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Collaboration. Curator, Acknowledgements & Liaison by Hugeaux (Father of ARTE MECCO). Text & Illustrations by Doris Green is an ethnomusicologist, Fulbright scholar, creator of Greenotation. Epilogue by Dr. Sharon Diamond-Myrsten, MD is a Brooklyn native, transplanted to Virginia. She earned a degree in English literature from the College of William and Mary, and a medical degree from Eastern Virginia Medical School.

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Collaboration - Hugeaux, Doris Green, Dr. Sharon Diamond,MD

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The GREENOTATION EXHIBITION of Doris Green - Part 2

It is odd that the concept of African music and dance is not the same in Africa as it is in the western world. In fact, the words music and dance do not exist in a number of African languages. Music, Muziki, and Musique the terms used by Africans are all borrowed from languages of the colonizers, namely English, German and French. Ballet, dance and danse the words we use to describe dance are also borrowed from colonizers. Therefore, it is unsettling when the western world takes offense to the use of the term Ballet in the title of a number of African dance companies. Africans do not call their movement dance because the word is not part of their vocabulary. They consider their movements a spontaneous emanation of their lives, which are associated with an event that they choose to remember and record in the oral tradition affixed to the existing music. In fact African dance, as we know it did not exist in Africa before Maurice Sonar Senghor returned from France in the fifties with a plan for a theatrical movement he hoped to create in Senegal. It was the fifties and Africa was under colonial rule and dance was contained in the villages where it originated and never seen on stage. Mr. Senghor was a visionary, having studied all aspects of the theater in France, who successfully transferred African dance from the villages and hamlets to the stage of the theatre first in Dakar, and later to theaters of the world. Without his vision, African dance/music would still be languishing in the boundaries of remote villages unheard, unseen or enjoyed by the world.


The next instrument incorporated into the percussion notation system, was the Nigerian double bell. The more instruments I learned, the larger the system grew. The standard tones were Bass, Tone, Slap, and the stick struck upon the side of the drum. The stick stroke did not have a name until the sixties. By the early sixties, the symbols for the drum had grown from four tones to twelve. My system of percussion notation had undergone several name changes, Percussion, Muziki Wa Kiafrika, (Music of the people of Africa in the Kiswahili language of East Africa) Africa Vuwo (for Ghanaian music only), and back to Muziki Wa Kiafrika. Each of these names met objections from one African country to another. Therefore, I decided to name it Greenotation, to reflect me as its creator. The system has been approved by the OAU (Organization of African Unity) for adaptation and inclusion in all schools and colleges throughout Africa. The system has been applied to the music of Africa from Tanzania to Senegal. Greenotation has attracted the attention of a number of African music directors, ethnomusicologist, and agents of culture. It has been demonstrated in various countries with success. It was proclaimed as the system that Africa had been seeking for decades and it meets the criteria that Africans established they needed in a percussion notation system. It incorporates the music of all drums including talking drums, xylophones, rattles, hand clapping, stones, castanets, numerous bells and even water drums. This is the only system that aligns with dance movements keeping music and dance as conterminous integers of the whole. The late Timi of Ede of Nigeria applauded my work and extended an invitation for me to join him in Nigeria to put the Igbin drums in notation. When I demonstrated the system to the Late Duo Laid also of Nigeria, he marveled at my ability to notate the Talking drums, and invited me to return to Nigeria to work with him in notating both the Talking drum and the Bata drums. Unfortunately because of the unsettled environment in Nigeria caused by coup d'etat, they both died before I could return to Nigeria. Maurice Senghor would support my work in Senegal and other French countries in Africa. Today Greenotation had been applied to percussion music throughout Africa.

THE SCIENCE OF WRITING MUSIC FOR AFRICAN PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS.
1. In Africa the music is played for the greater majority on percussion instruments. In the western world musicians are able to reproduce the music of ancient musicians merely by turning the pages of sheet music, and reading the notes. Sheet music for drummers and other players of African percussion instruments does not exist. Percussion music is an oral tradition that is passed from one generation to the next by a mouth-to-ear process. Unfortunately any culture that is entirely dependent upon oral communication for transmission of its culture is doomed to partial failure because of the breakdown of human memory and outside interpretation. The western music note does not mean anything to the African musician. It does not tell the drummer if he is to strike the drum with his whole hand, half hand, or a stick. Neither does this black note with the stem tell the African if his hand remained in contact with the drumhead or if it immediately rebounded from the drumhead.

2. Without a system that could annotate the sonorities and nuances found in African music, these rhythms remained largely in their place of origin not even crossing the border into neighboring countries. Without a system for writing music of percussion instruments, the music of Africa was lost each time the holder of this knowledge died. Therefore, Africa was in dire need of a system wherein percussion music could be written. A number of ethnomusicologists who tried to use the western musical note in their attempts to notate African drums found the limitations of the western system. African musicians launched an extensive search for an African notation system. One of the recommendations was that any system of notation should include other elements of the culture such as dance, which shares an inseparable relationship with music.


Copyright Hugeaux All Rights Reserved. Copyright Doris Green All Rights Reserved. Permission Granted. Copyright Sharon Diamond-Myrsten All Rights Reserved. Permission Granted.