Side A: Birom Music; Songs: (1) This song tells of ancestors and their deeds. Instruments: drum and voice. (2) A song for threshing acha. (3) Planting acha song. A ceremonial song for the ceremonial planting of the first acha. (4) Another acha threshing song. These songs are a medium of gossip and ridicule; a measure of social control. (5) Ancient song about a chit (spirit). Instruments: a dried cactus with notches cut into it and rubbed with a stick. Also used is the yom shit (a zither). (6) Song of a ceremony no longer performed, associated with the fertility of women and land and marriage. Side B: Igigwe music; The instruments are drums of various sizes, rattles of seeds in grass woven pods which are tied to the dancers legs, and one-note fifes, which give an organ-like sound because the players of one orchestra have fifes of different pitches.
Donor:
Leonard Plotnicov and University Appropriation
Collection place:
Nigeria
Verbatim coll. place:
Du near Bukuru (Nigeria) and Miange (Nigeria)
Collector:
Audrey Smedley and Luc Buquieaux
Collection date:
1961
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Audio reel tapes, Drums (membranophones), and Zithers