June 29, 19 2 2
MUSICAL COURIER
6
AN AFRICAN SCALE
By Nic. G. J. Ballanta-Taylor
Copyrighted, 1922, by The Musical Courier Company.
In the notation of this scale I have always treated it as an ordinary minor scale with a major third; when so noted it is very easy to write down any melodies.
The scale is different from the major scale by having (a) steps of whole tone for five degrees, and (b) the interval of a semitone each between the third and fourth and fifth and sixth degrees:
whole tone steps
,-nTo^o ^	״
Ex.12
semitone semitone
Its Use and the Forms It Assumes.
I shall now show the various ways in which this scale is used and the forms it then assumes:
(a) In all melodies, the five principal tones given in Example. 1 will be found; some melodies are constructed mainly upon those five tones, when it takes the form of a pentatonic scale.
(bj If the melody begins with the fourth degree it sometimes contains the flat third; the scale then appears as a minor scale with the raised sixth and flat seventh:
Ex.13
(c)	Some melodies begin with the lowered third. In such cases they would appear to be constructed on the ordinary major scale but with this difference: there would then be found either no subdominant or a raised subdominant.
(d)	The lowering of the third note of the scale from F sharp to F natural places this scale within the definition of the major scale; that is the reason why many melodies at first hearing suggest the major scale; but the harmonies attendant on such melodies and the fact that the cadences sometimes are on the dominant instead of the tonic utterly disprove any such contention. On the other hand there is a decided tendency, especially in districts where European music is prevalent,_ to the exclusive use of the major and minor scales. I give the following from Sierra Leone as an example (Sierra Leone has been a British dependency since the eighteenth century) :
(e)	If this scale begins on the fourth degree without any alteration, we then have a form of the ascending melodic minor scale:
Ex.16
possessing (a) the raised sixth, (b) a leading note, and many melodies are constructed on this form of the scale.
Many of the American negro melodies bear testimony to this scale_ if it is accepted that the inconsistencies are due to white influence.
The negro folk song, “O Rock Me, Julie” is very characteristic :
Ex.17
This is, however, noted as based on the whole tone scale; but the G sharp and B natural do not appear to be consistent with whole tone principles.
* * *
In the next instalment I shall discuss the form of the melodies themselves, the rhythm of the music and the method of accompaniment.
Marie B. Bencheley Song Delayed in Printing
Marie B. Bencheley’s waltz song composition, entitled “Spring Comes Dancing In,” has been delayed in being printed, owing to the fact that Miss Bencheley has not been able to find suitable words for the song. It has been planned to publish it as a waltz song without words, for a coloratura voice, but should Miss Bencheley find a suitable verse she would consider using it. Miss Bencheley is a well known vocal teacher of Minneapolis.
Arthur Shepherd Married
Arthur Shepherd, assistant director of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, was married to Grazella Pulver, on Saturday, May 27, in the Unity Church of that city. Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd were at home after June IS.
NIG. G. J. BALLANTA-TAYLOR
(A Personal Autobiography)
I WAS born at Kissy, a village three miles to the southeast of Freetown, in Sierra Leone, on March 14, 1893. My father died when I was ten years of age. While I was at the Grammar School in Freetown, my tutor gave me lessons on the clarinet, and by degrees I became sergeant of the school band. In 1906 I had completed the book entitled “Clarke’s Catechism in Music,” and won the first prize in music in two successive years at the Government exhibition; I began lessons in organ playing, and in 1910 I was appointed organist of the Grammar School. In 1911 I was appointed organist of St. Patrick’s Church in Sierra Leone, and in that year I gained a Church Missionary Society’s scholarship to prepare for the ministry. As I did not wish to enter the Church, I abandoned the scholarship. I submitted an anthem to No-vello in London in 1912, but it was returned with the remark that it should be corrected. As yet I had not studied harmony and counterpoint, etc. I then began the study of harmony in 1913 and I had to study by myself, there being no teachers in the theory of music in Sierra Leone. I studied first Ralph Dunstan’s elementary harmony; followed that by Vincent, and then I read Prout and many others in counterpoint. I studied Pearce, Proud, Bridge and several others, and read also books on form, free counterpoint, fugue, etc., all by myself. In 1917 I presented myself as a candidate in music at Durham University in England and was successful in the first examination for the degree of Bachelor of Music. I have not yet presented myself for the final examination on account of financial difficulties. I came to this country with the hopes of having some of my works performed before going to England to take the final examination.
Nic. G. J. Ballanta-Taylor.
There is an instrument like the xylophone which produces more notes than these five, and several other instruments produce divers inflections of the five notes given in Example 1, according to the taste of the performer. The flute players, however, by means of cross fingerings could produce two more notes which correspond to the original notes on the keyboard of the “Balanje” (Mendi) ; these are: (1) The note a tone lower than C, viz, B flat, and (2) the note a tone higher than E, viz, F sharp. The notes B flat and F sharp appear to have been formerly used as auxiliary notes only; that is, the note B flat is used as the next note below C and F sharp as that above E, as the following examples show :
But an examination of the “keyboard” instrument and the analysis of many other melodies prove conclusively that at one time or another the notes B flat and F sharp were used as melody notes and are so now used.
Ex.9
See also Example 4 above, where the B natural appears as one of the notes of a chord in bye-tones. It may be interesting to compare this with S. Coleridge-Taylor’s “African Love Song” in his African suite where the tonic is used as an embellishment of the flat seventh.
The complete scale therefore is as follows:
AFTER I had completed the course of my academical training in music, being a West African negro, I searched in vain for information about native scales —their formation and their mode of treatment. As I had to study the English text books, I was well conversant with all scales in western Europe but was unable to express myself in the musical language of the country where I was born, at least intelligibly.
One great difference between African music and that of the Caucasian races is that of the leading note. The African, untouched by European musical influence, does not at any time use the note a semitone below as the lower auxiliary note to any principal tone. When one’s ear has been trained so to use the lower auxiliary, he is bewildered to find that the music of his own people does not fit itself easily to the rules given by his tutors. It is true that some of the ecclesiastical modes possess this peculiarity—that is, a note which is a whole tone below the final. It is also true that some composers usually approach the cadence in the major key through the minor seventh; but these composers do not write in the native African scales, nor does the study of the ecclesiastical modes assist one in his quest for some data to work upon any more than an assiduous study of Greek literature furthers one’s progress in the mastering of, say, the Mendi language or any other African language. The only avenue open to me, therefore, was to embark upon the task of studying the native scales or any one of them and the best mode of treatment.
The musical scale of the negroes of Northwestern Africa —that is, in the Senegal, Gambia, French Guinea and Sierra Leone—consist of five principal tones:
Ex.1
4 ^ ~־Y־-»	°
These tones are those that could be produced by an instrument resembling the flute and made of wood, which the Mendis called “Ballanji” and the Jolloffs “Gerar.”
This instrument has three pairs of holes which, by playing the instrument flutewise, produce the following sounds in succession:
Ex.2
i a____________3	4________5	6________
־u-----°---------------------------------------
1st pair	2nd pair 3rd pair.
The sixth note is the octave of the first, which is the final. The note G, beginning the second pair, is a kind of dominant (I use this term in the sense of prominence). The fifth note, the C, the first of the third pair, is the penultimate note of one of the cadences. Between the first and second pairs the distance is three semitones according to the European method of dividing the octave, as also between the second and third pairs.
There are two principal cadences. These are formed by the notes contained in the second and third pairs and have specific meaning:
(a)	When the second pair is used the melody is of a solemn character;
(b)	The third pair denotes the ending of a joyful strain.
Ex.3
The first pair of notes given above is very rarely used as the last notes of a melody, although it frequently occurs as a sort of middle cadence as in the second bar of (a), above where the triplet group is barely an ornamental presentation of the first pair of the series.
In addition to these two final cadences there are two others which are formed by the notes a minor third apart as they are given in Example 2, viz:
Ex.10
It is not uncommon, however, that in proceeding from G to F downwards, the F sharp is sometimes lowered to F natural; this is easily explained by the system of key relationships as in the key of one sharp more: F and not F sharp would be the note below the final:
Ex.11
These two are the regular middle cadences. When they are used as final cadences those cadences are more often than not extended by the addition of the regular final forms:
Ex.6_ Allegro a !>,!> M ^	Chorus	
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