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Sounding place in the western Maputaland borderlands Angela Impey
Online publication date: 10 November 2009
To cite this Article Impey, Angela(2006) 'Sounding place in the western Maputaland borderlands', Journal of Musical Arts in Africa, 3: 1, 55 — 79 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.2989/18121000609486709 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/18121000609486709
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Sounding place in the western Maputaland borderlands1
Angela Impey
Abstract
This article draws on research conducted in western Maputaland, a remote region in the borderlands of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. It argues that sound and the affect of music-making represent a much under-utilised research resource in Africa, particularly in contexts of social and spatial rupture. As discursive modalities, they provide constructive entry points for understanding how personal and social identities are negotiated, how spaces or landscapes are constructed, and the ways in which these processes interrelate in the making of place. Building upon narratives inspired by the revival of the jews harp and two mouthbows – once widely performed in the area as walking instruments, but remembered now by elderly women only – the research utilises musical memory as a method to chart hidden geographies in a changing landscape. In so doing, it aims to raise the level of the voices of a people whose livelihoods and sociality may be at variance with broader environmental development processes in the region.
Introduction Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010
Fambile Khumalo laughs as she remembers uKhisimusi (Christmas) as a child:
The men would return from Johannesburg with sweets and bread in cardboard boxes. We would cross the Usuthu River and visit our families in Mozambique. We used to eat very well! We ate meat and goats and chickens. We even ate rice and tea! I remember when they brought back the first gramophone. [She sings:] Baleka webaleka, siyafa, ijubane Run away, we are dying, run fast Wemntanakhe Baba Child of my father Gijim’umqinise! Run fast! Ah, that song really makes me remember! (Khumalo 2004)
Fambile Khumalo grew up in Banzi Pan, a vast area of shallow flood plains and low Acacia scrubveld located on the border of South Africa and Mozambique. Banzi had long been 2
1 This research was made possible by a joint grant from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN).
© 2006 University of Cape Town ISSN: 1812-1004 © 2007 University of Cape Town ISSN: 1812-1004 56 ANGELA IMPEY
inhabited by Zulu, Swazi and Tembe-Thonga people who lived by hunting, fishing and cultivating crops in the rich alluvial soils deposited by the annual flooding of the Pongola River.2 As the area is predisposed to extreme heat, drought and flooding, survival depended on both rootedness to land as well as the establishment of kinship networks that extended deep into the coastal regions of southern Mozambique and west into Swaziland to support a system of in- and out-migration during times of environmental stress, the outbreak of diseases and warfare (Bruton & Cooper 1980; Harries 1994). In 1924 Banzi and the surrounding pans were formally declared a protected area by the South African government. Originally established for the protection of the hippopotamus, the area was subsequently fenced and stocked with other large species and thus established as a compensatory wilderness for a rapidly urbanising white population. Cleared of all its residents by the early 1970s, Ndumo Game Reserve, as it became known, was duly refashioned into a pristine, timeless space in nature; a space outside history. The ‘timelessness’ inscribed in the image of the game reserve has, however, become memorialised as a critical moment of loss for the Banzi people:
They came as if they were coming to fence the hippos in the pans. They said that they were going to fence the pans because people were destroying nature, but the animals were destroying our fields. After a while they didn’t fence only the pans; they fenced the whole area. They made the herd boys graze the cattle outside the fences. The boys removed the cattle while the families were still in the park, working their fields. They started to say that we must not kill the birds. We were not even allowed to kill a snake if it entered our houses. We were not allowed to touch the antelope. If they found you catching a cane rat, you would be arrested and taken to the police station in Ingwavuma. When you returned, they would chase you away from the park.
After some time, the police came and burned down the houses of all the people who were Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 still inside. If they were not home at the time, all of their things were removed. When they came back from their fields, they found all of their things in the yard and their houses burned. They told us that we had to collect our children and leave. We didn’t know where to go. They brought tractors and picked us up, put our last chickens and goats in the trailers, and dumped us outside the fences. The old people had to clear spaces under the trees for their sleeping mats. That was it: the park was closed and no one was allowed to return. (Sibiya 2003)3
Once removed, the Banzi families settled on land in various wards along the periphery of the game reserve where they pledged allegiance to local chiefs, built new houses and prepared new fields. During the ensuing decades, a singular lament emerged amongst them. Informed partly by the recollections of those who had been removed, and partly re-imagined in response to emerging opportunities for economic redress, it is a lament that without variation conflates environmental conservation with a profound sense of dispossession:
2 Tembe-Thonga is a distinct cultural-linguistic group who inhabit regions of south-eastern Mozambique and north-eastern KwaZulu-Natal. Historically, the Zulu referred to all people living in this eastern district as Thonga (Tsonga) or Ronga; a more generalised designation for non-Sotho or Nguni-speaking people consisting of the Konde, Maputa, Tembe-Thonga, Matolo, Mphumo, Mabota, Mazwya, Chiranda and Manyisa tribes (Junod 1962:16–17 in Kloppers 2001:56). 3 MaSibiya and her family were removed from the Ndumo Game Reserve in the late 1960s. SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 57
There we were rich: we ate bhatata [sweet potato], banana, madumbe [root vegetable], idombolo [cassava] and pumpkins. We drank from the Usuthu River. Today that river is reserved for the hippos and crocodiles while our children die from drought. The wild fruits are left to fatten the monkeys, and the rhinos graze on the graves of our ancestors. (Sibiya 2003)
Today, Ndumo Game Reserve is one of many protected areas in South Africa that struggles under the legacy of ‘fortress conservation’.4 Although current environmental paradigms have begun to embrace an integrated conservation-with-development trajectory, the people and park’s relationship remains politically contentious. As a borderland area, western Maputaland falls within the Usuthu-Tembe-Futi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA)
Sound, social memory and spatiality in western Maputaland
This article focuses on narratives of place in the western Maputaland borderlands as invoked through sound and music-making. It investigates women’s evocations of place in particular, arguing that women’s experiences of spatial rupture through conservation Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 expansion have been different to those of men. While the loss of access to adequate land and resources through their removal from the Ndumo Game Reserve forced many men to seek wage labour elsewhere, women had to assume principal livelihood responsibilities in their capacity as farmers, water conservators, and collectors of edible and medicinal plants. The article therefore focuses on narratives associated with those for whom land has carried essential responsibilities for survival, whose working with the land has linked them functionally, affectively and sensually with place, and for whom loss of land has been experienced as overwhelmingly threatening.5 The article draws on research whose objectives were underwritten by two fundamental questions:
4 ‘Fortress conservation’ refers to a colonial preservationist paradigm managed according to a principle of fences, firearms and laws. This approach undermined local people’s control over the environment and criminalised their access to natural resources and game. New approaches based on ‘sustainable use’ are attempting to place communities back into the conservation scenario by empowering them to manage environments and include them in conservation-based economic development (see Murphree 1991; Murombedzi 1998; Metcalfe 1999; West, Igoe & Brockington 2006). 5 For further discussion on women’s uses and perceptions of the environment in relation to land-use policy, see Ardner (1981) and Leach (1992). 58 ANGELA IMPEY
• What can be learned from sound, song and performance with regard to how experiences are constructed, negotiated and reinvented in the context of spatial and social rupture? • In what ways can the act of remembering and disclosure through music-making contribute towards the empowerment (re-voicing) of marginalised people?
The first is an analytical question that draws on mainstream ethnomusicological concerns regarding how music is imagined, performed and made meaningful in relation to broader socio-political developments. The second is motivated by an interest to contribute actively towards processes of social transformation or redress. It is central to what may be more generally referred to as advocacy ethnomusicology; its intention is to use research towards practical social or development outputs. Drawing on participatory methodologies
Figure 1: Map of the Usuthu-Tembe-Futi Transfrontier Conservation Area
promulgated by Paulo Freire (1995) and Robert Chambers (1997; 2006), it seeks to use music as a medium of self-empowerment, and to encourage dialogue between communities and development agencies in the attempt to realise more integrative and culturally apposite approaches towards livelihood development and environmental sustainability.6 This article presents an overview of my research in four sections: the first focuses on a description of the jews harp (is’tweletwele) and two mouthbows (umqangala and isizenze) in western Maputaland. Once performed by young women to accompany walking, these instruments are now remembered by elderly women only. The second section explores the revival of these instruments as a participatory methodology, linking sonic, kinetic and spatial memories to memories about self in place and time. In the third section I examine the jews harp and mouthbow repertoire as historical text, tracking changes in lyrical content to broader socio-economic and spatial changes in the region. I conclude by reflecting on ways in which the act of remembering through sound and performance has produced insights and activities that may have more widespread development potential for the region.
Nguni women’s mouthbows: umqangala and isizenze
As mouth-resonated sounds are relatively faint, they have been generally overlooked by writers in the past, but, heard in the kraal in the stillness of early evening, they ring out unmistakably, and, combined with the fundamental sounds, produce an effect which has a unique character and beauty all of its own. (Kirby 1968 [1934]:225)
In his comprehensive study of musical instruments in southern Africa in the 1930s, Kirby notes that the ‘simple’ mouthbow was widely played throughout the southern African
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 region. At the time the umqangala (referred to also as umqengele amongst certain isiZulu speakers) was played by Swazi, Zulu and Shangana/Tsonga people,7 thus suggesting that the instrument had been widely practised in the area of my research for some time.8 The umqangala is constructed from a length of a river reed (umhlanga) and a single string (usinga) once made from sinew, hair or a fibrous plant (Kirby 1968 [1934]:220) but replaced now with a light-gauge nylon fishing line. A reed is more pliable than wood, and allows one to pull the string in as tight as required, producing a slight arch and preventing the string from vibrating against the stave. Further, the hollow centre of the reed produces a resonance which helps to amplify the harmonics. The instrument is generally constructed by the performer herself, the reed length being measured against the length of her arm. Should
6 This research is also informed by the Unesco Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Links Project whose mission is ‘[to build] dialogue amongst local knowledge holders, natural and social scientists, resource managers and decision-makers to enhance biodiversity conservation and secure an active and equitable role for local communities in resource governance.’ For further details, see
the performer prefer a deeper sound, she may cut the stave slightly longer. The string is attached to the tips of the reed stave by means of a slip-knot, producing a taut thread that is plucked with a reed plectrum. The end of one side of the stave is positioned into the corner of the mouth between the upper and lower lips without touching the teeth. The other end is held by the index finger of the left hand, while the thumb is used to stop the string. The string is plucked very close to the mouth with the right hand (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Mrs Minah Mkize plays umqangala mouthbow9 Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010
The isizenze is a more complex mouthbow, historically associated with the Tembe- Thonga in the coastal region of north-eastern Maputaland and southern Mozambique. This instrument is less well documented by Kirby, who refers to versions of it amongst the ‘Transvaal Thonga’ (Shangane/Tsonga) as isizambi; the Venda as tshizambi; the Chopi, Tswa and Ndau in Mozambique as chivelani; and the !Kung San in Botswana as nxonxoro (Kirby 1968 [1934]:235).
9 All photographs were taken by photographer and field assistant, Mduduzi Mcambi
Made from the pliable wood of the usiphane tree (Grewia occidentalis), the isizenze consists of a solid wooden stave, thinned and bent up sharply at both ends. A single flat ‘string’, made from a strip of ilala palm leaf (Hyphaene coriacea), is attached to each end. A series of small corrugations are incised into the outer centre of the stave; the performer will rasp these corrugations with a small wooden stick causing the instrument to vibrate powerfully.10 Unlike the umqangala, whose harmonics are amplified by placing the tip of the stave into the mouth, the isizenze player will place the palm leaf between her lips, positioning her mouth near the stave end, but not on it. She holds the bent stave more or less in the crook of her left arm, using the thumb and the third finger to stop the string (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Mrs Nyanyisile Gumede plays isizenze mouthbow Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010
10 Kirby suggests that a rattle stick was used by the Shangana/Tsonga to create additional percussive effect when rasping (1968 [1934]:236). I found no evidence of this in Maputaland, however. 62 ANGELA IMPEY
Interestingly, Kirby’s documentation of the ‘complex mouthbow’ in other parts of southern Africa suggests that these instruments were performed by adolescent males. In my research, however, both umqangala and isizenze mouthbows are unambiguously associated with women. They were used as walking instruments, performed to accompany love songs or songs that commented on the behaviour of friends, neighbours and family members. While generally practised as solo instruments, they were occasionally played in responsorial format, the bow melody providing a short solo phrase, while fellow female travellers sang the chorus.
The jews harp in southern Africa
The jews harp is a small, mouth-resonated instrument that appears in various shapes and sizes throughout the world. Constructed from bamboo or metal, it is generally a lyre-shaped instrument with a central lamella that is struck to produce vibration. Often mistaken for a toy, it is an instrument with rich melodic and rhythmic potential, capable of elaborate punctuation as well as subtle variation.11 Almost no research has been undertaken to date on the jews harp in southern Africa. Known most commonly as isitolotolo, and in the area of my research as is’tweletwele, it is assumed that the instrument was readily adopted by young Nguni women as its construction and performance practice were similar to those of existing mouthbows. Like them, the jews harp exploits the physical properties of the mouth both to produce a melodic phrase and to resonate and amplify a wide range of harmonics. Jews harps were similarly used by young women as walking instruments, much of the performance repertoire becoming
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 interchangeable with that of mouthbows. Examples 1 and 2 illustrate two basic motifs that are played on the jews harp (is’tweletwele). The melody line represents the harmonics that are isolated from the fundamental note by the careful manipulation of the mouth cavity. The notes indicated below the melody line represent the fundamental note which operates as a drone throughout. These songs are cyclical, and once the basic phrase is established, the performer will begin to explore more elaborate possibilities with harmonics, thus establishing a complex polyphonic relationship between the fundamental melody and its overtones. The D given in the bass clef is not the fundamental, but the first sounding harmonic of the D fundamental.
11 The etymology of the term ‘jews harp’ has been widely debated. It is agreed, however, that the term does not refer to Jewish people, nor to any known musical practices associated with Jewish culture. Rather, it is likely to be a misnomer of the Old English term ‘gewgaw’, a later term, ‘jewes trump’ or the French word ‘jouer’ (to play). For details on the history of the term, see
Example 1: uNomadlozi unjenjengamalakhe (Nomadlozi is my name)
Example 2: Ndabazophela emalowini (All stories end in the home)
There is evidence to suggest that the jews harp has been played in the region for a number of centuries. Jews harp historian, Frederick Crane, suggests that the earliest mention of the jews harp or ‘trumps’ in southern Africa may be found in the travel diaries of Monsieur Francois LeVaillant, a hunter and amateur zoologist, who was based in the Cape of Good Hope in the 1780s (Crane 1994): Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 I had a little box brought to me, which I placed on my knees. I opened it; never did any charlatan put as much adroitness and mystery into his act. I pulled out of the box that noble and melodious instrument, perhaps unknown in Paris, but rather common in several provinces, where one sees it in the hands of almost all schoolboys and of the people – in brief, a trump.
When I had had enough of my leisurely pleasure, I seized the nearest of my men, and equipped him with my marvelous lute. I took much care in teaching him the manner of its use; when he had reached a reasonable degree of skill, I sent him back to his place. I strongly suspected that the others would not be happy until each also had one of his own. So I passed out as many trumps as I had Hottentots in my company, and, joining together, some of them playing well, others badly, and others still worse, they regaled me with a music fit to terrify the furies. (Translated in Crane 1994:38–39)
By the mid- to late 1800s the jews harp had been thoroughly adopted by young Nguni women in the KwaZulu-Natal region. A vital clue to this is contained in a photograph lodged at the Marianne Hill Monastery Archives in Durban, South Africa.12 This image,
12 Other photographs from this collection may be located in the Killie Campbell Africana Library, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. 64 ANGELA IMPEY
dated 1900-1908, includes two Zulu women, one of whom is wearing a jews harp on a string around her neck. The other is holding an umqangala mouthbow. According to the ‘Catalog of the F. Crane Trump Collection: Part 1’, the jews harp, clearly distinguished by four up-turned metal arms welded onto the outer frame, is identified as an English ‘Baroque’ model (No. 129), first manufactured in the early 1800s by the Troman family in the West Midlands.13 The export of jews harps from England to Africa preceded this photograph by some 200 years, however. With the global expansion of English trade at the end of the 16th century, these instruments were amongst a variety of objects that were used as barter goods, as is illustrated in The life and achievements of Sir John Popham (1531–1607):
[…] yet if they would bring him hatchets, knives, and lewes harps, he bid then assure me, he had a Mine of gold, and could refine it, & would trade with me: for token whereof, he sent me 3. or 4. Croissants or halfe moones of gold weighing a noble a piece or more, and two bracelets of silver. (Rice 2005:110)14
Jews harps were likely to have been made available locally by way of a number of routes. Firstly, weekly advertisements published in the Zululand Times from 1907 reveal that commercial music stores such as Jackson Bros., Durban, traded ‘musical instruments of every description’. While jews harps may not have been specifically mentioned in their copy, these advertisements provide evidence of a vigorous trade of musical instruments from England, Europe and America to South Africa at that time. Secondly, trading stores became important distributors of Western instruments in more remote rural localities. Jews harps were purchased from salesmen who travelled throughout
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 southern Africa on behalf of wholesale companies in Durban, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth. Here, they were often mounted on display boards and positioned next to the cash till where they were traded as cheap trinkets or ‘impulse buys’. According to the women with whom I worked, the main suppliers of jews harps in western Maputaland were the trading stores in Swaziland and the town of Ndumo:
We grew up with our mothers playing is’tweletwele [jews harps]. These songs were there before we were born. Then we were able to buy them. They were only a tickey or half a cent, and bread was also a half cent. And sugar. We bought them at KwaMatata [store] in Swaziland and Ndumo. (Nkomonde 2003)
Finally, ‘concession stores’ on the gold mines on the Witwatersrand played an important role in the introduction and dissemination of jews harps throughout the sub-region.
13 Jews harp historian, Michael Wright, has located the same instrument in the catalogues of Rudolph Wurlitzer, Cincinnati and Chicago, dated 1913-1930: Here it has been noted as ‘No. 3078: 2¾ inch iron fancy lyra model, lacquered, with tempered tuning plate, shipping weight, 3 oz. Price $0.10. - 1913 (cost in 1920 - $0.15.; 1922 - $0.25; 1930 - $0.20). (Wright & Impey 2007:2) 14 The quote is taken from a document sent by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to Captain Popham while on a voyage of discovery of Trinidad and Guiana. See also Wright and Impey (2007). SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 65
Run mostly by Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, these general dealerships-cum-eating houses catered mainly to migrant labourers, amongst whom were men from Swaziland, Mozambique and Maputaland (cf. Sherman 1987, 2000). Men purchased for themselves guitars, concertinas, harmonicas and gramophones; for their girlfriends and daughters, they bought jews harps which they presented as gifts when they returned home on annual leave (cf. Sherman 1987, 2000). It appears that the importation of jews harps into southern Africa was dramatically reduced in the early 1970s. This may be attributed to a decrease in demand for the instrument as a result of the popularisation of radios and cassette players, as well as to an increase in the price of the instrument brought about by the alleged use of superior metals and finishes at that time. What remains clear is that both the jews harp and mouthbows stopped being performed in the western Maputaland borderlands around this time; a period marked also by the final wave of forced removals of communities from the Ndumo Game Reserve, by increased participation by men in the migrant labour system, and by intensified militarisation of the national borders because of civil war in Mozambique.
Figure 4: Women in Usuthu Gorge play is’tweletwele (jews harp) Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 66 ANGELA IMPEY
Reading the jews harp and mouthbows as social and spatial practice
Western Maputaland has had a complex history of ethnic, social and political fissure and fusion (Felgate 1982; Harries 1983; Webster 1991; Kloppers 2001). As a borderland region, it is typically characterised as not quite Mozambique, South Africa or Swaziland, but a place in-between. Historically, this ‘in-betweenness’ has facilitated the development of widespread kinship, ethnic and political allegiances, negotiated largely to support an economic system based on shifting agriculture. Despite this, oral testimonies collected from local residents suggest that social memory has been distilled into a singular narrative of dispossession and humiliation, the complexities of the distant past having been obscured by the trauma of forced removals and the systematic partitioning of the area by fences, laws and a public culture of racial exclusion. In the following section I focus on the re-introduction of the jews harp and mouthbow as an activating modality to recover narratives about self and community in place and time. I argue that sound and music-making operate as mnemonic systems that evoke times, places and events that have the potential to elaborate, bypass, or even contradict collective memory. Furthermore, I suggest that the creative revitalisation of musical practices after a period of hiatus has the potential to transact memories in a more dramatic way than would memories evoked from a continuous performance tradition. Drawing on Climo and Cattell, who suggest that ‘[…] social memory as song achieves meaning through a process of enactment and becoming real in the bodies of individuals’ (2000:20), I have extended the notion of ‘enacting’ memory to one of ‘transacting’ memory, using an economic model of exchange in the process of bringing ethnomusicology into the world of advocacy
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 and development. The material recovery of historical experiences, as documented and reperformed in sound, body and place, makes new forms of transaction possible, and sets them in motion by reviving memories and affects, by cultivating an empowered sense of place, and by providing evidence in the form of songs and their associated narratives. The conceptual connection between sound, memory and spatiality was, in fact, made for me when I first met Fambile Khumalo in Ez’phosheni, Maputaland, at the commencement of my research, as is demonstrated in the following excerpt from my field recordings:
‘Put it on your teeth but not between them,’ Fambile instructed me when we first met and I asked her how to play is’tweletwele (jews harp). ‘Hold your tongue far back in your mouth. First you need to have a song in your head. What is your song? You start singing from your heart and then you sing quietly with your fingers.’ She listened for some time and said, ‘Right, you are beginning to get it! Now, what can you remember?’15
Fambile’s question came as a surprise as it pre-empted any attempt, on my part, to discuss associations with the instrument and its sounds. By asking me what experiences I associated
15 The perceived interconnection between language, song and mouthbow melody is such that I refer hereafter to mouthbow ‘songs’. SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 67
with is’tweletwele, she had taken for granted that sounds carry ‘referential functions’; that they index experiences, feelings and places associated with musical performance. Her assumptions resonate with Ingold’s notion of ‘dwelling’ in which he suggests that sounds, like other sensual landmarks such as smell and sight, are spatially and temporally meaningful; through the act of doing they ‘gather to form a sense of place’ (Ingold 1994:338).16 Extending the analysis of spatiality as social practice to a place-based ethnomusicology, Solomon suggests that ‘musical performance is a practice for embodying community identity, inscribing it on earthly landscapes as well as in the landscapes of the mind’ (Solomon 2000:258). Over the following two years I worked with 20 women ranging in age from 45 to 80 years. We explored a variety of participatory methodologies, including collective experimentation with sounds and performance techniques; recounting – individually and in groups – lives and stories associated with songs, and, most importantly, performing while walking.17 ‘Soundwalks’ generated a particularly rich body of information, as the women would stop en route to point out a tree whose bark they would use to cure stomach pains; a bird that they would follow in order to locate honey; or a pathway that led to the graves of their ancestors. They read the land with a corporeal knowledge, each cue prompting songs relevant to it, and the songs, in turn, elaborating their stories.18 As walking instruments, mouthbows provide a particular range of experiences that are pertinent for the recovery of social and spatial information. Firstly, sounds emitted from mouthbows are predicated upon kinetic memories of the diaphragm, the throat, the mouth cavity and the epiglottis. In this regard, they are experienced as ‘of the body’, the mouth used as a resonating chamber from which melody and overtones are produced and amplified. However, as walking instruments, mouthbows are made meaningful in open
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 spaces, played into or against the wind, and shaped by their acoustic potential. A second factor linking sound to place is elaborated in language. Mouthbow melodies are essentially derived from language; shaped by the tonal inflections or contours of a spoken phrase. In addition, some performers will purposefully select words that contain clicks in order to emphasise particular rhythmic or textural qualities in their song. As borderland people who straddle three languages – i.e. Zulu, Swazi and Tembe- Thonga – performers would use different languages to connote different activities and their appointments in the landscape. Although further analysis of this issue would require
16 Rodaway (1994) uses the term ‘phenomenological topography’ to refer to ‘being in the world’. This concept, which may be otherwise described by terms such as ‘situatedness’, ‘spatiality’, ‘being in place’ and ‘belonging’, combines the experiential with the physical/spatial, thus reflecting a geographical understanding of experience. See also Revill (2000), who likewise analyses ways in which musical meanings are intimately and inextricably bound into the spatial formations, practices and processes by which music is performed. 17 Not all of these paths are accessible to the women today. We did, however, obtain permission from park authorities to return to certain areas in the game reserve that had been inaccessible to them for more than 30 years. 18 The act of listening and responding while walking (i.e. ‘soundwalking’) has been embraced as a methodology by ethnomusicologist, Steven Feld, by acoustic ecologists such as Peter Cusack (2004), and by sound artists such as Hildegard Westercamp (2001 [1974]). 68 ANGELA IMPEY
in-depth linguistic research, the following language-use pattern began to emerge in my research. Ceremonial songs, such as wedding songs, would be performed in Zulu, reflecting the inclination among Zulu men in the area to marry women from other regions in order to maintain geographically widespread kinship networks.19 Songs associated with walking west to the trading stores in Swaziland, and thus relating to travel and commerce would be sung in Swazi. Finally, songs referring to the domestic sphere, and to the activities of women or children in particular, were sung in Tembe-Thonga, connecting women north- east to their familial homes in Mozambique.20 The interaction between sound and the environment in jews harp and mouthbow songs is significant both in relation to sound production and to overall communicative intent. Although most mouthbow songs generally refer to relationships and moral issues, women also linked them sonically and iconographically to the environment, and to frogs in particular:
The song I have been playing is a song of frogs. We copy their sounds. As you play this thing you can’t explain what it means, but you will recognise that it is the sound of frogs. The frogs are happy when it is raining. That’s when they start calling. (Gumede 2003)
This connection is recognised by similarities in the way that frogs manipulate the mouth and throat to create sound, in the equivalent sound envelopes created through attack and decay, as well as in behavioural equivalence, that is, in the way that frogs use sound to attract a mate or assert their presence:
We would play when we walked to the river with a clay pot on our heads. If a boy wanted to
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 proposition a girl at the river, he would wait for her there. We would play and dance and our amahiya [cloth] would swing open. In this way a girl would become attractive. A boy would be very excited to hear a good player. (Khumalo 2004)
In their references to frogs, women’s mapping of place through sound becomes iconically linked to both locality (river) and to the social practices related to that locality (courting). This recalls Roseman’s descriptions of the way that the Temiar of the Malaysian rainforests inscribe in their songs crucial forms of knowledge of the landscape in a manner that serves to ‘map and mediate their relationships with the land and each other’ (Roseman 1998:111). Such references to zoomorphic iconicity also recalls research conducted by Steven Feld in the Papua New Guinea rainforests, in which he similarly explores the way sound and
19 This is particularly well illustrated in the song, Induku enhle igawulwa ezizweni (A good stick is found far away). Here, the ‘stick’ is a metaphor for a woman/wife, and refers specifically to firewood, which is customarily collected by women and represents the hearth of the home. 20 An example would be the song Kukhona okunyakaza esinyeni ingani (Something is moving in the womb; it is a child). For further information regarding gender, ethnicity and language in Maputaland, see Webster (1991). SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 69
‘sounding’ by the Kaluli links the environment and musical experience and expression. Important in this association is that Kaluli spirit cosmologies are rooted in a range of natural features (especially birds) and their manifestation in sound is enhanced by the acoustic potential of the rainforest to echo and reverberate; to construct particular kinds of presences, and thus to invoke certain kinds of emotive responses. The relationship of mouthbows to environmental space in western Maputaland is less acoustically intense or enclosed than may be Feld’s descriptions of Kaluli poetic songs and funerary rituals; their soundings not reliant on dense forest canopy and echo, but on projection and flow produced by wind across open savannah plains. The social function of jews harp and mouthbow songs was to make public women’s commentaries in such a way that they could be transported and enunciated through space. Songs were used to flirt, to announce social encounters, to question moral behaviour, to greet and to remember. Songs were created, shared, exchanged and reshaped. However, as jews harps and mouthbows are relatively quiet, and the spaces in which they are performed vast, messages were broadcast not through dramatic effect, but more as evocation or inference; a subtle positioning or ‘voicing’ of oneself in social and environmental place.
Analysing the jews harp and mouthbow repertoire as historical text
Although it is difficult to date jews harp and mouthbow songs, the repertoire deals with a range of experiences that reflect particular historical moments in the western Maputaland borderlands, and falls loosely into four socio-spatial phases: 1) songs of emplacement;
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 2) songs of longing and dislocation; 3) songs of enclosure and restriction; 4) loss of songs altogether.
The first phase constitutes simple greeting songs, proverbs or moral commentary. These songs are remembered as having been played when walking to the river to collect water; across the flood plains to visit relatives in Mozambique, or over the Lebombo Mountains to the trading stores in Swaziland to buy cloth and sugar. They are considered to be old, inherited from mothers and sisters; songs described as ‘those that were there before’. As they pre-date the women with whom I worked, they reflect social conditions in western Maputaland prior to the 1950s; a period characterised by spatial mobility and a sense of ‘being in place’. The following four examples represent the short ostinato phrases that comprised the main body of a song. Once established, a performer would improvise around the phrase, or, if walking in the company of others, would present the phrase as a solo part to which her friends would respond with an appropriate chorus: 70 ANGELA IMPEY
Sawubona Mayoyo sawubona Hello Mayoyo hello Deda endleleni, Nkolombela Move off the pathway, Nkolombela Ngubane lowo owagana esimncane? Who is that person who married so young? Izindaba zophela emalawini All stories end in the home
These songs comment on social encounters, on love and marriage, and on social discord that necessarily finds resolution within the family. Their focus is family or community: a named greeting being an acknowledgment of a known individual; a proverb drawing on mutually understood references and cultural form; a moral assertion referring to mores and customs that shape social relations and cultural practices. Most notable in many of the songs of this phase is the extent to which land and nature are made meaningful through their associations with people. In them land, nature and kinship are often mutually implicated, and it is through this insinuation that notions of physical space and culturally constructed place emerge. The following example is both performed on is’tweletwele and also occasionally sung to the accompaniment of the umakhweyana gourd-bow:21
Aayi imbombosha Hey, little cattle egret Wemaganazonke You who marries Wemalanda nkomo You who fetches cows Wemalanda nkomo You who fetches cows
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 In it, the cattle egret is used as a metaphor for a young woman. If successful in marriage, she will bring cows to the home of her father as marriage dowry (lobola). The sooner she is able to accomplish this, the sooner her duty to her family will be complete, a feat imagined herein as the early setting of the sun. While jews harp and mouthbow songs were one way of fixing relationships and of rooting them in a material historicity, as walking songs, they were also a way of transporting knowledge. One of the most prevalent memories evoked by this category of song is of the now extinct event known as isigcawu. Isigcawu was an important night-time event that attracted young people from all over the region, who would congregate to sing, dance, exchange gifts and ultimately seek a marriage partner. Isigcawu was significant, therefore, in the role it played in facilitating the development of new kinship networks through marriage, and by extension, in linking women to new spatial associations:
Isigcawu was so important to us in those days. When we walked to esigcawini22 we would walk playing our instruments. When we got there, the boys would dance on one side and the girls
21 The umkhaweyana gourd-bow is more readily associated with Swazi women in western Maputaland and, although rare, is more widely practised today than are the is’tweletwele and mouthbows. 22 Esigcawini: to the place of isigcawu SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 71
would be on the other. When we were tired of dancing, we would come together and make a fire and we would cook birds and eat honey. When the aloes were in flower, the boys would catch many birds.23 There were no schools then, so isigcawu was a place where we learned things. It was our backbone (umgogodlo wetu); everything started from there. We learned about our culture, is’tweletwele and songs. We would choose a big tree or a place near the homesteads. People would come from Mbondweni and Ez’phosheni. They would walk on the pathways through the bush when the moon was full. Many of us met our husbands at esigcawini. (Gumede 2004)
The concept of ‘pathways’ with reference to isigcawu is revealing: referred to as izindlela yesiZulu (‘Zulu pathways’), the term lays claim to an internally defined spatial organisation. Paths begin in one place and lead towards other places, hereby signifying social connectedness and intentionality.24 Pathways were the main context associated with the performance of jews harps and mouthbows, and where themes and motivations were woven across and into each other in the landscape. As with Aboriginal songlines, izindlela yesiZulu become graphic representations depicting different spatial distributions of locales transacted and elaborated in song.25 The pathway is also used metaphorically in many of the songs, such as in Deda endleleni Nkolombela (Move away from the pathway, Nkolombela). In it, the bow-player asks the young man, Nkolombela, to move off the path to allow her to collect water from the river. Since the pathway to the river is also the traditional site where a man would wait to proposition a woman, by asking him to move away, the singer is symbolically refusing the advances of the man. For the women of western Maputaland, pathways are conceptually differentiated from
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 roads, which are referred to as umgwaqo or ‘i-Teba’, named after the mine recruitment agency that constructed the roads in the 1930s to provide access into the area by bus.26 Roads became a symbol of modernisation, of spatial demarcation imposed from the outside. They, like state barriers and the fences of the game reserve, cut through families and fields, bringing new ‘flows of influence’ (Bunn & Auslander 1998) and generating new expressive responses. Roads led the men away to the mines and forced women to take on greater responsibility for their families in their capacity as farmers. Roads brought churches and schools. Accordingly, songs become absorbed in a sense of longing and dislocation, framed herein as a second phase in the history of jews harp and mouthbow practice. Migrancy directly affected the women with whom I worked and most songs that we collected in this category were composed by the women themselves during the 1950s
23 Aloe marlothii is prevalent in the area and the sticky sap from its flowers is used by young boys to trap small birds. 24 Werlen (1993) and Ingold (1994) both argue that spatial arrangements are the consequence of human action and processes rather than the cause. See also Lee (2004). 25 For a detailed explanation of Aboriginal ‘songlines’ see Morphy (1995) and Morphy & Flint (2000). 26 TEBA (The Employment Bureau of Africa) was the official recruitment agency established by the South African Chamber of Mines in the 1920s to secure migrant labour from various localities in southern Africa. 72 ANGELA IMPEY
and early 1960s. These songs constitute a fairly large component of the overall repertoire, shaped by short, repetitive phrases, and represented as laments or meditations rather than songs used to provide rhythmic impetus for long-distance walking.
O-Diya Diya Wami Oh my dear, my dear Woza lapha dali-wami Come to me, my darling Ayibosala bekhala ubaba nomama They will be left crying, mother and father Yabaleka indoda The man has left Kubuhlungu inhliziyo My heart is painful Kulomuzi kaBaba noMama In the house of my father and mother Kukhanyis’ubani lomlilo ovutha entabeni? Who is burning a fire on the mountain? Kukhanyis’ubani? Who is burning?
The third category of songs, which emerged in the late 1960s to early 1970s, reflects social and spatial rupture more dramatically brought about by the final wave of forced removals of the Banzi families from the Ndumo Game Reserve and the increased participation of men in the migrant labour system. Oral accounts of this period focus particularly on the image of the fence, for instance, which in western Maputaland became an icon of white intervention, of restriction and patrol.27 Containment enforced through fencing affected women in particular who were thus denied access to the Usuthu River – their main water Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 source – and which restricted the spatial spread necessary for shifting agriculture. Pressure on women to support their families on ever-decreasing portions of land forced them into new forms of cash labour such as clearing roads for the Provincial Roads Department or selling sugar cane, and many of them embarked on the illegal brewing and selling of alcohol. Songs that emanate from the third phase thus depict women as fugitives from place, encircled by new laws, regulations and the fear of imprisonment:
From Ndlaleni’s house we walked all the way to Makanyisa, playing is’tweletwele. That’s what we were doing when we were going to eat sugar [at the trading store in Ndumo]. We were singing ‘Nalivani’ because the police were giving us problems. They wanted us to pay for dompas. (Mkhize 2003)28
27 For further discussion on the image of fences in black South African oral narrative, see Hofmeyr (1993). 28 ‘Dompas’ refers to the identity book (or pass book), which all black South Africans were obliged to carry during the apartheid era. Being caught without it was a criminal offence. SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 73
The following songs are typical of the third phase. They are more elaborated than the songs of the previous phases, often performed collectively and sung as an act of defiance or protest:
Nalivani Bakithi nalivani There is the van, my people, there is the van* Nalivani Bafana nalivani Run away boys, there is the van Balekani Bafana nalivani There is the van, boys, there is the van Lizonibopha! They will arrest you!
Dela baba ngoba imali You are happy father because the money Bayifaka ebhokisini They put it in the box Jabula (mapoyisa) ngoba imali Happy (police) because the money Bayifaka ebhokisini They put it in the box
Balekani nonke Run away everyone Kukhona okuzayo Something is coming Gijimani nonke Run away Kukhona ukuzayo Something is coming**
Baleka mfana lashona ilanga Run boy, the sun is setting Gijima mfana Run boy Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 Awekho amanzi There is no water Awekho amanzi asemfuleni There is no water, it is in the river
* The ‘van’ refers to the police patrol vehicle. ** ‘Something’ refers to a man nicknamed Umthanathana (‘the one who talks contemptuously’) who oversaw the eviction of the families from the game reserve.
The fourth phase of jews harp and mouthbow practice is traced to the early 1970s, after which the instruments lost their social role and spatial context, and ceased being played.
Reflections on ethnomusicological research as advocacy
It is my contention that sound and the affect of music-making represent a much under- utilised research resource, particularly in contexts of social and spatial rupture. Furthermore, I propose that the sonic qualities of physical spaces and the affective aspects of sound and music-making influence how experiences are remembered at particular historical and geographical junctures. While jews harp and mouthbow songs may not comment on land, locality and displacement, song and text together provide a highly-situated body of evidence about experiences in relation to senses of emplacement and patterns of 74 ANGELA IMPEY
displacement. Reading song as oral testimony in western Maputaland draws attention to the varied nature of people’s experiences by invoking everyday actions and exchanges, and by describing the changing nature of relationships between people and their world. These inflections challenge the singular representation of self, community and history that has emerged in this region, and produce new understandings that may have relevance to emerging land-use policies implemented under the TFCA programme. One of the more important insights drawn from the thematic changes in the jews harp and mouthbow songs, for instance, suggests that the negative impact on women by the reconfiguration of the western Maputaland borderlands through conservation expansion has been experienced only partially through the loss of land and natural resources. Perhaps as significant has been the effect on them of spatial rupture; of the obstruction of movement that for centuries has facilitated migratory survival strategies, that have produced and sustained kinship networks; and that have facilitated an ‘in-between’ borderland sociality. With roads, fences and other forms of government intervention, so opportunities produced by the ‘in-betweenness’ of the borderlands have became harder to negotiate, producing greater dependence on the centre (in this case, the South African state) from which they have, ironically, become progressively remote.29 Such a socio-economic understanding of spatial rupture may be particularly significant to the TFCA programme whose proposal to open up conservation corridors for the re- establishment of traditional migratory routes of wildlife (elephants in particular) includes a complicated plan to erect more fences around villages and agricultural areas for the protection of people, thus potentially further impeding their mobility. A further consideration is that while men have sought wage labour elsewhere,
Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 their income has been unpredictable and has generally not relieved women of their responsibilities as primary producers of the household. Women remain depended upon to sustain the family by cultivating smaller fields as well as in engaging in other forms of wage labour, yet they are provided with fewer of the security systems that had historically been in place to manage the challenges of survival. It is in this context that is’tweletwele and the other mouthbow practices lost their social moorings. While women continue to participate in other forms of music-making, the loss of mouthbows and the jews harp suggests that women lost a unique means by which they situated themselves in their social and environmental localities. Singing and playing these instruments had been an act of affirmation and an expression of entitlement. That these walking songs had become dormant could therefore be interpreted as testimony to a progressively corroded sense of emplacement by women; a symbolic consequence of a more generalised loss of voice. Analysis of jews harp and mouthbow practices calls attention to the increasing
29 This dependence has been exacerbated by the decline of the mining industry, which has affected household income based on labour migrancy. This is corroborated by a study undertaken by Kloppers (2001), which suggests that 85% of people in the Maputaland region are dependent upon government pension, child and HIV/AIDS grants. SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 75
vulnerability of women over time, and highlights the importance of gender in the analysis of land, identity and social rupture. Given the close association between gendered experience, musical expression, ecology, and the historical and social dynamics of place and displacement, insights drawn from song and performance, such as that of the mouthbow and is’tweletwele tradition, may contribute towards more culturally apposite processes of redress in western Maputaland. Already the act of remembering has stimulated practical action by the women bow players in Maputaland. Attention drawn to the women and their musical heritage through this research has been an empowering experience and has generated a greater sense of community between them. One consequence of this has been the establishment of a performance group called Omama Bazetweletwele (Mothers of the Jews Harps) which has stimulated the revival of long-forgotten dances associated with the isicgawu gatherings, and with old beading practices, considered necessary for their performance attire.
Figure 5: Omama Bazetweletwele (Mothers of the Jews Harps) Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010
Performing at weddings, funerals, pension-day gatherings and school concerts has encouraged the group both to reclaim their old repertoire and to compose new songs, re-establishing herein their role as custodians of collective memory and commentators of contemporary social issues. Among their new compositions, for instance, are songs that deal with HIV/AIDS and others that celebrate ethnic diversity within the region: 76 ANGELA IMPEY
Safa ngenculazi sekutheni? Why are we dying of AIDS? Siyafa, siyaphela We are dying; we are finished* Yithi amaZulu, sesenza okwakithi We are Zulus, we do our Zulu things kwaZulu Yithi eSwazini, sesenza okwakithi We are Swazis, we do our Swazi things seSwazini Yithi KaNgwane, sensenza okwakithi We are KaNgwane, we do our KaNgwane KaNgwane things** Yithi amaZulu, sesenza okwakithi We are Zulus, we do our Zulu things kwaZulu
* Group composition, Omama Bazetweletwele, Ez’phosheni/Maputaland (2003). ** King Ngwane III was the name of the first Dlamini to rule Swaziland and KaNgwane was the name he gave to his country. This song was composed by MaGumede, Ez’phosheni/Maputaland (2003).
Significantly, these performances have begun to present new income-generating opportunities for the women of Omama Bazetweletwele.
Conclusion
In this article I have focused on music as an emplacing medium, exploring ways in which past cultural topographies invoked through memories of sound and performance may provide insight into contemporary ‘predicaments of place’ (Feld & Basso 1996). Music is framed herein as both historical text and a form of agency, providing a focus for mobilising Downloaded At: 16:50 6 July 2010 collective evocations of self and place, and aimed at raising the level of the voices of a people whose livelihoods and sociality may be at variance with broader social and environmental processes. While the reconstruction of senses of place through sound, performance and memory may not produce measurable indicators and quantifiable results, as may be required by conventional development models and processes, they do contribute towards a deeper understanding of the meaning of places, and of the symbolic and relational conditions that support or drive economic practices and their outcomes. Examining the long-term social and cultural impacts of conservation expansion may be especially judicious in the light of the re-landscaping that is presently taking place under the TFCA process in southern Africa, whose gestures towards eco-regionalism are rendering local people increasingly invisible, and whose attempts to transcend boundaries through the creation of wildlife corridors and tourist super-destinations may be restricting local people – and women in particular – to ever-diminishing bounded spaces. SOUNDING PLACE IN THE WESTERN MAPUTALAND BORDERLANDS 77
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