Namibia,

Republic of. Country in south-west Africa. It has an area of 824,269 km² and a population of 1.73 million (2000 estimate). European colonial influence in south-west Africa began in 1847, with the activities of the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, gradually arousing German interest until the formal establishment of German authority over the territory in 1884. Formal declaration of independence of the new nation of Namibia occurred in 1990.

Namibia is scarcely populated; the southern half is largely desert, and the rural population is found mainly in a narrow strip in the north, bordering Angola.

The diversified population's languages fall into three groups: (a) Bantu languages; (b) Khoisan languages such as Nama, Damara, !Ko, !Kung’ etc. (fig.1.); and (c) Indo-European languages (German, Afrikaans etc.). Some population elements form clusters with subdivisions. During the era of South African apartheid 12 ethnic groups were officially distinguished.

1. Musical traditions of the main ethnic groups.

2. Recent developments.

3. Research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GERHARD KUBIK/MOYA ALIYA MALAMUSI

Namibia

1. Musical traditions of the main ethnic groups.

Music and dance in Namibia are predominantly associated within six socio-economic contexts: (1) educational institutions such as schools and churches, including mission schools; (2) government-sponsored events such as festivals, public performances, political rallies, radio and TV presentations; (3) entertainment in bars, night-clubs and drinking spots, generally known as ‘drankwinkel’; (4) work-songs, choir singing and music for wedding ceremonies performed on large farms mostly owned by German or Afrikaans-speaking entrepreneurs; (5) the life-cycle of rural communities based on agriculture and animal husbandry; and (6) the nomadic life of certain foragers.

The division of Namibia into farms with dependent worker populations and a few areas ‘reserved’ for ‘native’ populations has reinforced ethnic and language differences and confirmed their relevance for the study of music in the country. In addition to long-established German farms around Windhoek, there are many owned by Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. Interaction between settlers and farm workers of various ethnic backgrounds has resulted in farm-specific musical activities.

(i) Khoisan-language speakers.

(ii) Bantu-language speakers.

Namibia, §1: Musical traditions of the main ethnic groups

(i) Khoisan-language speakers.

(a) Nama traditions.

On farms south-east of Windhoek, the influence of Protestant church music on Nama music was strong. 19th-century European hymnody survives in several Nama-speaking farm communities. In some communities, a specific harmonic style of choir singing has emerged integrating older Nama traditions.

In documents of the German colonial era, a characteristic Nama dance with reed flutes (≠ai) is mentioned, but by the 1970s it had disappeared (Budack, 1979). Attempts to revive it have not led to significant results. Nama workers gather during leisure time at drinking parties, performing a dance accompanied by accordion and guitar called the ‘Nama step’. ‘Nama step’ implies an intense quivering of the whole body, affecting consecutive body parts. Regarding the sung parts, they mostly consist of vocables. Another characteristic of this music is an unusual tri-partite segmentation of the cycles by the chord sequences involved. Clearly, this style is rooted in older traditions of Khoisan-speaking peoples in south-western Africa.

Older Nama musical traditions were greatly affected in the 19th century and the early 20th by both Christian religious influences and everyday life in workers' quarters on the farms, yet the Kubik-Malamusi survey (1991–3) published in 1994 indicates that oral Nama-language narratives continue to this day. Izes (folktales) are generally trickster tales about wolves and jackals, but there is a great variety of themes.

(b) Damara (‘Bergdama’) traditions.

The Damara speak a Khoisan language very close to Nama. They are the descendants of an early, c100–200 ce migration of Angolan Bantu-language speakers from Angola, who adopted the Nama language. They live in the mountainous areas of north-west and central Namibia. Many of them are scattered, however, working on farms in the area of Windhoek. Although songs accompanied by a musical bow have been reported (Wängler, 1955–6), musical instruments of any kind except imported instruments such as the accordion and guitar are now extremely rare (Kubik, 1994). By contrast, there is a strong choir tradition, stylistically similar to Nama choir traditions, characterized by a compact homophony. Many of the most impressive Damara choirs, especially those formed by worker communities on farms, are hardly known outside their local communities. Some of these choirs are composed entirely of family and close relatives of the leader.

Some older Nama-Damara musical concepts concerning form and the structure of motion survive in recent types of local popular music. While Mbaqanga and other popular music from South Africa draw on a four-part division of cycles, Damara ‘Nama step’ music includes harmonic changes at points dividing a cycle of 18, 24 or 36 pulses into three or six segments. In a typical 24-pulse cycle at the basis of one of the songs recorded from Adolf !Hanegu //Naobeb, an internal relationship was observed between the fundamental 24-pulse cycle felt by musicians and dancers, the dancers' reference beat and the timing of the chord changes performed by the guitarist and the keyboard player. The structure shown in ex.1 is characterized by a 6x4 segmentation of the 24-pulse cycle. This is a salient Nama-Damara characteristic, unusual in the broader context of contemporary southern African popular music, where such a cycle normally demonstrates an 8x3 segmentation with the referential beat on every third or sixth fundamental pulse.

(c) Bushmen traditions.

In Namibia, south-eastern Angola and Botswana, the Bushmen (also often referred to by the Nama name San, though this is generally considered insulting and derogatory by the Bushmen themselves) are reputed to be extraordinarily musical. Their tonal system is derived from the auditory experience of the natural harmonics of a stretched string (Kirby, 1932, 1961; Kubik, 1970, 1994). On Namibian territory, there is a great number of different Khoisan languages and ethnic divisions, including the !Kung' on the border with Angola, the Mbarakwengo (Xun) and the !Ko of the Kalahari.

Bushmen musical traditions that survive today depend to a great deal on socio-economic and environmental factors. !Ko families who serve a Herero chief remember a spectacular fighting game between men, while women still practise polyphonic singing. By comparison, !Ko families on the farm of Ansie Strydom, north-east of Gobabis, practise an astonishing variety of musical instruments, including musical bows, lamellophones, pluriarcs, guitars and accordions. It was among these !Ko families that some unusual observations were made: a dengo board lamellophone with 23 lamellae arranged in two ranks and tuned in an ascending scale from left to right; a double-braced musical bow with two tuning loops (fig.2); and a too pluriarc with five strings used as an accompaniment to singing.

Somewhat different in their musical culture are the northern Bushmen. !Kung' refugees from Angola display female polyphonic singing and the use of mouth- and gourd-resonated musical bows derived from the hunting bow (Kubik, 1970). A friction bow is also used, as are lamellophones (Kubik, 1994, p.171). The ≠gauka (pluriarc) originally from south-western Angola was found played by a musician of the Mbarakwengo, Johannes Kamate, recorded near Bagani. Some ecstatic dance practices, especially quivering dances performed by men, also survive in a small community of !Kung' refugees west of Rundu, Okavango region.

Namibia, §1: Musical traditions of the main ethnic groups

(ii) Bantu-language speakers.

(a) Tswana traditions.

Tswana is an important Bantu language spoken in Botswana and Bophutatswana, South Africa, as well as in small areas of Namibia, south-east of Gobabis. Older Tswana traditions, notably dithlamane (storytelling) with interspersed songs, survive in the area of Aminuis, eastern Namibia. A remarkable musical instrument, technologically, is the seganpure (also sexankure, sekampure in local pronunciations), a friction chordophone (Rycroft, 1966) made from a long stick, with one string attached to a tuning-peg at the stick's lower section, and capped with a tin at the upper section. It is still played by Tswana performers living on Namibian territory (fig.3). The seganpure has been referred to as ‘Buschmanngeige’ (Bushman violin) (Heunemann and Heinz, 1975), because it was also recorded among !Ko-speaking neighbours of the Tswana. It could be either an older Bushmen invention or a creative response to a Dutch-imported 17th-century bowed instrument. Rycroft has suggested that the genesis of the seganpure might be connected with the ‘Trumscheit’ (see Trumpet marine; Rycroft, 1966).

(b) Herero traditions.

The Herero and the related Himba (Zemba) pastoralists count among the most important cattle-raising peoples of southern Africa. In commemoration of the Herero leader Samuel Maharero (1890–1923), a Herero Day is celebrated every year in Okahandja, a town north of Windhoek. It is characterized by solemn parades of cavalry with men dressed in uniforms, some in pre-World War I styles. The women wear characteristic Victorian-style robes, with headdresses in the shape of cattle horns (fig.4). Similar celebrations take place in various contexts, always with a solemn display of old uniforms and military drills by what has become today a symbolic association of ‘veterans’ of the Herero-German war. On such occasions, dominated by the presence of important Herero chiefs, declamatory songs (omuhiva) and praise-poetry (ondoro) are performed by the uniformed men. Like the traditions of other African pastoralists, Herero music is characterized by an absence of musical instruments. The only instrumental object commonly seen is a wooden plank.

Omuhiva song texts suggest the importance of social stratification among the Herero. Vocal music is predominant, with both unison and leader-chorus singing. The oucina dance-song genre is performed by women who accompany their songs with swaying body movements and hand-clapping on off-beats. One of the alternating lead singers and dancers binds a percussion plank on her right foot, hitting the ground with it in a slow and rhythmically complex pattern of strokes. The Ociherero name for this instrument, ocipirangi, comes from ‘Planke’ (Ger.: ‘plank’). It seems to be a late 19th-century or early 20th-century innovation; earlier, a piece of cow skin (orukaku) was used, and struck into the sand to accompany women's songs. Oucina songs, in their characteristic pentatonic modes, focus in their content on the most important economic asset of the Herero, cows. Some of them are sung during milking, others describe tiresome journeys with ox-carts or praise historical personalities, such as Samuel Maharero who died in exile.

Although the Ovahimba, a Herero related ethnic group, have become a tourist attraction in Namibia, their music has been little researched. The Namibian pastoralists are among the most culturally conservative in the country. With a deeply rooted tradition of unison singing in a pentatonic mode, and their harsh, declamatory vocal timbre, Herero youths often have difficulty adapting to multi-part singing in the diatonic system in Western-style schools. Contemporary South African popular music has also found relatively little resonance.

(c) Ovamboland traditions.

Storytelling, including chantefables and other narrative genres, such as omahokololo, still play an important role in Ovambo (Kwanyama) cultures, as do other forms of vocal music, particularly choir singing, mission and school songs and, more recently, patriotic songs. In contrast to many other Namibian ethnic groups, work-songs are common among the Ovambo, such as songs by women pounding finger millet with interlocking strokes.

By the 1990s the ecology of Ovamboland was seriously damaged due to overgrazing, resulting in total deforestation, which may explain the general absence of drums these days. Except for a few imported musical instruments, such as accordions and guitars, Ovambo musical culture is now barren of musical instruments. Neither the ‘Ovambo guitar’, a pluriarc, nor the kambulumbumba gourd-resonated musical bow, recorded by Sabine Zinke (1992), can be easily found in 21st-century Namibia. It is uncertain whether the famous Ovambo horn ensemble (Guildenhuys, 1981, p.29) still exists. Ovambo music is dominated by choirs, with diverse repertories, from groups such as the SWAPO-Hanyeko Choir singing liberation songs to more religously orientated groups, such as those founded by Efafnasi Barnabas Kasita and Junias Shigwedha.

(d) Okavango traditions.

It is significant that the Gciriku (Diriku), an Okavango people, known for a remarkable oral literature, have click sounds in their language, adopted from Khoisan speakers. Unaccompanied vocal music performed by groups, as well as dances with drums, rattles and wooden concussion slabs play an important role in their musical traditions. Music-dance genres include: manthongwe, a healing dance; chikavedi, a dance for chiefs performed every year when, after a successful harvest, millet is presented to the chief; thiperu, an entertainment dance shared with the Mbukushu performed throughout the year. Musical instruments of the Gciriku are shared with their neighbours; some, like the chinkhuvu (slit-drum), have been recently adopted from the Vanyemba, Angolans of various ethnic backgrounds.

Kwangari (Kwangali) musical traditions include a variety of dances shared by men and women such as epera, in which the men imitate cows, and muchokochoko performed by men wearing leg rattles of the same name. The dancers are accompanied with the standard set of three long, single-head drums, played by men with their hands. The lowest-tuned drum (with a lump of tuning wax in the centre) is called nkurugoma (big drum), the other two are nkinzo and mpumo. A ceremonial dance called mayauma with swaying movements by the women pays respect to the chief. A popular dance for young people is called axi. Musical instruments for individual use include no fewer than four different types of musical bows: rugoma, a mouth-resonated stick rather than bow, played exclusively by women, made of a river reed; kaworongongo, a mouth-resonated friction bow; mburumbumba, an unbraced musical bow held against an external resonator, such as a washing-tub with orifice facing down on the ground; and kamburumbumba, an unbraced musical bow with a gourd- or tin-resonator pressed by the performer against the stave. Two types of lamellophones have been traced: edumudumu, with fan-shaped board and notes arranged in two ranks, and ndingo, a board lamellophone imported from south-eastern Angola. Ngoma nkhwita is the Kwangari name for a friction drum with internal friction stick, a type widely found in south-western Angola.

The easternmost branch of the Okavango peoples is the Mbukushu. Most popular at Bagani is the thiperu dance with drums. Participants form a three-quarter circle. Participating women hold wooden slabs, 10x15x1·5 cm in size, in their hands, clapping them together. Inside the circle there is a dance master whose head is decorated with feathers. He performs a dance with a female, working out tiny steps with occasional turns and jerky movements. The music is organized in cycles of 12 or 24 elementary pulses.

There is an old Mbukushu dance for the chiefs called rengo; another dance performed by old women during female initiation ceremonies is called dichemba. Lamellophones are popular in the area. They are called thishanji, with fan-shaped boards and lamellae arranged in two ranks. The proximity to Zambia has had a notable effect on youths who, like their peers in Zambia, make homemade banjos.

(e) East Caprivi traditions.

The Subia and the Lozi are among the people settled in this area. Subia musical culture emphasizes drum-accompanied genres, such as healing dances. Such events require the use of three ingoma, tall, single-head drums with tuning paste applied to the centre of the skin. The set includes iingóma inkando (deep-tuned drum), chikumwa (medium-pitched drum), and kambiri mulyata or iintunguni (high-pitched drum). A medical practitioner performs the dance shaking two inchinza, tin-rattles with a handle, while singing the leader's vocal line with response by a mixed chorus.

Matangu, storytelling with songs, is still a popular evening activity among the Subia. On such occasions chisiyankulu (‘What the old people have left behind’), i.e. oral history, can also be discussed and explained to the young. Among the musical instruments used for individual performance, the kang'ombyo Caprivi-type lamellophone is popular. A typical kang'ombyo has 14 iron lamellae mounted upon a fan-shaped board with its lateral rims raised.

As in Zambia, one of the salient expressions of Lozi musical culture is the playing of gourd-resonated xylophones called silimba. The base of these xylophones is a stand, almost like a table (fig.5). The Lozi are the only ethnic group in Namibia with such a tradition of xylophone playing. The kang'ombyo lamellophone was also adopted from their Subia-speaking neighbours. In addition, the performance of chantefables (matangu) is an important activity.

Namibia

2. Recent developments.

Independence brought an influx of people from rural areas into cities, notably Windhoek's Katutura township. It remains to be seen, however, what effects this will have on urban musical activities. The Ministry of Education and Culture has promoted traditions with ‘national’ messages, not always conducive, however, to the encouragement and promotion of living individual artists; rather it has aided the rise of folkloristic groups and generated educational music for school activities, such as the mushrooming marimba (xylophone) school ensembles using industrially manufactured instruments and a modified Carl Orff approach to school music teaching.

Popular guitar-based music has also had a long history in Namibia. South African-made acoustic guitars were and still are readily available, which is not so in many other African countries. Accordion and guitar groups have existed among the Nama and Damara since the early decades of the 20th century. While this tradition continues among various peoples settled on farms, for example among !Ko workers on the fringes of the Kalahari steppe east and north-east of Gobabis, it has been transformed in some places into an electric version, with an electric guitar and keyboard, while the essential dance movement, the ‘Nama-step’, remains the same.

Namibia

3. Research.

Although ethnological interest in the peoples and cultures of Namibia was considerable during the period of German rule, reports on musical activities were scarce until the 1960s. In a select bibliography of articles on the music of south-west Africa, Darius Thieme (1962) cited three publications specifically concerned with music: Bleek (1928), Grimaud (1956) and Wängler (1955–6). The more extensive bibliography by L.J.P. Gaskin (1965; pp.29–30) lists 23 entries.

Among the classic works on Khoisan music analysing material from northern Namibia are two articles by Nicolas England (1964, 1967). Also of importance for comparison are field documents on the !Ko in Botswana by George Nurse (1972) and D. Heunemann and H.J. Heinz (1975). Two related articles on ‘Bushman’ and ‘Hottentot’ musical practices by David Rycroft (1978) and E.O.J. Westphal (1978) demonstrate the benefit of interrelating music and language research in Namibia. Erika Mugglestone (1982) introduced a further, historically oriented perspective by analysing data on Khoisan, notably ‘Hottentot’ music, as found in Peter Kolb (1719).

Systematic recording in Namibia began with Hugh Tracey's brief recording tour in 1965. In spite of the vast distances he had to traverse, Tracey recorded 111 items in different parts of the country. In 1988 Andrew Tracey of the International Library of African Music, South Africa, made recordings at Nyangana Mission in the north, documenting rare instruments such as the rugoma (mouth bow) and ruwenge among the Okavango peoples. In 1990 Minette Mans organized a symposium on ‘Independence and Namibian Music’ at the University of Namibia in cooperation with Andrew Tracey. Choirs and musicians were invited and heard for the first time by international audiences. Beginning in 1991, Gerhard Kubik and Moya A. Malamusi carried out a three-year survey project on music, dance and oral literature in Namibia. Archival copies of the sound recordings are deposited at the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, and at the Ethnomusicological Department of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. A preliminary account of the results of this research was published in the journal EM-Annuario degli Archivi di Etnomusicologia dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Kubik, 1994).

Namibia

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

P. Kolb: Caput bonae spei hodiernum: das ist, vollständige Beschreibung des afrikanischen Vorgebürges der Guten Hoffnung (Nuremberg, 1719)

S. Passarge: ‘Das Okavango-Sumpfland und seine Bewohner’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, v (1904), 649–716

E.M. von Hornbostel and C. Sachs: ‘Systematik der Musikinstruments’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xlvi (1914), 553–90

D.F. Bleek: ‘Bushmen of Central Angola’, Bantu Studies, iii (1928), 105–26

L. Schultze: ‘Zur Kenntnis des Körpers der Hottentotten und Buschmänner’, Jenaische Denkschriften, xvii (1928), 147–228

P.R. Kirby: ‘The Recognition and Practical Use of Harmonics of Stretched Strings by the Bantu of South Africa’, Bantu Studies, vi (1932), 30–46

P.R. Kirby: ‘A Secret Musical Instrument: the Ekola of the Avakwanyama of Ovamboland’, South African Journal of Science, xxxvii (1942), 94–115

H.H. Wängler: ‘Über südwestafrikanische Bogenlieder’, Afrika und Übersee, xxxix (1954–5), 49–63; xl (1956), 163–74

Y. Grimaud: ‘Note sur la musique vocale des Bochiman !Kung et des pygmées Babinga’, Ethnomusicologie II: Wégimont III 1956, 105–26

E. Damman: Studien zum Kwangali: Grammatik, Texte, Glossar (Hamburg, 1957)

P.R. Kirby: ‘Physical Phenomena which Appear to have Determined the Basis and Development of an Harmonic Sense among Bushmen, Hottentot and Bantu’, AfM, ii/4 (1961), 6–9

D.L. Thieme: ‘A Selected Bibliography of Periodical Articles on the Music of the Native Peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa’, AfM, iii/1 (1962), 103–10

N.M. England: ‘Symposium on Transcription and Analysis: a Hukwe Song with Musical Bow’, EthM, viii (1964), 233–77

L.J.P. Gaskin: A Select Bibliography of Music in Africa (London, 1965)

H. Tracey: ‘I.L.A.M. Recording Tour (South West Africa and Northwestern Cape)’, AfM, iii/4 (1965), 68–70

D. Rycroft: ‘Friction Chordophones in South-Eastern Africa’, GSJ, xix (1966), 84–100

N.M. England: ‘Bushman Counterpoint’, JIFMC, xix (1967), 58–66

G. Kubik: Música tradicional e aculturada dos !Kung' de Angola, Estudos de Antropologia Cultural, iv (Lisbon, 1970)

G.T. Nurse: ‘Musical Instrumentation among the San (Bushmen) of the Central Kalahari’, AfM, v/2 (1972), 23–7

D. Heunemann and H.J. Heinz: Film nos.E2123–2127 (Göttingen, 1975)

D. Rycroft: ‘Comment on Bushman and Hottentot Music recorded by E.O.J. Westphal’, Review of Ethnology, v/2–3 (1978), 16–23

E.O.J. Westphal: ‘Observations on Current Bushman and Hottentot Musical Practices’, Review of Ethnology, v/2–3 (1978), 9–15

K.F.R. Budack: ‘The Khoe-Khoen of South-West Africa’, SWA Annual/SWA Jb 1979, 111–15

C. Gildenhuys: ‘Musical Instruments of South West Africa/Namibia’, Symposium on Ethnomusicology II: Grahamstown 1981, 28–33

F. Strydom: ‘The Music of the Rehoboth Basters’, ibid., 80–83

E. Mugglestone: ‘The Gora and the “Grand” Gom-Gom: a Reappraisal of Kolb's Account of a Khoikhoi Musical Bow’, AfM, vi/2 (1982), 94–115

K. Alnaes: ‘Living with the Past: the Songs of the Herero in Botswana’, Africa, lix (1987), 267–99

E. Damman: Was Herero erzählten und sangen, Afrika und Übersee: Beiheft, xxxii (Berlin, 1987)

Å. Norberg: ‘Musikinstrumente der Bini in Südwest-Nigeria’, Musikkulturen in Afrika, ed. E. Stockmann (Berlin, 1987), 197–220

P. Roos: ‘Traditional Namibian Songs for Schools: a Research Project’, ISME Yearbook, xv (1988), 165–72

S. Zinke: Neue Gesänge der Ovambo: musikethnologische Analysen zu namibischen Liedern (diss., U. of Berlin, 1992)

G. Kubik and M.A. Malamusi: ‘Namibia Survey 1991–1993’, EM-Annuario degli Archivi di Etnomusicologia dell'Accademia Nazionale de Santa Cecilia, ii (1994), 151–209

G. Kubik: Theory of African Music, i (Wilhelmshaven, 1994)

African Guitar: Audio-Visual Field Recordings 1966–93, videotape, dir. G. Kubik and W. Bachschwell, Vestapol Productions 13017 (Cambridge, MA, 1994)