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Zulu women's bow songs: ruminations on love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Rosemary M. F. Joseph
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Extract

The existence of a tradition of bow-playing is recorded in some of the earlies written accounts of the Zulu people. Captain Gardiner in 1836 (pp. 104—5 and p1. 1) notes the presence of a gourd-resonated musical bow. It is not, however, clear which of the two Zulu gourd-resonated bows Gardiner encountered. He provides an illustration of a simple bow with undivided string and gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave but does not note its name. the instrument would seem to be a cross between the Zulu ugubhu, a simple bow with undivided string, but with the gourd resonator attached near the lower end of the stave, and the Zulu umakhweyana, a simple bow with the gourd resonator attached near the centre of the stave, but in which the string is divided by means of a loop which is secured within the centrally-located resonator. Angas (1849:p. 111 and p1. 25) also seems to have confused the two instruments. Plate 25 is an illustration of a young man playing what appears to be the ugubhu (although the gourd resonator is situated higher up the stave than is usual), but the drawing in the text (p. 111) in explanation of plate 25 shows a young man playing the umakhweyana. Thus, while the ugubhu is generally regarded as the older and more authentically Zulu of the two instuments (the umakhweyana being thought to have been borrowed from the Tsonga of Mozambique around the turn of the nineteenth century), it is apparent that, from at least the time of the first documentation of the Zulu, both instruments were in current usage.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 1987 , pp. 90 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1987

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