NRC Weekend, 10-11 May 2014, science section (p.7)
And then I tell you: `Katamboom’
Interview, Linguistics: for six years Yoad Winter carried out a research into
the drum language of Senegal. The players drum messages like `I go wash my
child’ or `I’m hungry’, using hundreds of rhythmic elements.
By Mischa Spel
How does an
Israeli linguist arrive in the midst of the griots in the inlands of Senegal? In
the case of Yoad Winter, by chance.
Winter
works at the Utrecht University, and lives in the same city. His
daughter
followed a drumming course for children. And there he came across a
Senegalese
drummer. By hearsay he had known that there existed something like
African "drum language". `Out of curiosity I made an appointment to
talk about it
once. And then another appointment followed, and then more
appointments.’
Drumming
in Senegal is a business for people who were born to this profession. Griots,
groups of poets, singers and musicians, accompany all sorts of ceremonies with
their singing, music and dancing. `What made me most curious was to realize
that the Senegalese drum language works in a way that is fundamentally
different than drum languages in Ghana or Nigeria’, says Winter. The languages
spoken in those countries are `tonal', like Chinese: a word uttered in a
different pitch may have a different meaning. The drums imitate the sentence’s
melody. But Wolof, the language spoken in Senegal, is not tonal. Furthermore,
the rhythms of the Senegalese griots do not imitate the spoken language, and
nonetheless they follow specific linguistic patterns. For Yoad Winter this was
a reason to go on a research trip to Senegal. He visited Senegal four times in
six years, created working contacts with, among others, the family of the
well-known drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose, and based on this research,
he wrote an article that will appear later this year in the academic journal Language.
`What
makes the Senegalese drum language interesting, but also complicated, is that
the rhythms have meanings, but not all Wolof speakers understand them’, says
Winter. `You can compare it to the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner’s operas:
musical motifs that indicate specific themes – love, a spear, salvation. You
know that they are there, you can learn how to identify them. But not everybody
who listens to Wagner knows the meaning. This is how Senegalese drummers work. You
can’t use the drum for `speaking' to each other. They react to subjects
appearing in the ceremony, and repeat them with rhythms with the corresponding
meaning.’
How
did you know what each rhythm means?
`I
gave the drummers a word and asked them to play the translation, for instance
`child’. What happens if you then add an adjective? Big child, small child,
thin child? From the rhythmic addition we can then abstract meanings. All
players use the same core sounds. However, the way in which these sounds
combine with each other may greatly differ.
You
often hear rhythms reoccurring. Takatam, takatam – silence – boom boom. What
does it mean?
`I’d
be happy to be able to answer that. But to recognize what a rhythm means you
need to know which family is playing, and to know all the rhythmic variations
and rules.’
Can
you turn any sentence into a rhythm?
`No.
`I go wash my child’ – that’s something that every drummer can play. But when I
replaced the word `child’ by `car’, it seemed that there was no corresponding
rhythm, ha ha.’
The
rhythms often sound repetitive. What does it mean? That you say the same thing
over and over again?
`The
drummers use linguistic materials and translate them to rhythms, which they
subsequently use for free improvisation. In the next part of the ceremony they
introduce a new theme. What we experience as repetition is often a complex
polyrhythmic interplay between different players.’
How
did you extract a message from this web of meaningful rhythms?
`Normally
I interviewed one player at a time, otherwise I do not hear what’s going on. Funny,
but often it didn’t work. The drummers are artists, and they like to
demonstrate what they can do.’
`For
instance, someone played the rhythmic equivalent of `a dish with fish and rice’,
and another player picked it up and played `I’m hungry’, and another one
responded `me too! me too!’. In this way it becomes a sort of conversation. The
research was real fun in places where the tradition was not yet eroded. In one
town the smallest children took part in the improvisation. An eight-year old
girl told a story about her school and what she liked to eat, and her brothers immediately
responded to that on the drums.’
How
did you process all the material? Did you put all rhythmic elements on a
computer?
`No,
it was a rather straightforward research. We found and registered around 150
basic rhythms, from which you can create an infinite number of sentences. I
think there should be a total of a few hundreds rhythms, which indeed would be
easier to process by using computers.’
What
stops you?
`Money.
These are professional musicians. We are rich Westerners. This makes it
unethical to pay according to local tariffs. The research works out the best if
the drummers come together as a group, because that’s the way they are used to:
you don’t play alone. I’m now looking for more funds and would be happy to
create a team for further research. But this is expensive and labor intensive. Ten
days net research require one month work.’
How
come?
`It’s
Africa. The circumstances are very different, mainly because of the heat and
because of poverty. In addition you have to bring people together, since many
people move from one town to another in search of work. And if it works out to
bring them together, there must be food for everyone. Ideally I should have
worked as an anthropologist and live with one family for months. But I have
too many responsibilities to be able to do that. I wish I found this topic
twenty years ago, when I was freer. Only at that time I didn’t have the
knowledge I have today, and I would not have come to the idea, ha ha. In life we
often come across this paradox.’