the musical traditions in Africa that are closest to P/B, in their use of interlock, hocket, stimmtauch, continuous flow, ostinato, nonsense vocables and even, in certain cases, yodel, tend to be found either among groups that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies or Bushmen, or groups to be found, as the Pygmies and Bushmen are now found, in relatively isolated “refuge” areas. For instance a well-known pocket of P/B style hocketed vocal and pipe-based contrapuntal polyphony can be found among several groups living in remote mountain regions of southwest Ethiopia. Another such pocket can be found in the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon, a well-known refuge area, surrounded by very different lowland groups that sing and play in markedly different styles. Another such group, the Bamoun, live in a high plateau region of Cameroon, with an elevation of close to 4,000 feet. Still another group, the Anaguta, now live in the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria, also recognized as a refuge area ("Some Notable Features of Pygmy and Bushmen Polyphonic Practice, with Special Reference to Survivals of Traditional Vocal Polyphony in Europe," p. 5).

What I am suggesting in the above can best be summarized by yet another quote (again, please forgive me, but this sort of recycling saves me considerable time and effort), this time from the abstract to a grant proposal (unsuccessful) I recently submitted to the Wenner Gren Foundation:

Informal research conducted so far suggests that variants of [P/B] style tend also to be found among food producers that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies, or among marginalized, relatively isolated, culturally conservative groups now living in out-of-the-way refuge areas scattered throughout the continent. Such a distribution pattern, if confirmed, would imply that all such traditions could indeed be survivals of an archaic practice, predating the Bantu expansion, possibly dating to the Paleolithic. I intend to test this hypothesis by more systematically mapping the distribution of “Pygmy/Bushmen” style vocal and instrumental music throughout Africa, as fully as current information sources permit.

I'll add one more (long) quotation, this time from the project description itself, which should give you an idea of what's been on my mind regarding the effort to understand the history of P/B, its variants, and their distribution among so many different African groups. As my proposal should make clear, there is still much that remains uncertain and merits additional research.

The proposed project will focus on certain musical traditions, both vocal and instrumental, closely related stylistically and structurally to P/B, though often somewhat simplified and less spontaneous, that can be found among certain groups of “Bantu” farmers and/or herders in various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, such practices are often limited to certain times of year, or certain types of situation or ritual, whereas singing in this manner is an everyday part of ordinary life for most Pygmies and Bushmen. So far, P/B variants of this sort have been found in 1. groups that have traditionally interacted closely with Pygmies (e.g., Mamvu, Lese, Bira, Budu, Ngundi) or Bushmen (e.g., Himba, Pondo, Lozi), or 2. marginalized, relatively isolated, culturally conservative groups now living in out-of-the-way refuge areas scattered throughout the continent -- e.g., the highlands of southwest Ethiopia (e.g., Dorze, Ari), the Mandara mountains of Cameroon (e.g., Ouldémé, Mofou), the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria (Anaguta), etc.

Are such distribution patterns the coincidental result of an incomplete survey? Or do they point to isolated survivals of an archaic, once ubiquitous, cultural practice, predating the Bantu expansion, possibly dating all the way back to the Paleolithic? If it can be determined with a reliable degree of statistical significance that P/B-related musical traditions are found exclusively, or almost so, among such groups, then the latter hypothesis would receive considerable support. Alternatively, a comprehensive survey might tend to support the theory offered for the distribution of hocketing wind ensembles by linguist/ethnomusicologist Roger Blench, who suggested that such ensembles could originally have been “part of the cultural repertoire of Nilo-Saharan speakers as they spread westwards across the Sudan in the Pleistocene” (Blench 2002). If no clear correlation of any sort emerges, it would be necessary to consider the possibility that stylistic practices and behavior patterns similar to P/B could have emerged independently among various “Bantu” groups, due to similarities in cognitive development, environmental influences, and/or historical events currently unknown to us. It is hypotheses such as these that I intend to more fully explore by systematically mapping the distribution of P/B style vocal and instrumental music throughout Africa, as fully as current information sources permit.

(to be continued . . . )