Xylophonspiel in Madagaskar : Ergebnisse der Feldforschungen 1986 - 1989 / von August Schmidhofer

• VerfasserIn: Schmidhofer, August 1958-
• Place / Publishing House: 1991
• Year of Publication: 1991
• Language: German
• Physical Description: 294 Bl.; Ill., graph. Darst., Kt., Notenbeisp.

eng: Studies on African xylophone traditions have often been done in the context of the hypothesis of Indonesian migrations to Africa in prehistoric time. The position of the Malagasy xylophone in this question was regarded as important, for the Malagasy culture shows many relations to South-East Asia, especially in its language. But up to now few was known about the xylophone which exists as leg-xylophone among the Antanosy, Bara, Sakalava, Masikoro and Mikea people in the south-west of the island. In his eight-months fieldwork the author could cover a large area in South-West Madagascar. So the recordings, now stored in the Phonogrammarchiv der oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna, are representative for the Malagasy xylophone culture. The recordings also contain other musics of special importance. The thesis includes 40 transcriptions of xylophone pieces, made with the aid of computer and by analysing cine films. Apart from formal similarities of construction and playing technique the Malagasy leg-xylophone that Curt Sachs (1938) identified as 'Malayan' shows a lot of affinites with parallel types in South-East Africa, especially the 'Nyasa- Ruvuma'- region. There is no longer reason to postulate an Indonesian origin of this instrument. It can be assumed that it was brought over from the mainland by African emigrants. Just when it came to the Great Island remains obscure. Other instruments as well seem to follow more closely patterns of mainland Africa. Without any claims for statistical precision, it can be said that the Negroid element dominates the music of southern Madagascar.