* for better viewing EXPAND your monitors*
An ONLY On-Line Exhibition
Fulbright Scholar
Doris Green
Creator of
GREENOTATION
THE SCIENCE
OF
WRITING MUSIC FOR AFRICAN
PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS
Text / Documentation and Illustrations by Doris Green
Curator, Acknowledgements and Liaison by Hugeaux
Epilogue by Dr. Sharon Diamond-Myrsten, MD
Acknowledgements by Hugeaux
Text by Doris Green
Doris Green is an ethnomusicologist, Fulbright scholar, creator of Greenotation, a system for writing music for percussion instruments of Africa, certified teacher of Labanotation and a U.S. State Department Cultural Specialist. She publishes Traditions Journal which is dedicated to the preservation of African music and dance.
Epilogue by Dr. Sharon Diamond-Myrsten, MD
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. She is a practicing board-certified family physician, and a practicing writer. Dr. Diamond-Myrsten has had many opportunities to work with Doris Green since the 1970s, and briefly served as editor of Green’s journal, Traditions.
This written collaboration is published and archived on-line at
THE MINORITY PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
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How to view an Art / Photography exhibition Online.
By HUGEAUX
April 12, 2006
Copyright HUGEAUX All Rights reserved
On-line art / photography exhibitions do not deal with size, but with CONTENT.
Many of you are similar to me. We work, live; pay bills and virtually live through our computers. Now with the 1001 things to do with the computer, let me add another. As an artist/photographer I have found it very difficult to view good art, within the solitude of my created surrounding. Now there is a way. These precepts are catered to viewing art via museums, and not galleries.
Much concentration is placed upon visiting a museum to view an exhibition, not to mention the cost, which make our concentration more direct. When viewing an exhibition at a museum, one usually has done some background research upon the importance of the exhibition. The atmosphere is non-negatively quiet (Hugeaux coined phase). The promenade is a slow stroll. Reading is a must. Many of the world famous museums give their patrons a place to escape the world for a few hours. The exhibitions are open domain and you can spend as long or as little time as you like. You do not have to have special knowledge of art.
How can this be established in our own individual havens? We must create a time for it. On-line exhibitions are very focused. They are usually obtained through a password portal, which is given to the individuals invited. This concept is similar to Unveilings, before public access.
Tips on viewing an art / photography exhibition Online:
- Remember like at a museum, prepare yourself for a journey and reading.
- Don’t view the exhibition as a slide show.
- Read the entire Preface, before viewing the exhibition.
- Try to make a comparison with other art forms, styles, objects or experiences.
- Use the scroll bar, instead of the clicker.
- Confine one image to one page frame.
- A second introductory statement should be place one-third and/or two-thirds within the exhibition.
- Re-adjust your seating and viewing arrangement at another angle for the exhibition.
- Clean you monitor glass.
- Right click to adjust size.
- Remember unlike a museum, you will not be over-powered by size, but by CONTENT.
- Choose various focal point of the image for concentration.
- Pay close attention to subject matter as it pertains to history, ethnicity, culture, structure or the likes.
- Pay close attention to dates, as they record different times in history.
Acknowledgements by Hugeaux
I first met Doris Green at Ohio University at the African Art Conference New Perspectives in African Performing and Visual Arts: First Biannual International Conference for Performers, Visual Artists, Educators, Teachers and Scholars.APRIL 18 -21, 2007 in Athens, Ohio. She was fascinated by my presentation on " The Importance of Documentation and The History of ARTE MECCO " and how I have used the Internet as a international educational / promotional apparatus. I mentored her upon publishing her first On-Line article. Thusly she has assisted me in creating a text for my ONLY On-Line web site Photography exhibition 2008 titled: CONCEPTION. Doris Green is truly an innovator of her time. Seeing a need in the Humanities and fully creating a dialogue for future historians to follow. I am privilege to have such a colleague in my realm of friends. This ONLY On-Line exhibition by Doris Green titled: GREENOTATION is another spoke in the wheel where contributors of the written document are being house in the Fine Arts. GREENOTATION is a topic in the Humanities. This ONLY On-Line exhibition: GREENOTATION shall surely preserve in history
WHAT IS GREENOTATION(?)
© D. Green, 2001
Greenotation is an innovative system for writing music of percussion instruments. Doris Green created it as a codified system to teach drummers who could not read music. As you know the notes used in the western music system mean nothing to the average African drummer. Western notes are suitable for melodies, but not percussion music. The actions that occur in traditional African music of percussion instruments cannot be written with western musical notes. For example a written quarter note does not indicate whether the drum was struck with a half hand or the whole hand, whether the stick bounced off or remained in contact with the drumhead. All of these actions and nuances have to be notated, as they are part of African music, the way the sounds of percussion music are produced. Therefore a new system had to be created to accommodate the actions and sounds of percussion music.
New paper Clip
WAL FADJRI Number 328.
Circa: Du 28 Aout au 3 September 1992
Section: En Relief
"This is a clipping from a newspaper in Dakar, Senegal. In fact at the time there were five articles written on me and my work to make Dakar the Cultural capital of West Africa. "
As a youngster, I took music and dance as activities to keep me out of harm's way. Piano lessons were the norm of the time, but I desired to play the drums, but there was no place to study African drums. On the other hand ballet and tap were the traditional forms of dance offered, but I was always interested in dancing the way of my ancestors. I would receive the opportunity to dance the ways of my people in an annual recital at Carnegie Hall. Congo drummers were playing and a routine was choreographed. I was one of a group of dancers assigned to this new rendition of music/dance. When we started to dance, my movements were more energetic than the others and they stopped. I had the stage to myself and I created my choreography. My dance so impressed the teacher that I was granted a solo spot featuring the African dance expression. My routine was called Queen of the Jungle Mist.
Each year I had to create a new routine for the dance performance. But I would find out that the drummers could not read music and did not drum the same rhythm from one rehearsal to the next, which made it difficult for me to choreograph the routine. Therefore I had to create a way for the Congo drummers to be able to play the rhythms I desired. I was a teenager facing what seemed to be an insurmountable task creating a new music system specifically for percussion instruments. I quietly went about the task of creating a percussion notation system. I used my music background and what was available to me to lay the foundation of the percussion notation system. The sounds the drum emitted when played would lay the foundation upon which to erect the building bricks of the system. There were no studios or schools in my immediate or adjacent neighborhood where Congo drumming was taught. Also drumming was considered a male activity and few drummers were willing to contaminate their macho image by teaching females to drum. I would struggle to learn and gained much through being observant as no one could hinder my vision or hearing.
One of my early methods was done in a box with a circle in each corner = four circles to a box. The time signature for this was quarter time. The circles represented the drumhead. In each circle was a pattern that indicated what the drummer was to play. Each box represented one measure of music and was read clockwise starting at the top left. When the drummer finished the measure, he would repeat the measure until a different measure that indicated a change occurred. I used this system to notate the drum rhythms of Batakoto, which was one of the more popular dances of the fifties. This worked well for Batakoto as it was repetitive and only required a few changes. However, it did not work, as well for other African selections, such as Fanga that was the rave of the fifties. Therefore, I set out to improve the system to be able to add other instruments and to include dance.
One cannot forget that there is an inseparable relationship between African music and dance. In fact in Africa, no dance is performed without its music. I was making great strides in notating music for African drums, but had difficulty in writing the accompanying movements. My method of writing dance movements was beginning to disintegrate as they were written in word descriptions that became more difficult to read as time went by. In 1962, Labanotation, a system for writing dance movements would be offered in Brooklyn College for the first time. Without hesitation, I became an undergraduate student to study how to write dance. When reading the text, I found that my system and Labanotation shared many of the same principles. I would combine the two systems and continue to construct a more effective percussion notation system.
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 SCIENE 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.
Photo of Sabar drummers
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.
Sabar score
3. Doris Green, one of the great minds of our times, as a teenager began to create a system for writing drum music because Congo drummers could not read music and never played the music the same way twice. This was the beginning of the phenomenal task of creating a system of writing music for percussion instruments of Africa. It was obvious that the western music note was unable to notate the sonorities and nuances found in percussion music. Therefore an entirely new system had to be created that could effectively annotate the music of percussion instruments and include within its staff the corresponding dance movements. Thus Doris Green created GREENOTATION, an innovative musical system for writing African music. Greenotation is based upon the rectangle, which can be prolonged or subdivided to represent timing. Different shadings and designs within the rectangle indicate what is played and the sound to be produced.
Understanding Sabar
4. Greenotation uses a three-lined staff that is oriented to the centerline, which divides the right from the left. Consequently anything written on the right indicates played with the right hand or the right side of an instrument and vice versa. The staff is read from the bottom to the top. The music is written on the left side and the dance on the right side of the integrated score.
Sabar score
5. The dance notation system, Labanotation, is used to represent dance movements. The basic symbol of Labanotation is the rectangle. Different shadings indicate the level of movement. Modification of the rectangle indicates the direction of the movement. Dance notation uses an eleven column staff. The position of these symbols on the staff indicates which part of the body is used.
Understanding Dance steps and gestures
6. Sabar is the national dance of Senegal. The National Ballet of Senegal performed this dance in October 1971. This dance changed the face of African dance forever, bringing African dance to new heights and making Sabar the most popular dance. Since 1971 Sabar has eclipsed Fanga as the most famous African dance.
Insert : Understanding Sabar 3jpg
7. In reading a score, please note that items that are written together are performed together. Items that are written sequentially are performed one after the other. From this day forth, African music and dance will be preserved in written documentation. If you can COUNT TO FOUR, you can read and perform Sabar.
Solo Sabar drummer
8. The Greenotation system has been applied to the music and dance of more than 25 nations of Africa. The O.A.U has recommended it for all schools and colleges throughout Africa. A number of African musicologists, choreographers, theater directors, cultural experts, educators have experienced the benefits of this innovative creation. They welcome Greenotation as the system wherein their complex rhythmic music, together with the accompanying dance movements, can be written, and performed from the printout. Greenotation provides African music with the scientific basis it formerly lacked yet it is so easy to use. With the advent of Greenotation no longer will the music of Africa be lost when its holder dies. No longer will the music be buried in the grave where it is lost to the world forever. Greenotation has provided perpetual life to African music.
The letter by Maurice Senghor
Doris and Maurice outside Minister of Culture office.
Epilogue
By Dr.Sharon Diamond-Myrsten
“Drums, rattles, bells, toes, hips, knees/ Culture handed down to younger hands and feet
But when gray-haired hands are lost, and young ears turn deaf/ Culture fades to black”
The communicative nature of African music and dance has allowed histories to be maintained, and culture transmitted in a way that most Western minds do not readily comprehend. The fact that traditional African music is entirely rooted within language severely places the preservation of cultural experiences at risk. This endangered state becomes more apparent as Western culture and ideologies encroach upon even the most remote locales.
“Black circles, dots, and lines on white pages/ re-marrying movement to sound
Can you not hear the percussion, can you not see the body in flight/As they emanate from the page?”
Early attempts to notate separated African music from dance, essentially hobbling any efforts to preserve culture. Doris Green’s talents as a linguist, dancer, and musician, enriched by her passion of her unknown forebears have enabled her to reach far beyond the basic theories of instrumentation and notation. Her unification of music and dance onto a single score has brought into existence what had never been imagined beyond the boundaries of her own self. It is precisely for this reason that Doris Green’s work is so integral to the preservation of African music and dance. Her work ensures its survival, and retains its core purposes- the commemoration of the experiences of a people, the preservation of culture, and its perpetuity into the future.
Credits / Footnotes / Links
http://www.brooklynx.org/neighborhoods/panafrican
http://www.africancutureonline.com/forums/articles.
http://ntama.uni-mainz.de/content/view/11/29/
www.ohiou.edu/africanarts/keynotes.html
http://dance.osu.edu/5_resources/labanlab/rhythmsfolder/rhythms_dance_welcome.html
http://minuet.dance.ohio-state.edu/~labanwriter1/labantalk/
http://dance.osu.edu/5_resources/labanlab/rhythmsfolder/rhythms_dances_agbadza.html
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