slit-log drum, tʃiɔ́ndɔ̀, kiɔ̂ndɔ́, tshiondo

Slit-log drum system of the Baluba people of the DR Congo, described in Verbeken (1920 and 1924) with many simplistic line-by-line transcriptions without linguistic tones, in Burssens (1936), and Van Avermaet (1945). Verbeken gathered data in Bena-Kanioka in Kasai-Occidental, Burssens’ data comes from the Katanga region, and Van Avermaet reported on the Luba-Samba people.According to Verbeken, the drum itself is a hollow tree trunk measuring between 0.5 and 2 meters in length and a width of less than 1 meter, with a L and a H side. The player may speak the corresponding words while playing. Phrasing is restricted to the “poésie traditionnelle de la tribu [traditional poetry of the tribe]” (339) and correspondences may be loosened in a phrase “afin de la rendre plus harmonieuse et plus compréhensible [so as to make it sound more harmonious and comprehensible]” (341). Content includes long-distance communication (particularly for and about the village chief), proverbs, official announcements, names (including special names for the village chief), hunting and wartime directives. Enphrasing appears to be heavily used, for example in specifying different species of animal with the same generic name. Tshiondo playing is passed down by a mentor who might be a “parent ou l’ami [parent or friend]” (339). Burssens notes that the language includes H, L, falling and rising tones, and among the Tshiluba or Luba-Kasai a M tone later analyzed to be downstepped H (NKongola and Maddieson 1974 in Maddieson and Gandour 1974:113). In the surrogate system, only the H and L tones are attested—contours and downstep are avoided or simplified. Burssens gives an example: má ìsɔ́ ‘eyes’, in the spoken language, is concatenated to mêsɔ́, but the surrogate omits the prefixal tone and only plays LH (475). Long vowels are assigned a longer pause between strikes (475). He describes the enphrasing system as composed of “phrases stereotypiques et, en partie, archaïques” (stereotypical phrases, some archaic) (475). Like the Bena-Kanioka variety, content includes long-distance communication, names, and proverbs and other subjects, and phrasing is formulaic and restricted. However, Burssens claims that “en principe, l’intonation de tous les mots luba puisse être rendue sur le tshiondo” (in principle, the tones of all Luba words may be rendered on the tshiondo), possibly by elicitation (477). Van Avermaet also reports a M tone, but from the point of view of this entry author none of the examples are inconsistent with downstep and downdrift. Van Avermaet also suggests a degree of flexibility in the encoding of tone. Content includes long-distance communication, including announcements of births, deaths, and festivals, as well wartime topics and proverbs/poetics.

Burssens, A. (1936). 24. LE LUBA, LANGUE Á INTONATION, ET LE TAMBOUR-SIGNAL. In Part 1 (pp. 474–477). De Gruyter Mouton. https://www.degruyter.com/view/book/9783110804416/10.1515/9783110804416.474.xml,​Van Avermaet, E. (1945). Les Tons en kiLuba Samba et le tambour-téléphone. Aequatoria, 8(1), 1–12. JSTOR.​,Verbeken, A. (1920). 15. LE TAMBOUR-TÉLÉPHONE CHEZ LES INDIGÉNES DE L’AFRIQUE CENTRALE. In Part 1 (pp. 336–365). De Gruyter Mouton. https://www.degruyter.com/view/book/9783110804416/10.1515/9783110804416.336.xml,NKongola, M., & Maddieson, I. (1973). Luba Tonology and the Development of Downstep. 4th African Linguistics Conference, New York. In Maddieson, I., & Gandour, J. (1974). An Annotated Bibliography on Tone. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 28 [Annotated Bibliography]. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED101587