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13. SINGING, DANCING, ENTERTAINMENT


Next to the unsophisticated but filling pleasures of traditional home cooking, the Andamanese appreciated the more refined entertainment of singing, dancing and playing games.

13.1 Dancing


At its simplest level, dancing in the Andamans was and still is a spontaneous individual expression of joy and happiness. A Sentineli woman, observed from afar in 1987, burst into a dance of joy, clapping her palms on her thighs (Schenkel) in a fashion also known from the Jarawa. She had just picked up gifts left on the beach for her people by a team of Indian anthropologists. Films taken by similar Indian expeditions to the Jarawa also show girls and women spontaneously dancing while trying to make the less nimble (geschickt) outside visitors do likewise.

On a more elevated level and always accompanied by music were the after-dinner dances that enlivened many a dull traditional Andamanese evening. After dinner and before sleep, entertainment could be provided by story-telling, games or dancing. If singing and dancing was the majority choice, as it usually was, the sounding board was brought out, the women lined up for the chorus and a male solo singer was chosen. Most of the able-bodied men would spend the next few hours dancing to this orchestra. A little more formal but still spontaneous and without body painting were dances that took place when the men returned after a successful hunt. Increasingly formal and with religious undertones were dances laid on for visitors, for the recovery of a sick member of the community, for a marriage, to mark the end of the mourning season, to celebrate the conclusion of a peace agreement, right up the songs and dances that accompanied important initiation rites. As we have heard, the more formal dances were occasions that required a dress code: special ornaments and body painting and the accompaniment of music marked these dances and heightened the sense of occasion.

If one disregards the ornaments of shell that rattled with every movement of the dancers, there was only one musical instrument: the sounding board (Brett). It was known only among the Great Andamanese and was often mistaken as a defensive shield. The sounding board was laid on the ground with the main singer giving the rhythm by striking it with the sole of his foot or heel. The effect was like that of a large drum. The singer-cum-drummer was normally also the composer of the song being performed since nobody was allowed to sing another's song as long as the composer was still alive and singing.

The only other source of sound was that of the human voice raised in song. The singing itself was simple and in unison, elaborations such as polyphony were quite unknown. Solo singers sometimes employed falsetto voices, however. Breathing techniques were unknown: a singer running out of breath would simply pause, if necessary in the middle of a word, and then continued. In order to keep rhythm, the singer might repeat the last few words regardless of the effect on the meaning of the song.

The biggest social event in traditional society was the jeg, a large gathering of neighboring groups. A successful jeg with new and successful songs could bring much prestige to the inviting group and its chief. Much effort went into the composing of special songs and still more into rehearsals (Hauptprobe, Generalprobe) with the male dancers and the female chorus. A really successful song and dance could make a jeg a memorable occasion.

Andamanese singing was highly monotonous and repetitive but that did not seem to reduce the pleasure the Andamanese took from it. The creative work was in the words yet the stress was almost exclusively on the rhythmic timing. Language and sense was subordinated to the point when language was turned into poetic dialects. The words of a song often had to be explained and "translated" by the composer to his audience: 

normal language:

mija yadi chebalen lakachire?

poetic language:

chekloo ya lak-u mejra?

translation:

who missed the hard-back turtle?

Popular subjects were the recent adventure of an individual or group events. Inevitably, pig and turtle hunts were evergreens.

An example from a pig-hunting song in the Aka-Juwoi language:

Solo:

Kok t'ra-chaume ra-lot-e
Kok t'ra-chaum-a
Poi tote abe-li-a

(bow, its lower part, pulled back)
(bow, its lower part)
(on tiptoe, I crept, silently)

Refrain:

Poi tote abe-li-a

(on tiptoe, I crept, silently)

The singer tells his listeners that he saw a pig but that the pig did not see him. He drew back his bow so as not to attract attention and then crept towards the pig, silently and on tiptoe.

Another song, this time in the Aka-Bale language, refers to a turtle hunt:

 Solo:

Log l'ar choarya-ainye-d'idi dut
Log l'ar choaryo
Ong d'en aut-boang-dooato-re

(the way, his, the sea on this account, I stop)
(the way, his, the sea)
(he, for me, went very slowly)

Refrain:

Ong d'en aut-boang-dooato-re

(he, for me, went very slowly)

What the singer tells his audience is that he kept his canoe unmoving above a reef where turtle come to feed. The refrain would be understood by his Andamanese listeners to mean that the hunter would be in the bow ready to harpoon the turtle while another man in the stern (Hecke) poled it along slowly and silently.


Most communal dances took place at night. From century-old descriptions of "cannibals dancing around large fires" we must assume that outsiders, probably from ships at sea, had observed communal dances from afar. What to the participants was an occasion of joy, peace-making and neighborly togetherness, to outsiders appeared a frightening display of painted devils jumping around blood-red fires while making savagely primitive howling noises.


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