The Songhai (also known as the Songhay and Sonrai) live on both sides of the great bend of the Niger river, from Mopti in Mali to Gaya on the borders of Niger and Benin. As a people with a single common language and, with minor variations, a common music culture, they are composed of three groups: the Songhai proper, who form the largest group; the Zarma or Zabarma, the second-largest group, adjoining the Hausa in the east; and the Dendi, centred on Gaya (fig.1).
The similarity of many aspects of Songhai music to Hausa music, especially in its instruments, is probably a result not only of historical links but also of continuing cultural contact. In the 16th century the empire of Songhai extended its influence in the east to Agades, and in the process conquered the intervening Hausa states of Gobir, Zamfara, Kano, Zaria and Katsina. The long metal Kakaki trumpet, now used in Hausa ceremonial music, is probably only one of a number of musical relics of Songhai dominance in this period. Other similarities, probably later in origin, include those between the Songhai kuntiji and the Hausa kuntigi (single-string plucked lutes); the Songhai moolo and the Hausa molo (three-string plucked lutes); the Songhai goje (fig.2) and the Hausa goge (single-string fiddles); the Songhai bamboro and the Hausa bambaro (both jew’s harps); and the Songhai Ganga and the Hausa instrument of the same name (double-headed cylindrical drums with snares).
Songhai secular music includes solo and choral songs, as well as primarily instrumental music. Solo songs are sung by men and women to accompany such activities as planting crops, harvesting, pounding cereals and canoeing; they are also sung by children and adolescents in games and riddles, and by adolescents when courting. Choral songs (male, female or mixed voices) may be unaccompanied or performed to the accompaniment of the kuntiji; their texts are mainly centred on historical traditions and politics, legends and fables, or praise and satire.
Solo instrumental music includes performance by children on the dilliara (idioglot clarinet) and the bamboro; by children and men on the kuntiji; by men on the moolo and the goje; and by children and adult men on the jidiga (lamellophone). The two most common instrumental ensembles, which may at times accompany vocal performances, are three kunce (double-headed cylindrical drums), used at wrestling matches and for dances; and two or three doodo (hourglass tension drums) combined with one or two ganga (double-headed cylindrical drums), used to accompany praise-songs or dances.
Songhai liturgical music shows close links with Hausa bori music. The animist religion of the Songhai distinguishes a hierarchy of divinities, each corresponding to a natural force such as the sky, rain, thunder, the earth, a river or rainbow. A second set of divinities, dating from French and British colonization of West Africa, includes the locomotive, doctor, corporal and so on. A specific musical theme is associated with each divinity so that their genealogical and other relationships form a framework for the musical liturgy and its associated liturgical dances. The gods are invoked through their music, and if the invocation is successful a god will possess the dancer, who then represents that god, making a dialogue between man and the supernatural possible. The dancer is finally released from possession through the intermediacy of the music. The whole ritual, involving invocation, possession, dialogue and release, is known as follay. The instrumental ensemble used for the performance consists of a goje, consecrated for this purpose with the blood of three cocks, and a set of from two to ten gaasay (percussion vessels; fig.3) consisting of inverted hemispherical gourds, each struck with a pair of fan-shaped wooden beaters; each beater has at least seven rigid spokes.
and other resources
J. Rouch: ‘Aperçu sur l’animisme sonrai’, Notes africaines, xx (1943)
J. Rouch: La religion et la magie songhay (Paris, 1960, 2/1989)
J. Rouch: Les songhay (Paris, 1954)
B. Surugue: Contribution à l’étude de la musique sacrée zarma-songhay (Niamey, 1972)
Première anthologie de la musique malienne, Bärenreiter Musicaphon BM 30 L 2501–2506 (1975)
Afrique noire: panorama de la musique instrumentale, Longue Durée LD 409 (1979)
Le Mali des Sables: les Songoy, Bärenreiter-Musicaphon BM 30 L 2503 (1979)
Griottes of the Sahel: Female Keepers of the Songhay Oral Tradition in Niger, videotape, Penn State Audio-Visual Services (US, 1991)
B. SURUGUE