Travels Of Richard And John Lander Travels in West Africa (Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons) by Mary H. Kingsley




















 -   I do not
believe there are any old words to them; I have tried hard to find
out about them - Page 162
Travels Of Richard And John Lander Travels in West Africa (Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons) by Mary H. Kingsley - Page 162 of 705 - First - Home

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I Do Not Believe There Are Any Old Words To Them; I Have Tried Hard To Find Out About Them, But I Believe The Tunes, Which Are Of A Limited Number And Quite Distinct From Each Other, Are Very Old.

The words are put in by the singer on the spur of the moment, and only restricted in this sense, that there would always be the domestic catalogue - whatever its component details might be - sung to the one fixed tune, the trade information sung to another, and so on.

A good singer, in these parts, means the man who can make up the best song - the most impressive, or the most amusing; I have elsewhere mentioned pretty much the same state of things among the Ga's and Krumen and Bubi, and in all cases the tunes are only voice tunes, not for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvellously developed series of drum tunes - the attempt to understand which has taken up much of my time, and led me into queer company - and the many tunes played on the 'mrimba and the orchid- root-stringed harp: they are, I believe, entirely distinct from the song tunes. And these peaceful tunes my men were now singing were, in their florid elaboration very different from the one they fought the rapids to, of - So Sir - So Sur - So Sir - So Sur - Ush! So Sir, etc.

On we go singing elaborately, thinking no evil of nature, when a current, a quiet devil of a thing, comes round from behind a point of the bank and catches the nose of our canoe; wringing it well, it sends us scuttling right across the river in spite of our ferocious swoops at the water, upsetting us among a lot of rocks with the water boiling over them; this lot of rocks being however of the table-top kind, and not those precious, close-set pinnacles rising up sheer out of profound depths, between which you are so likely to get your canoe wedged in and split.

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