Un chant du Tibesti (Tchad)

The male solo analyzed here was composed by a youth during a fifteen-day trip by camel that took him from the Tibesti in the Chad to Fezzan in the Murzuk region of Libya. It is a dithyrambic song dedicated to a woman, and the Teda call it dobana tvrkia, or « song of the saddle. » A semantic analysis of the words shows that this is an elaborate composition that can be understood on several levels. The composer mixes stereotyped traits with real traits which, in fact, allow listeners to identify the family the song is destined for. As for the form, it is a poem in verse with a strophic structure. An analysis of the melody brings to light some of the norms which the author adheres to ; we can then establish the synoptic transcriptions and schémas of these norms, though they obviously remain implicit both for the singer and the listener. It appears that the melodic system is based on a hierarchy of degrees ; originality resides in the fact that each degree is polyvalent and its place in the hierarchy varies according to whether it is in one or the other segments that makes up the melodic strophe. This is exactly the opposite of the tonal system where, in a given key, the tonic, the dominant, and so on do not change throughout the composition. We will not study the rythmic system here, as it poses more general questions, which will be the subject of another paper. At the end of this analysis, we raise the question of the nature of the complex relations that exist between the music and the words. It seems that the two are of equal importance and coordinated rather than one being subordinate to the other

Art · Hierarchy · Linguistics · Literature · Melody · Musical · Originality · Poetry · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African Studies and Geopolitics · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy