Speech Surrogates

Drumming system of the Jabo/Grebo people of Liberia, primarily described in Herzog (1945). The instrument itself is a slit-log drum with a single long slit. Herzog analyzes Jabo to have four tonal registers with a number of both contrastive and derived contours, grammatical tone processes, and vowel concatenation/shortening. Tone is encoded, including grammatical tone, according to pitches struck on the lip of the drum. The slit-log has a semi-gradient pitch range: “the lips [of the slit] vary in thickness between themselves and in different places of the same lip, thus providing a number of points for producing various tones” (Herzog 1934:220). Variations in encoding some tones are possible, apparently dependent on “drummer’s convenience and on aesthetic factors” (226). Despite the wide pitch range, though, the four-tone linguistic system is reduced so that “tones 3 and 4 usually coincide” (226). Herzog suggests that this reduction may be preserved from a historical three-tone contrast characteristic of other Grebo languages. Dwyer (1981) attributes a different, three-tone analysis to Luckau (1975): “Since the publication of Herzog’s (1945) article, Luckau (1975) has reanalyzed the tonal system of the Jabo dialect of Grebo and has found it to have three tone levels rather than four as proposed by Herzog. Luckau then shows that the process of mapping linguistic tones into drum notes is a very straightforward process” (Dwyer (1981:442).According to Herzog, long vowels are “rendered with two beats or tones, or a long tone” (225). Diphthongs are typically encoded with a flam (termed “scraping” in Herzog). Vowels in hiatus tend to be simplified on the drum, so that “the beat for one may be omitted, or both beats may be shortened” (226) which possibly matches vowel concatenation in the spoken language (as described in Sapir 1931:32). Flams are also employed to encode certain consonant qualities. Simple onsets with prenasalization (“anacrusis”) or (perhaps) implosives (“emphatic or heavy consonants”) and complex onsets (which only occur with [l] in second position) are encoded with a flam or “by striking two tones at the same time” (227). This encoding varies based on phrasal position and tone. Herzog proposes a historical explanation of the flam technique based on various syllable-reducing processes; ornamentation and drummer’s discretion also account for some instances. Herzog also notes some iconic and symbolic elements, like “rubbing a drum-stick repeatedly back and forth along its lower lip” to indicate the anger of the army (229). Enphrasing is used extensively: “the bulk of the material … consists, then, of a large number of fixed formulas, variations, and additions to the fixed formulas” (Herzog 1945:557). For instance, a “proverb or an honorary title” may be substituted for the names of people and animals (555). Practice of the system is restricted to “a comparatively few specialists” due to the complexities of the system (569). Content includes long-distance communication, organization of assemblies, names/titles, and formal dialogues involving praises or boasts of “warriors or eminent men” (Herzog 1934:221).Smaller versions of this drum are used for dance music, mostly playing “strictly musical rhythms without word-meaning” but there may be elements of musicalized surrogate speech: “word-meaning has been read into some of these musical rhythms” (222). The lead drummer also incorporates “brief snatches” of surrogate speech including the piece’s title, praises or taunts of the present dancers, and signals regulating the progression of dance-movements (223).

Slit-Log Drum

Summary

Bibliography