Tone and tune: the evidence for Northern Ewe music

Abstract

Opening ParagraphOne of the most intriguing features of most African languages is that of tone, by which variations in speech tone generate different meanings (Pike, 1948, offers a valuable introduction to this subject and includes an extensive bibliography; Fromkin, 1972, is a comprehensive evaluation of specialised studies). In the Ewe language, for example, the word to [H] pronounced with a high tone means ‘ear’, as in To le venye (HLMM), ‘I have an earache.’ To can also mean ‘through’, Meto akonta me [MHLHML], ‘I have gone through the accounts.’ But as soon as the high tone is replaced by a low one the meaning of the word changes drastically: to [L] means ‘thick’ as in Dzogbo la to [LHHL], ‘The porridge is thick’. Similarly, mi [H] is a pronoun for the first person plural (Mieto adegbe, ‘We are on the way to the hunt’). The same word refers to ‘faeces’ as in [HL], ‘goat's faeces’. A shift of tone from high to low results in a change of meaning. Mi [L] is a pronoun for the second person plural (Mile tsi [LLM], ‘You (should) take a bath’); it also means ‘swallow’ (mi amatsi, ‘swallow [or take] the medicine’). The phenomenon is not restricted to monosyllables. Kuku [HH] refers to a ‘hat’ (Meɖe kuku na wo, ‘I remove your hat,’ which is a figurative way of saying ‘I beg you’). Kuku [LH] on the other hand refers to ‘death’. Asi [LH] is the word for ‘hand’, while asi [LM] denotes ‘market’. Tone is operative on a number of levels within the syntagmatic chain: on the level of syllable, word, phrase and sentence. Furthermore, a number of constraints—syntactic, international or natural factors—influence the disposition of speech tones (consult Ansre, 1961, for information about Ewe tone and Dakubu, 1988, for the most recent study of this and other aspects of Ghanaian languages).

Indigenous African Music: A Descriptive Analysis of Mmino wa Setšo from a Northern Sotho Perspective

“…Extemporisation, poetry recitation, and indeed scolding are some of the modes through which text messegess are set in motion. Once in motion, these texts assume, to an extent, some level of liberation from the constraints of ordinary spoken language (Agawu, 1988); often enjoying poetic impunity which is embedded in poetic licence (Perloff, 1990).…”

“…Cognisant of such dangers, we, nonetheless, note that Northern Sotho people distinguish between mmino wa sebjalebjale (modern music) and mmino wa setšo a Northern Sotho designation generally used in reference to indigenous (African) music. This kind of dichotomisation enables them to insulate mmino wa setšo from undesirable influences; hence even up to today mmino wa setšo is devoid of the domineering I -IV-V harmonic formula, which both Akrofi (2003) and Agawu (2008) rightfully acuse of being a colonising force. Practitioners of mmino wa setšo would rather acculturate other encroaching music styles by infusing or rather injecting indigenous principles into, than have such music alter mmino wa setšo, per se.…”

The Perception of Cantonese Lexical Tones in Popular Music: A Preliminary Report

“…Composers are found to have employed different composing strategies to maintain lexical tone faithfulness without constraining musical creativity [3], mainly through striking parallelism between lexical tone transitions and musical note transitions, i.e., mapping between the direction of two adjacent musical notes and the direction of lexical tones for the two corresponding sung syllables. However, conflicts between lexical tones and melodies are still found in some cases such as in Northern Ewe music [9], Dagaare folktales [10], Kalam Kohistani chants [11], or even modern Mandarin pop songs [12]. The above studies mainly surveyed across a number of songs in a particular tone language and calculated the degree of parallelism manifested, meaning that they attempted to investigate tone-melody interface from the composers' point of view.…”

Methods of analysis for tonal text-setting. The case study of Fe'Fe' Bamileke

“…This idea has been supported or challenged in a number of studies, sometimes yielding conflicting results (e.g. for Ewe songs, [1] found direct correlation, whereas [2] claimed the opposite). In this paper, I will test this hypothesis on a small sample of songs in Fe'Fe' Bamileke, a Bantu language of Cameroon.…”