The most common name for the exceptionally long metal trumpet found in West Africa (see Hausa music, fig. 1). It is used in the ceremonial music of certain traditional states in the east and south of the Republic of Niger, the central and northern zones of Nigeria, central Cameroon and parts of Chad and the Central African Republic. It is normally associated with Islam.
The earliest known reference to the instrument is by the 16th-century historian Mahmoud Kâti in an account of the conquest of Aïr (now in Niger) by the army of the Songhai emperor Askia Mohammed I. During the 15th and 16th-centuries the expansion of the Songhai empire (with its capital at Gao on the Niger) led to the spread of the instrument eastwards via the Hausa states and Borno to beyond Lake Chad and south-eastwards down the Niger valley via the former Nupe state to beyond the river’s confluence with the Benue. Its adoption by the Hausa states of the 17th and 18th centuries as part of the regalia of kingship established it as a royal instrument throughout the areas of their influence. After the jihad of Usuman Dan Fodiyo (early 19th century), Fulani emirs who had control of the Hausa kingdoms adopted not only the traditional Hausa administrative organization but also the associated regalia including the kakaki. It either replaced or was used in conjunction with long trumpets of wood or cane, such as those seen in the 1820s by the explorers Denham and Clapperton at the courts of Kukawa, Mandara and Logone.
The status of the instrument was reinforced in the following period and its use spread in neighbouring areas, including those which in many respects remained hostile to the growing cultural and political influence of the Hausa emirates. The exclusive association of the kakaki with kingship (or an equivalent degree of authority) is reflected in two traditional Hausa kirari, identifying praise epithets: kakaki busan mutum ’daya (‘kakaki, blown for one man alone’); and barawon kakaki ba shi da iko ya busa shi (‘he who steals a kakaki nonetheless has no authority to blow it’).
In both form and usage the Hausa kakaki has become a model for practices over a considerable area of West Africa. In Nigeria the Nupe people refer to the instrument as kakati and Edo-speakers as kaki, while to peoples around Lake Chad (including the Kanuri of Nigeria, the Mului of Chad and the sedentary Fulani of northern Cameroon), it is known variously as kashi, gashi, gachi, gatshi or gatci. Although the etymology of kakaki remains a mystery, gashi etc. would appear to be connected with the Hausa praise-words ‘ga shi’ meaning ‘see him’, which are frequently ‘blown’ on the instrument to announce the appearance of a high official; this usage was first recorded of the Sultan of Borno in the 1850s by the German traveller Heinrich Barth (1857).
The kakaki is usually made from kerosene tins, more rarely from large brass measuring pans. Gold and silver trumpets are mentioned in legends which should, perhaps, not be taken too literally. Normally made in two detachable sections of approximately equal length, the whole instrument is between 2 and 4 metres long. A typical example from the emirate of Katsina in Nigeria consists of a mouthpiece section formed from three tubes soldered together (total length about 1·25 metres) with a fairly uniform bore of about 2·5 cm; and a bell section formed from two tubes (total length about 1·25 metres) and a bore which increases from 2·5 cm at the junction with the mouthpiece section to 7 cm at the start of the actual bell and 10 cm at the end of the instrument. An unusual instrument from Niger has two bells branching from the narrow stem. The trumpet’s 2nd and 3rd partials, forming an interval of between a perfect and an augmented 5th (approximately 750 cents), are the two principal notes blown. The 2nd partial of a kakaki such as that described is around c, with a frequency of about 130 Hz. A third note, rarely used, is produced from the 2nd partial but is pitched about a semitone below it.
In performance the player is either standing or on horseback, with the trumpet held to his mouth in a near horizontal position by one hand and supported part way down the stem by the extended other hand. The kakaki may at times be blown as a solo instrument (e.g. for the Emir of Zaria, Nigeria, or at Kano Airport to herald the arrival or departure of high officials) but is normally used in groups of four or more with matching groups of the double-headed cylindrical Ganga drums. Their performance is based on the linguistic tones and syllabic quantities of an unverbalized text, the take, in praise of an official patron. This is frequently divided into a solo statement and a chorus response; the solo trumpet is pitched about a semitone below the chorus trumpets, as in ex.1. This take was formerly performed for the installation of the head of Kusada District in Katsina Emirate, Nigeria. Acute and grave accents mark high- and low-tone syllables in the text, the sequence of long and short syllables is shown in the scansion and the small note heads on the top staff represent secondary strokes used either to fill in long syllables or to complete a phrase before its repetition.
Often included with the kakaki and ganga is the algaita (oboe, see illustration). Other instruments in the ensemble vary according to locality and may include the kuge (clapperless bell), farai (wooden trumpet) and kaho (side-blown trumpet). As the kakaki itself is generally associated with kingship and its blaring timbre and deep tone are immediately recognized as symbolic of status, it is blown only on ceremonial occasions, such as the Thursday evening salutation to the ruler, the procession to the mosque the following day and the great parades accompanying the major Islamic festivals. Former uses include signalling in warfare; for example, among the Nupe of Nigeria it would signal the order to charge. Although today the kakaki is almost entirely associated with Islamic functions, this has not always been so: at the end of the 19th century the Chief of Illo at Girris (now on the Nigeria-Benin border) ordered a blast from 12 trumpeters to drive away evil spirits.
The instrument itself is probably much older and considerably more widespread in distribution than its documented history would indicate. A depiction of a Roman tuba on Trajan’s Column, Rome (113 ce; for illustration see Tuba (ii)) bears a remarkable resemblance to the kakaki, as do trumpets shown in an Egyptian military band of the 14th century, in China in the later Middle Ages and in the mouths of Giotto’s angels in the painting The Crowning of the Virgin (c1317). It can be assumed that the long metal trumpet, if not its name, reached West Africa from the north.
There may be a relationship between the West African kakaki and the Maghribi nafīr, which Chottin (1927) suggested was devised by the Moors in Spain and introduced in the mid-14th century into Fez, from where it spread throughout the Maghrib. He also suggested that it was initially used as a military instrument but later acquired a religious role, being blown from the tops of minarets during the nights of Ramadan. However, he described the nafīr as producing only a single note, unlike the kakaki, whether blown singly or in pairs.
H. Barth: Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (London, 1857/R)
O. Houdas and M. Delafosse, eds.: Mahmoud Kâti: Tarikh el-fettach (Paris, 1913), 135–6
A. Chottin: Note sur le ‘Nfîr’ (trompette du Ramadan) (Paris, 1927)
P.G. Harris: ‘Notes on Drums and Musical Instruments Seen in Sokoto Province, Nigeria’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, lxii (1932), 105–25
S.F. Nadel: A Black Byzantium (London, 1942)
A. Schaeffner: ‘Timbales et longues trompettes’, Bulletin de l’Institut français d’Afrique noire, xiv (1952), 1466–89
C. Duvelle and M. Vuylstèke: disc notes, Anthologie de la musique du Tchad, OCR 36–8 (1966)
K. Krieger: ‘Musikinstrumente der Hausa’, Baessler-Archiv, new ser., xvi (1968), 373–430
D.W. Ames and A.V. King: Glossary of Hausa Music and its Social Contexts (Evanston, IL, 1971)
F.E. Besmer: Kidan Daran Salla: Music for the Eve of the Muslim Festivals of Id-al-Fitr and Id-al-Kabir in Kano, Nigeria (Bloomington, IN, 1974)
ANTHONY KING/R