In a new study<\/a> we turned our ears to a rock painting in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa\u2019s Western Cape province. The human figures in this painting have previously been interpreted as healers holding fly-whisks and doing a trance-dance. Fly-whisks were an important accessory for the dance because they were thought to keep arrows of sickness at bay. <\/p>\n But our results suggest that the fly-whisks are in fact musical instruments of a type known as a !goin !goin<\/em> \u2013 a name that only exists in the now extinct \u01c0Xam language that was spoken by hunter-gatherers in central southern Africa. The !goin !goin<\/em> is an aerophone; these instruments produce sound by creating vibrations in the air when they are spun around their axes. <\/p>\n To reach this conclusion we combined digital image recovery techniques with instruments created from life-size templates based on our findings. The eight instruments were played in a Cape Town sound studio and the sounds were recorded. Sound produced by the recreated instruments convincingly matches the sound spectrum (90 \u2013 150 Hz) produced by a similar 19th century model of the !goin !goin<\/em> aerophone, which is archived in the Kirby Collection<\/a> of Musical Instruments, curated by the University of Cape Town\u2019s College of Music.<\/p>\n Our results suggest that !goin !goin<\/em> type aerophones were used around or before 2000 years ago. This conclusion is based on the age of the image that is painted in the fine-line technique, which is a style of painting that disappeared with the arrival of pastoralists<\/a> in the southern Africa region 2000 years ago.<\/p>\n The Cederberg painting is one of only four known examples of aerophone playing depicted in rock paintings in the southern Africa region. By contrast many paintings are identified as illustrating fly-whisks. Our findings suggest the need for greater nuance when studying rock paintings. Perhaps some of the fly-whisk depictions should be revisited with a \u201clistening ear\u201d?<\/p>\n The !goin !goin<\/em> generates a distinct pulsating sound (visualised in the image below) due to the circular rotation of the player\u2019s arm and the twisting and untwisting of the cord that attaches the rotating blade to the stick.<\/p>\n Read more: How our African ancestors made sound in the Stone Age<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n An unexpected finding was the compositional possibilities offered when two or more !goin !goin<\/em> were played at the same time. Speeding up and slowing down the rotation subtly changes the sound. Two instruments, one played fast and the other slow, creates a composition. Playing in sync and out of sync adds another layer of musical creation. <\/p>\n It was not possible to play eight instruments in the sound studio at one time. An eight-instrument performance requires more space than the studio could provide. But a sound recording of three !goin !goin<\/em> playing together suggests what group music-making with the !goin !goin<\/em> may have sounded like. <\/p>\n This compositional aspect of the instrument was not well known at all so we delved deeper. In the Special Collections archive<\/a> at the University of Cape Town we found an obscure description of the !goin !goin<\/em> which confirmed, as does the Cederberg painting, that groups did play the instruments together.<\/p>\n An instrument consisting of a blade of wood attached to a little stick, which is held in the hand. The performer grasping the little stick whirls the blade about in the air, producing a whirring sound. It is used by both sexes among the Bushmen [another name used for the San and today considered derogatory by some] and, at times, by a number of persons together with the view to causing rain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u01c0Xam-speaking hunter gatherers associated the sound of the !goin !goin<\/em> with honey bees<\/a>. They even went so far as to say that with the !goin !goin<\/em> they could \u201cmove bees\u201d. This complements the previous statement linking the instrument\u2019s sound with \u201ccausing rain\u201d. The archive statement also confirms that both men and women worked with rain, using the sound of the !goin !goin<\/em> for this purpose.<\/p>\n Read more: What archaeology tells us about the music and sounds made by Africa’s ancestors<\/a> <\/strong> <\/em>\n<\/p>\n What of the trance healing dance suggested by earlier interpretations of the Cederberg painting? It is well known<\/a> that all senses, not just vision, hallucinate in trance and that the aural hallucination of buzzing is construed as the sound of bees, rushing wind or falling water. So the painting does link to trance because of the association with bees and buzzing \u2013 but the items depicted in the painting are musical instruments, not fly-whisks.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/how-the-music-of-an-ancient-rock-painting-was-brought-to-life.jpg\")
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\nTrance links<\/h2>\n