Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa. Percival Kirby

      Campbell,²³ in his account of the Damara, noted their use of a kind of drum. ‘They beat ... on an instrument of skin, resembling a drum.’ Barnabas Shaw²⁴ also mentioned the fact, saying that the Damaras ‘make use of a drum similar to that of the Namacquas.’

The most rudimentary type of drum found among the Bantu of South Africa is the ingqongqo, and it is now met with only among the Xhosa of the Transkei and in neighbouring areas. It consists of an ox-hide or bullock skin, which has been pegged out and dried in the sun. After it has been properly dried, it is fastened on poles stuck into the earth, so that the surface of the hide is about three or four feet from the ground. It may thus be readily removed after use, and put away for future performances. Alternatively, small loops of hide are fastened at intervals round the skin, and these are held by the performers, who grasp them with their left hands, while with their right they strike upon the upper surface of the hide with sticks about two feet long called amaqoqa, so named because of the engraving which ornaments the upper part. The portion gripped by the hand is left plain.

      The ingqongqo is only used at the abakweta dances during a circumcision school, when it serves as an accompaniment to the dances or songs executed by the boy initiates, marking the time for the dancers and exciting them. The beaters are always women who are near relatives of the initiates.

      The skin from which the ingqongqo is made is obtained from a bull killed specially for the abakweta dance. The bull is usually given by a prominent man who has a son of his own amongst those who are passing through the initiation rites. The flesh of the bull slaughtered for this purpose is not eaten.

      The engraving of the amaqoqa or beating-sticks is done by the boy initiates while the skin is being prepared. The skin itself is kept in the itonto, or grass hut in which the abakweta or initiates are living.

      During the dances which are accompanied by the ingqongqo the initiates stand in a row in front of the cattle-kraal, facing the women, the tallest to the right, and the shortest to the left. He who is considered to be the best dancer is rewarded by the gift of an assegai, and the next best receives a long black umsimbiti stick (Millettia Caffra), neatly decorated. In some districts assegais are not given, and an umsimbiti stick then constitutes the first prize. The actual dances take place away from the inkundhla, the clean, well-trodden area before the cattle-kraal in which the councillors are wont to gather to give judgement on the various cases brought before them. The term uk-ombelela is used for ‘to beat the drum for’, and it appears in the sentence abafazi babesombelela abakweta, which means ‘The women were beating time for the circumcised boys’.

      The instrument is known and used by the Tembu, who also call it ingqongqo, and their employment of it is identical with that of the Xhosa. It has been suggested to me that among the Tembu, the number of beaters is always even, six, eight, or ten being usual. I have been unable to obtain complete verification of this point.

      Figure 2.3. Xhosa women playing upon the ingqongqo. Photograph by P. R. KIRBY.

      The abakweta ceremony generally takes place towards the end of summer-time, and consequently the ingqongqo is only made and played then. The instrument is often destroyed after the ceremonies are at an end; this fact, together with the fact that the use of the instrument is dying out, causes it to be seldom met with.

      The photograph in Figure 2.3 shows a number of Xhosa women beating an ox-hide after the manner of the ingqongqo near Kentani in the Transkei. The hide, however, is not a regular ingqongqo, nor are the sticks actual amaqoqa. Figure 2.4 shows four genuine amaqoqa of the Xhosa. The earliest reference to the use of the ingqongqo which I have come across is that of Rose.²⁵ In passing through the territory of Chief Hinza (whose own kraal was at what is now called Butterworth), Rose witnessed an abakweta ceremony in which the initiates ‘performed a wild kind of dance, the principal motion of which was a whirl, while the women sang a monotonous air, and kept beating an extended ox-hide, which they stood round’. The Rev. H. H. Dugmore²⁶ wrote a description of the abakweta ceremony in which he stated that, to accompany the ukuye-zezela, or dance of the novices, the women, collected in a company, stood together at a short distance, beating time with sticks upon a shield, while singing a kind of chant abounding in licentious allusions. Mr. Dugmore, moreover, pointed out that at the conclusion of the abakweta ceremony, contributions were made to the novices by their friends and neighbours to enable them to ‘set out in life’, one presenting an assegai, another a brass girdle, and a third a head of cattle. These presents may have become the prizes in the competition of recent times described above.

      Figure 2.4. Amaqoqa, or engraved sticks used for beating the ingqongqo. Photograph by W. P. PAFF.

      The ingqongqo was also used at the initiation of a Xhosa witch-doctor, which was known as ukombela, a term which was used for dancing, drumming, or clapping the hands at a night party, or, for accompanying the incantations of a doctor. Such drumming, which accompanied the singing by the whole company present of special songs, was used for exciting the doctor, and working him up to a state of frenzy or ecstasy known as ukuxentsa, when preparing to ‘smell out’ an evil-doer. In addition to the beating of the ingqongqo, bundles of assegais would be struck together. This practice has been considered in the section devoted to rattles and clappers. In olden times the Zulu had similar practices.²⁷

      I have said that the sticks with which the ingqongqo was beaten were called amaqoqa. Kropf²⁸ defined the verb ukuqoqa as ‘to carve, notch, or file a walking or tally stick with stripes; to beautify it so that it looks checkered’; and the noun iqoqa, of which amaqoqa is the plural, as ‘a kind of assegai the neck of which is filed in an ornamental manner’, or ‘a carved stick used by girls in dancing’. The ingqongqo and its beating sticks the amaqoqa would therefore appear to be the degenerate representatives of the great war shield and assegais, appropriated for ceremonial purposes as would be perfectly natural, and accordingly connected with the next type of drum to be described, which is still found in the same areas as those in which the ingqongqo is met with. This is the ikawu, which consists of a shield made from the skin of a parti-coloured ox. The skin is cut so as to be widest at the middle, narrowing towards top and bottom. Near the top is sewn a small piece of skin, in the middle of which a hole is made for the reception of a common knob-stick, a black knob-stick, a small assegai and a large assegai such as is used for slaughtering. The performer beats upon his ikawu with a knob-stick. The ikawu is used, with