Primitive Technology

by David Wescott

  rasp - friction idiophones, very common

  concussion drum - hollow gourd - open end strikes the ground

  bullroarer, buzzer - parts strike the air to create a sound ung-klung - bamboo cut to varying sizes with a clapper inside kalimba (thumb piano), xylophone, marimba - composite idiophone

  bell - clay, copper

  clapper and click sticks - one item with a split, or two sticks tapped together

  Aerophone - wind/horn-like instruments, or wind created noises.

  Transverse - blown like true flute, blown perpendicular to the instrument.

  Vertical - wind enters via one end of the instrument.

  Oblique - blown across the top like a pop bottle.

  Sample Instruments -

  trumpet - shell, didjeridu, gourd

  whistle - single or limited tones

  pan pipe - limited evidence

  flutes/flageolet - wind split by reed or beveled edge

  ocarina - clay or gourd five hole instrument

  Membranophones - instruments with taut skins.

  Most widely played instrument.

  Single head / Double head

  Sample Instruments -

  pottery drum - pot may contain water under the head

  frame drum - thin with 1 or 2 heads

  cylinder drum - barrel, cone, hourglass

  talking drum - variable pitch drum

  friction drum -

  Cordophones - instruments with taut strings.

  Pluck/strum - extensive use in other continents, but not much recorded here.

  Hit - musical bows played over baskets or other resonator.

  Saw - bow with tight strings dragged over tight strings on instrument. Very recent.

  Sample Instruments -

  mouth bow - small or large - string plucked or taped with a stick

  resonator bow - berimbau

  earth bow - bow placed over 2 baskets

  harp, lute, zither - plucked or strummed strings

  violin - Seri, Tarahumara. Apache - single or multiple strings

  The Human Voice - "One man's music is another man's noise."

  The earliest known musical instruments in the world are a group of bone whistles and flutes from late glacial sites in Europe and dating from about 30,000 years ago...All of the flutes tested, and there are many, indicate conclusively the absence of any early fixed tonal system. John Coles

  Drums and stringed instruments have a long history of use in society and ceremony, but limited evidence of prehistoric use in this country.

  PRIMITIVE FLUTES OUT OF BONE:A SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN EXAMPLE

  By Manuel Lizarralde

  * * *

  On the summer of 1988, Akirida (a wise Bari Indian, my friend and collaborator) and I were walking in the rain forest of northwest Venezuela, when he pointed to a plant he called motubi. I was surprised because I knew the term motubi means flute but I did not know that it also meant a kind of bamboo. I asked Akirida if this bamboo could be used as a flute. Akirida said "akaing" (correct) and cut a section of bamboo with his machete. In a few seconds, he made two little holes and started to play it. Then, I realized that flutes can be made of any material, but bamboo is one of the most natural plant sources for the flute. However, bone is a very good raw material that is stronger and its beauty is favorable, probably because it resembles ivory, the color preferred by many cultures. I would like to share how and what I have learned about making bone flutes.

  Photo 1. The top cut is critical. The resulting hole must be close enough to at least one thin edge so that the wind is split by the bone when the flute is played(see Photo 3, and Norm Kidder's flute dawing).

  Although I do not have much skill playing flutes, I havemade many flutes that make similar sounds. I have made them out of bamboo (6), deer bones (5), lamb bones (3), and jaguar bones (1). My wife, Nerissa Russell, a zooarchaeologist working on Neolithic sites (5,400 year old) in eastern Europe, told me that bone tools tend to be made from wild animals as their bones are stronger and denser than those of domestic animals.

  In the spring of 1992, at the Glass Buttes Knap-in in the Oregon desert, I managed to do something I have wanted to accomplish for some time: construct a bone flute using only stone tools. A large deer was being butchered at the site with stone tools, and I saw this as my chance to do a stone-tool bone instrument, in this case with obsidian blades.

  The best bone for making flutes are tibias which are located between the ankle and knee in the front part of the rear leg . The tibia shaft has the natural shape of a pipe and the ends tend to be fairly soft and easy to work with stone tools. The tibia is more traingular than round, with three sides , wide, and its walls are thin near the ends.. The shaft is quite long (7-10 inches or 17.5-24 cm), and narrower in the center where the walls become thicker (this can be a problem when you drill the holes). Another nice characteristic is that the tibias' proportions are right for the human hands and mouth.

  The first tibia bone flute I ever saw was one made by the Warao Indians. My father gave it to me in 1988. He acquired it in 1969 in the small village of Ipania along the Guiniquina Creek in the Orinoco river delta, Venezuela. According to him, the Warao Indians used to make the flutes out of human tibias, specifically from enemies killed in warfare (Karibes and Arawaks). Nowadays they make them from the tibia of white tail deer. I have since stores in Venezuela, four more bone flutes from the Pemon indigenous people. They had basically the same characteristics, but the deer bone was 3/4 the size of the Warao bone flute. This makes me suspect that this is the basic design and style for Venezuelan Indian flutes. It seems that jaguar bone and deer bone flutes are common in the Guyana region of South America and the North Western part of the Amazon. The Tukano indigenous people of the Vaupes region of Colombia also use jaguar tibias for their flutes.

  Photo 2. Joe Dabill and Manuel use a stone-tipped pump-drill to create the holes in the flute at Glass Buttes, 1993.

  Using the Warao Indian bone flute as the model, I made three more flutes at an experimental archaeology camp in Hungary in the summer of 1988 out of fallow deer tibias. I started with stone tools but finished the work with steel tools because the stone tools I had were not sharp enough. All three flutes produced nice sounds.

  During the summer of 1990 in the Venezuelan rain forest of the Sierra de Perija (near the Colombian border), the Bari indigenous people killed a jaguar and I tried to make a flute from one of the bones. Its shaft wall was too thick and the sound was not very good. Human and deer bones have thinner walls and a bigger hollow section for the marrow.

  Thus, in the spring of 1993, I got the great opportunity of not only having a fresh bone at hand but also an abundance of pristine rock (obsidian) to accomplish the task with primitive pre-metal technology. I was curious about not only how long it would take to accomplish the given task, but also how hard it would be.

  It is better to make bone tools or flutes when the bone is fresh because it is softer than when it is dry. To have lots of raw material is another ideal condition that I had at Glass Buttes. I was very lucky because I did this flute over a pile of obsidian flakes and near friends (most materials came from Steven Edholm) who lent me different kinds of drills and blades.

  The mule deer tibia is the biggest tibia I have used for a flute. I started to cut the upper part of the bone (the end near the knee joint) about 3/ 4 inch from the end with some thick obsidian blades (Photo 1). You need to make the grooves progressively deeper on the three sides of the bone, until you get to the marrow. Then, it is easy to snap off.

  On the far end of the bone, you make a 1/4 inch hole for the air to flow through when you blow on the flute (Photo 3). Make three or four 1/8 inch holes with a drill for creating different tones (Photo 2). I cleaned the marrow out of the bone with a stick, water and sand. With a piece of sandstone, I rubbed the bone walls to remove any soft tissues, and then used river sand and water to clean and polish the entire flute. In less than two hours, I had a working bone flut
e ready to be played by a primitive musician.

  Unhafted stone drill point

  Photo 3. The correct position for playing. The marrow hole is blocked by the lower lip and chin, and the air is blown across the thin edge of the bone.

  Photo 4. The finished flute and the tools used to create it. Lower left are the hafted stone drills and wooden shafts. The large flakes on the right were used for grooving and scraping the bone.

  * * *

  African Bottle-top Rattle

  By Rob Withrow

  Early visitors and traders to Africa found natives of the Belgian Congo with a sweet tooth for soda pop, especially Fanta Orange. After enjoying the drink, being a "no-discard" society, the people soon found other uses for the empty bottles and caps. One of the most honorable jobs ever given to a bottle-cap was that of achieving music. It became the tinkling, snapping, tambourinic transmitter for the little known "Ziarian Pop Shaker" rhythm instrument.

  For those who undertake this project always remember, "some things need a good shaking in order to achieve that which it aren't" HA! Enjoy.

  My thanks to Bill Kelso for showing me my first and allowing me to replicate and submit this information on a most unique bit of historic musical instrumentation.

  Flatten the caps and then burn in fire to remove plastic coating. Quench in water to remove temper.

  * * *

  MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

  Text and Illustrations By Norm Kidder

  * * *

  Throughout Central California and beyond, music and dance were the media of communication with the world of 'spirits'. Songs were received from this realm during dreams or trances, and had associated powers enjoyed by the owner of the song. Songs were employed in hunting to 'charm' the spirit of the animal, during food preparation to guarantee proper results, in gambling to draw on the help of supernatural powers, in courtship to bring divine assistance to the cause of love, in ceremonies to communicate with the creative forces to restore or maintain harmony in the world, or simply to build your relationship with power (which is often called medicine). Songs were sung to greet the sun each morning, thanking it for returning to maintain its regular habits. In a world totally controlled by unseen forces, song and its visible representation, dance, were the means of maintaining the perfection of creation. The dances of the Northwest coast of California are called World Renewal dances, in Australia, men followed maps, called songlines, to periodically re-sing the world into existence, or else it might fade. In much of 'pre-contact' society, music and dance were anything but mere amusement.

  The instrument most often associated with Indian dances in America today is the drum. The steady rhythm of the drum is likened to the heartbeat of the earth. In some parts of north central California, a section of hollow log was placed over a trench, and pardad with feet or poles to produce a drum-like sound, but the skin covered drum was unknown until the arrival of Europeans. In it's place, various types of rattles took over the role of rhythm instrument.

  The most common, and widely used rattle form was the split stick rattle, or clap-stick. The simplest was a piece of elderberry, bay or other straight grained wood (now also bamboo) about 2 feet long (Photo 1) which was split length-wise, leaving an unsplit handle. Any pithy center was removed (Photo 2), and the stick was struck against the opposite hand to produce a clacking sound. If the split was controlled to approach one side, it produced a looser half which could be made to clap against its partner by snapping the arm with a stiff wrist in the air, creating a sound that has been compared to castanets. The same effect was achieved by carving away wood at the base end of one side (then the top) to make it limber enough to snap in the air. These rattles were used by the members of the chorus which accompanied ceremonial dances, and sometimes during gambling and doctoring. Today, these instruments, often made of bamboo and called batons, or just bats, are used by singers to establish the rhythms of the dances. One singer in particular, known as the rock, isresponsibleforcon-trolling the movements of the dance while the others concentrate on the song.

  Photo 1. Coastal and Inland-style (CA) dapper sticks.

  Jim Riggs carving out the pithy center of an elderberry clapper with a crooked knife. Winter Count '95.

  Rattles may show up during other kinds of singing as well. Doctors of many specialties use rattles made of deer toes (see page 25), large moth cocoons, or the split sticks to accompany their power songs as they call upon spirits to help cure an illness, bad weather, or other disharmony which needs 'fixing'.

  Whistles also served as rhythm instruments, and were used mainly by the dancers (it would be hard for the singers to blow them). They were made either of elderberry, cane, or hollow bones, had a single hole cut near the middle with a plug of pitch or asphaltum to aim the air flow against the edge of the central hole (Photo 3). The combination of clap sticks, voices, whistles and movement create a rich tapestry that is certainly enthralling to the audience of people, and I assume to the spirits as well.

  Two other instruments are known from our area which were used in more personal contexts. The musical bow was sometimes made for the purpose, although a hunting bow might also be used. One end of the bow wood is held against the teeth, and the string plucked or hit with an arrow or stick. Varying tension on the string can produce a range of tones. The sound is only clearly heard inside the head of the musician, making this a private experience. The last musical instrument known from the 'old days' was the flute.

  Except for the Mohave peoples of southern California who used a typical plains type flageolet (the love flute still popular today) the remainder of groups used a simple open ended flute. This was made from a hollowed elderberry tube, with the ends beveled, and four holes burned or drilled in line along the center of the tube. It is played by blowing across the open end at an angle that will produce the flute-like note. The four holes change the note, but are not standardized into a specific scale. Each flute produces it's own music. Some flutes were played from either end, producing two different scales. At times the players added complexity to the sound by humming as they blew, creating a type of harmony. These flutes were used in courtship of both future wives and possible spirit helpers. The flute is simple to make but takes considerable practice to master. Receiving a powerful song with the aid of the flute however, would provide lasting benefit to the musician. (Songs were owned, and only worked for the original receiver, although others might sing them) (See Paul Campell's article for a more complete presentation of the California-style flute).

  To make any of these instruments you must first find an appropriate piece of elderberry (Sambucus sp.). If possible, harvest in the winter from a tree growing in a canyon where it gets enough sun light to grow strong, but not so much that it doesn't have to grow straight. If possible, let the piece dry completely (stripping the bark speeds this process), as it will be easier to work and won't warp later. Also, elderberry juice is poisonous, so don't put green elderberry in your mouth. (Some people react to elderberry juice and get a skin rash.)

  For a flute, cut a piece about an inch or inch and a quarter in diameter, and 9-12 inches long, cutting through a node at each end if possible. Check to see how much of the cross section is wood, and how much is soft and pithy. The ideal for a flute is a minimum of 1/8 inch thick ring of wood, to a maximum of 3/16 of an inch. After the piece has dried, gouge out the pithy center using a hard stick with the end cut to a chisel edge. Smooth and polish the inside. Cut or grind the edges of the tube to a bevel from the outside (see illustration). Draw a line down the length of the tube and mark four points along it for the holes. Placement of the holes is determined by ease of fingering. Often holes were paired, with two fingers of each hand covering a set of holes. If the holes are not centered down the length of the tube, a different scale is produced by blowing each end. I use a piece of coat hanger wire heated red hot on a stove to burn in the holes.

  To play the flute, cover the holes and get comfortable, it could take a w
hile. Hold the end of the flute to your lower lip, which should cover almost all of the opening. Tip the tube down at about a 45 degree angle, and blow across the upper edge of the flute, changing the angles until a flute-like sound is made. I find I'm almost whistling at the point where it works. Then uncover the holes to get notes.

  (morf)

  V-W^I —------------------------- -■-

  It took me a long time to get a sound, and holding the angle requires real concentration.

  To make a clap stick, find an elderberry branch between 1 and 1 1/2 inches thick, and 1 1/2 and 2 feet long. If possible, cut it so that there is a natural handle formed at one end by a leaf node. The wood thickness should be greater than for a flute, with 1/4 inch thick sides ideal. Strip off the bark and dry. Split the end away from the handle by first picking aline that will split between any leaf scars present on the 'working' end, and ending at the leaf scars forming the handle. Set a wedge or knife blade on your line and carefully split the stick down to just short of the handle. Its better to split too short than too long. If the split was successful, carefully pull the two sides just far enough apart to slip a knife between them and cut away some of the pity core. Once you have created an open channel down the center of the stick use a long hard reamer to push out and break up the remaining pith down to the handle. At this point, hitting the clapper against your hand or leg should produce the clapping sound. If not, slip a thin piece of bark, buckskin, or such down to the bottom of the split to spread it slightly. To make the more responsive instrument, pick the half of the clapper that seems the looser, and make it progressively more so by cutting away wood just above the handle (see illustration) until it flaps easily, but doesn't break.