Tribal dance.

Recently I saw a typical old-style TV documentary featuring some 'primitive' tribe somewhere in a very non-western place.  Among the many aspects of their culture being highlighted was their folk music.

We the viewers meet someone presented as the tribal elder (or  maybe just some old guy) named "Ng!tu", or something equally non-western.  Ng!tu pulls out a thoroughly non-western looking device and uses it to make very non-western sounds.  In response everybody jumps, claps, moves in circles, showing all the signs of  high party time on the veldt.  The clear message is that I am witnessing music and dance and if I don't 'get it' thats just because I'm a white male from the USA without 3 doctorates and therefore I am a hateful evil idiot and inherently inferior.  

I can accept non-western musical concepts. Sounds need not conform to my habitual expectations in order to be called "music".  Though it doesn't sound a bit like what I sing in the shower I’m not suggesting for a moment that Ng!tu or his music is less valid.  Nevertheless out of training and habit when I listen to Ng!tu’s music I seek meter, tonal centers, and recurring thematic elements. I find none of those things.  Maybe this is a precise art form very different from what I’ve heard.  
 

On the other hand maybe Ng!tu’s  music sounds odd to me because ...well, because maybe Ng!tu sucks.

NatGeo is packaging Ng!tu as the hot talent in town but let’s face it - there are other possible explanations.  We've been deceived by pseudo-intellectual television with ulterior motives so often that if you're not questioning the message then you're not thinking. Maybe the NatGeo crew is sorta embellishing this. Maybe?

Perhaps when Ng!tu brings out his …errr ...  instrument … 80% of the tribe thinks  "Oh, shit. Crazy old bastard gonna screw up my favorite song again! I hate it when he does that".

Maybe the only reason anyone listens when
 Ng!tu plays is because he is the boss.  When the Bossman plays you gotta flatter him or else when gnu dinner night comes around - you get a hoof.  

Maybe he owns the only instrument in the village and won't let anyone else touch it.

Maybe they're all waiting for him to die so they can give the damned thing to somebody who isn't tone-deaf.

I'd like to see the khaki-clad nerd boys from NatGeo go to the twentysomethings in the tribe and say "Look ... really ... is the old guy alright, or do you think he's been in the sun too long?" or maybe  “Is this how you always dance or are you just punkin' it up because the guy in the Birkenstocks has a camera?"

Then again perhaps its not only the NatGeo gang who are “embellishing” here.  Maybe when the Land Cruiser fulla smarmy eggheads is spotted kicking up dust on the horizon ol' Ng!tu gathers the family and says  "Yonder comes the dorkmobile again. What we feed ‘em this time?  Hows about I get out that stupid thing I made one night on peyote. I'll make noises like I'm squeezing a cat and you guys all jump around the way we did when N’gati broke the anthill.  We'll tell ‘em it's a party or a religious ceremony or some crap,  that should get us all some good face time.   I’ll text Uncle Mudabo in Nairobi and have him Tivo the show when it runs."

In my mind I try to envision what would happen if a similar gang of young eager journalists chose to make one of their enlightening documentaries in the small town where I grew up during the 1970s.

Hey, it’s MY imagination and I can waste it if I wanna!

In my mind I see a troupe of city folk riding into town with cameras, microphones, and notepads to document local culture, somehow arriving at the home of my uncle Clem.

Uncle Clem was kind-hearted and charming, but perpetually in need of a shave and a bath. He was known for his quick smile & folksy wit and he was generally well-liked around town (from a reasonable distance). His favorite thing to do was play guitar and sing. His musicianship was, unfortunately, as fine as his fashion sense. He had a voice like a running chain saw being swung through a window by an angry chimp. As for his sense of rhythm, he could scarcely tap out ‘shave and a haircut’ so that it was recognizable.

Uncle Clem’s guitar was just as sophisticated as the man himself, with rusted frayed strings and visible cracks in the wood predating my earliest memories. One or more of the tuners were always broken so that pliers were needed to turn them.  Since it was a long walk to the tool shed Uncle Clem just didn't worry about tuning it at all - he couldn’t tell the difference anyway. He paid $11.50 for it via mail-order in the 1950s and never took care of it. By the 70s it would have needed repair just to qualify as firewood.

When the camera crew arrives Uncle Clem is thrilled to have a new audience, so it takes little encouragement to bring out his heartfelt rendition of "Oh, Susanna".  The cameras roll, and captured for everyone's cross-cultural edification is "Oh, Susanna" without tonal center, without meter ... you know ... all that stuff I mentioned above.

"Oh, it rained hard all durn night ...it gets dry 'round here ...

Oh, Suzanna don't never cry fer me no mo neither ...

la la la..."

A few dozen of his children & grandchildren gather around to see the strangers. They giggle and squirm and jump around  - not because it is a tribal dance, but for various personal reasons including:

• the little ones have plentiful energy & can't afford to entertain themselves any other way
• some are excited because they've never been close to anyone with a car less than 20 years old
• a few have to go to the bathroom but the guy with the note pad & Harry Potter glasses is blocking the door.
• 3 of them got into poison oak and the itching is driving them bonkers
• most of the girls 12 or older are trying to flirt with the cameraman - or ANY man for that matter

Just down the road lived Edgar, a handsome well-groomed fellow with a fine quality guitar and a voice fit for Carnegie Hall.  People enjoyed listening to Edgar, which is yet another way in which he differed from Uncle Clem.

Which of these men would become the subject of someone's "cultural study" and accompanying video documentary: Edgar, or Uncle Clem? Take a guess.

I loved my Uncle Ng!tu ... er... Clem, but I always tried not to be there when he played guitar.

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© 2013 Raymond Blowers

December’s Rumbly Brainfarts will describe a studious search - to find the time.