Songs and dances classification

To refer to a song, often the one they have just sung or heard, people mention certain characteristics of the song or they use a name.
Characteristics are the occasion(s) at which the song is typically used, the purpose for which it is used, or to the purport of its text. The names refer to the dance type that goes with the song or to the composer/origin of the song. In both latter cases there also is a connection with occasions.

The underlying reasons for a particular classification of a song are its purpose and the occasion(s) at which it is sung. Important exceptions are the genre names that do not refer to purpose or occasion by themselves. It is interesting to see whether it is possible to map purpose, occasion and name in one overview. While trying to do this, one stumbles into some salient aspects of Chibale music that will be treated in short.

We’ll look at some of the quotations of people who contributed to the composition of the overview of older song genres. They illustrate several of the salient features of Chibale song classification.

What appear to be the ‘same’ songs can be classified differently depending on the status of the one starting it. For the repertoire deriving from Chibale or more generally from the Kaonde-Lamba-Lenje-Lala region, a distinction is made between songs brought by mediums, (non-possessed) specialists and laypeople.
The effect of the performance of the three types of performers is different and since effect (purpose) is the most important criterion for song classification, the three situations lead to different classifications.

The songs within one root melody have the same length and are similar in the contour of the melody, in the ratio note repetitions : steps : leaps, in the number of syllables used and in rhythmic density. They are not similar in text, apart from a few words, like a name or exhortation, that occurs in every realisation of that root melody.

How can the repertoire be extended? What is a new song and does it exist? How are songs classified that one has never heard before?

Depending on the abstraction level, songs are called the same when both belong either to one musango or to one genre category.
We will see that, for the concept of sameness, song text, performative characteristics, purpose and context are much more consequential than the observable music technical characteristics of the song.

Two ‘systems’ underlay older Chibale music. In both, music repertoire cycles between the mpanga and the village. Old repertoire is brought by the spirits (mpanga) via possessed mediums and is then icilaila-ed back to the village; the icilaila-ed repertoire will become old repertoire after some time and then will be brought by the spirits etc. It is likely that this cycling happened in both systems though, at present, the cycling in the cimbwasa system is more obvious. From the other hand, the two ‘systems’ are not separated; music from the cinsengwe system is also icilaila-ed by women and can become part of the other system.