influence:
It is likely that Kirby’s training at the Royal College, headed at the time by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, author of The Evolution of the Art of Music (1897), provided the intellectual context for his long-held evolutionary ideas as much as the early work of comparative musicology (2002:35, n.18).
In prefacing a posthumous article of Kirby’s for the South African Music Encyclopedia, John Blacking identifies key challenges that reading Kirby presents, at the same time as pointing to the value and validity of his work:
[Kirby’s] views on the evolution of music, musical stratification and the origins of scales from natural harmonics, and his contention that four-part music is not genuinely Black African, have been presented without comment, although there is evidence for different interpretations. Prof. Kirby’s conclusions have been based on many years’ fieldwork in all parts of Southern Africa where indigenous music was made, as well as an exhaustive study of all written and other records of musical practices made in the past (1986:266).
This pioneering text, produced in a short time span, has great historical value, and constitutes a kind of baseline for research into southern Africa’s musics. Riches abound in the text, which are not negated by dated theory and language. Not least among these are Kirby’s soliciting and elucidation of aspects of local music and performance terminology, techniques of music- and instrument-making, metaphor, and local music theory. Christine Lucia (2005:xlii) typifies the careful descriptive writing and analysis based in fieldwork and close observation in his article on the gora as ‘the better side of scientific positivism’.
Lastly, in the absence of a longer biographical note, I think it appropriate to note that those I have spoken to who knew Kirby concur that he was a caring person, a ‘character’, and a most engaging and effective lecturer; one of his students said with glee that even engineering students were drawn to attend his lectures! Among many instances of thoughtfulness in this correspondence, one is typical—a 1934 intervention to secure tax relief for Kwalakwala, a field consultant. Kirby had spoken to the magistrate in Bloemhof and followed up with a letter delivered by hand to the official to assist an ailing and impoverished man in his seventies. This Kirby, who contributed richly to the social and artistic life of Johannesburg and Cape Town, does not appear in this book, though his wit, charm and humanity sparkle in his memoirs and in odd corners of his writing.
MICHAEL NIXON
South African College of Music
University of Cape Town
1Unfortunately, a large part of his instrument collection in storage was lost to insect damage. The wax cylinder recordings, too, have become severely degraded, and only a few minutes of sound have been recovered from these.
2Amidst current work in this area an illuminating article is Carolyn Hamilton’s recent theorising of the James Stuart Archive, a colonial archive she has studied for several decades (2011).
3He draws, for example, on numerous accounts of Nama flute ensembles dating from 1661 up to his colleague Winifred Hoernlé’s field notes, artefacts and sound recordings from her research of approximately 20 years earlier.
4This publication’s title changed in 1941 to African Studies, the name it bears today.
References:
Blacking, John. 1986. ‘Indigenous musics of southern Africa’. In South African music encyclopedia, vol. 3. Edited by J. Malan. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Burchell, William John. 1822. Travels in the interior of southern Africa. London: Longman, Hirst, Rees, Orme and Brown.
Dubow, Saul. 1995. Scientific racism in modern South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Dubow, Saul. 1996. ‘Human origins, race typology and the other Raymond Dart’. In Africa today: a multidisciplinary snapshot of the continent in 1995. Edited by Peter F. Alexander, Ruth Hutchison and D. M. Schreuder. Canberra: Australian National University.
Hamilton, Carolyn. 2011. ‘Backstory, biography, and the life of the James Stuart Archive’. History in Africa, 38:319-341.
Kirby, Percival Robson. 1923. Some old-time chants of the Mpumuza chiefs. Bantu Studies, 2(1):23-24.
Kirby, Percival Robson. 1947. My museum of musical instruments. SAMAB: South African Museums Association Bulletin 4(1):7-13.
Lucia, Christine. 2005. The world of South African music. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. UK: Cambridge Scholars.
Olwage, Grant. 2002. Scriptions of the choral: The historiography of black South African choralism. SAMUS 22:29-45.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
THIS study of the Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa has been made possible by a generous grant received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, through the Research Grant Board of the Union of South Africa. Without such assistance it would have been impossible for me to cover so large a field, for in the course of my investigations I have had to travel many thousands of miles. I undertook no fewer than nine special expeditions to distant native areas, as well as many shorter excursions. On these expeditions I frequently lived in native kraals, and participated in the musical performances of the people, the only way, in my opinion, for a European observer to learn and understand the principles underlying native music.
In this book my chief aim has been to attempt to supply specific and detailed information, and to correlate to some extent the earlier and often rather vague generalizations on the subject which have appeared in the works of travellers. South Africa, by which I mean that portion of the Continent which lies south of latitude 22°, or, roughly, south of the River Limpopo, has been, from the point of view of the ethnologist, in a very fortunate position. For hundreds of years little was known of it except those portions near the coast, which from the fifteenth century were regularly visited and described by travellers from many lands. The interior, on the other hand, remained practically unknown until the nineteenth century, when the driving force of European colonization opened it up rapidly, revealing a strangely chaotic mixture of races whose past history is only now being brought to light. Further, those non-African peoples who from time to time have visited the east coast of Africa, and even penetrated far inland, have had singularly little influence upon the peoples dwelling south of the Limpopo, and such influence may, I think, be readily recognized. In other words, the native races which have inhabited large areas of South Africa for the last five centuries or so have retained much of their original culture, although they have naturally exchanged many ideas and adopted not a few. There remains, it would seem, in spite of inter-tribal wars and their inevitable consequences, much that is ancient and individual among the various native peoples of South Africa. The musical instruments used by them illustrate this well, and, from the point of view of the ethnologist, the study of them would appear to possess a double value, since they partake both of the material and the spiritual. I have therefore tried to trace, where possible, the history of the various types of musical instruments found in South Africa, using as a basis the wealth of historical material which the country is fortunate in possessing, together with the evidence of native tradition and ritual. I have also endeavoured to indicate, as precisely as I could, the geographical and tribal distribution of the instruments, and likewise to secure their nomenclature, from which much may be deduced. Finally I have, by personally studying most of the instruments under the guidance of native experts, attempted to reveal their true nature, as well as the materials from which they are made and the manner of making them.
In the course of my
