bowed musical bow, umhrube

Bowed musical bow system used by the Thembu Xhosa people of South Africa’s Lumko District, described in Dargie (1986, 2007, and 2011) and Dlamini (2004). The instrument itself (umhrube in Xhosa) is an orally resonated musical bow made with a wooden stick about “55 cm long when taut”; the wire is “bowed with a scraped twig, reed or marigold stalk” (Dargie 1986:63). When stopped with the thumb of the left hand, the bowed string raises about two semitones in fundamental pitch. Overtone pitches are selectively emphasized by changing the shape of the oral cavity. Performers may also add a harmonic lines by whistling “through the aperture at the side of the bow, so that both whistling and overtones could be heard through the same aperture” (Dargie 2011:45).The language is tonal with H and L phonemic tones as well as a derived falling contour tone, phonemic downstep and downdrift (Claughton 1992:18-20). The surrogate system is a “sung” mode, reproducing the tone-melody associations of sung Xhosa music: “The bow performs the izicabo, which means that it is singing the texts of the song, faithfully following the speech tones and accents of the texts. But in fact the bow plays melody, and from the melody alone people know which text lines the bow is singing” (Dargie 2007:64).Xhosa tone-melody association is not entirely strict, but the main melodic pitches more or less encode surface tone, while metrical accent is associated with linguistic stress (Dargie 1986:186-7). These melodies, reproduced on the umhrube, can also be somewhat altered for aesthetics or technical limitations of the instruments (Dargie 2011:42).The umhrube is played by women, and learned by girls through “observation and imitation” (Dargie 2011:35). Content includes Thembu Xhosa traditional vocal music texts.

Dargie, D. (2007). Umakhweyane: A musical bow and its contribution to Zulu music. African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 8(1), 60–81.,Dargie, D. (2011). The Xhosa umrhubhe mouthbow: An extraordinary musical instrument. African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 9(1), 33–55.,Dargie, D. J. (1987). Techniques of Xhosa music: A study based on the music of the Lumko district.,Dlamini, S. (2009). The role of the umrhubhe bow as transmitter of cultural knowledge among the amaXhosa: An interview with Latozi “Madosini” Mpahleni. Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa. https://doi.org/10.2989/18121000409486694