FUSION THEORY (VERSCHMELZUNGSTHEORIE) AND ASANTE IVORY TRUMPET MUSIC: COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY AND AFRICAN MUSIC IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

• Authors: Kaminski Joseph S.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Asante trumpet groups comprise seven elephant tusk trumpets. The 'sesee' trumpet leads two divisions of tusks grouped by size into high and low tone clusters. One set, grouped by three short tusks and one long tusk is called 'agyesoa' and 'bosoo'. A set of two longer tusks is called 'afr'. The clusters of the 'agyesoa' and 'bosoo' occur on the weak pulses of a song and alternate with the 'afre' clusters that are on the strong pulses reinforcing the sesee's surrogate speech. The clustered tones are cents apart. Each instrument contributes its tone to its division's cluster, and these clusters are alternated rhythmically in hocket. Clusters are intentionally dissonant, even for the Asante, and the tusks are tuned thus, for their sound is intended to scare away evil spirits in a 'sound barrage'. In one ensemble, the 'agyesoa' and 'bosoo' cluster roughly contains the tones d(l) - 10 cents, d(l) - 25 cents, c-sharp(l) + 35 cents, and b-flat + 20 cents, and it alternates with the 'afre' cluster of roughly b - 10 cents and b-flat - 5 cents. The Asante are aware of the dissonance produced by these clusters, and tonal fusion occurs because of the same timbre of the instruments. The process of hearing the tonal fusion draws on 'Verschmelzungstheorie', based on the psychological studies of music by the founder of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, Carl Stumpf. Dissonant tones have the lowest degree of 'Verschmelzung' (fusion). The Asante create these vertical clusters for intentional dissonance, asserting to comparative musicologists that the perception of dissonance might be universal

Keywords

EN

AFRICAN INSTRUMENTS; PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Muzyka
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 1(212)
• Pages: 37049
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Kaminski Joseph S.

• Joseph S Kaminski, Brooklyn Campus Long Island University, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, New York 11201-8423, USA

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10PLAAAA073310