Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!

Subject: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From:
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 11:54 AM

Hello!

I've been trying to find some info on the mouthbow as an native american instrument.

If you have any info on it, please email me and let me know your source!

Thanks! Francine

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: catspaw49
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 12:10 PM

The mouthbow is a chordaphone and the simplest of all stringed instruments with some history in Asia and North America, but mostly in Africa. Those used in the US by the Cherokee for instance are not well documented. African bows were more ornate and a bit more advanced(?) and you will probably find much more info on them.

Obviously they played a minor role in appalachian music and in recent years the work of Buffy St.Marie has brought it too more prominence.

Try a search on GOOGLE and see what you can find.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Allan C.
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 12:12 PM

Look here:

http://www.jewsharpguild.org/whmo9.html

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: catspaw49
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 12:17 PM

Allan's Link

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 01:21 PM

Ewan McVicar brought a Philippine mouthbow to my school last November; it was not a stringed instrument but was made of a strip of bamboo, played similarly to the jews harp. Cool sound!

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 04:23 PM

There should be some information available from John Rice Irwin at the Museum of Appalachia in East Tennessee. I believe he has several in his collection. The mouthbow was played here in Stone County in the early part of the twentieth century by a Charlie Everidge. That is where Jimmy Driftwood learned the instrument and there is a story circulating in these parts that Jimmy taught the mouthbow to Pat Sky who in turn taught it to Buffy Ste. Marie. I am passing this along as a story. I cannot vouch for the truth of it. Charlie and Jimmy's dad, Neil Morris, were recorded by Allen Lomax and the song with the picking bow played recently on Spud Mountain via the internet. There are supposedly drawings on a cave wall in Europe, France, I think, dating back many 1000s of years depicting a caveman playing a mouthbow.

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: catspaw49
Date: 25 Jan 01 - 04:52 PM

Hi Arkie......That info on the Museum isn't on the net although writing them may get some answers. As I said above, there is some 'bow used at times in Appalachian music and most of that came from Cherokee traditions, but there's very little documentation. (The M of A is one HELLUVA' place ain't it???)

The only part of your story I can vouch for is that I know Patrick Sky taught the mouthbow to Buffy. I recall Peter LaFarge figuring into that story too, but I don't recall how.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Arkie
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 12:42 AM

Catspaw, I am sorry to say I have never visited the Museum of Appalachia. Hope to do so some day. For anyone interested, the Museum is in Norris, TN and puts on a big festival once a year with lots of traditional music. John Rice Irwin has published a book on his music collection with about five pages devoted to mouth bows. The informant who discusses the origins of the mouth bow attributes it to Indians. Since the Cherokee have lived in east Tennessee for a number of years, this would support what Catspaw said earlier.

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 03:53 AM

Funny, I was having a conversation last night on the subject of making music by putting things (not possums!) in your mouth. I recall a British jaw's harp player made an album in the sixties or seventies of ethnic JH-type music from all over th world. One that stays in my mind (the only one!) is an African instrument. There's this fly in Africa that has a very loud and constant-pitched buzz; they tie one to a stick, and it tries to fly away for an hour or two before it becomes exhausted (flies are pretty stupid), and you put the noisy end of the stick in your mouth and off you go. Don't try it with bluebottles, unless you know where they've been.

Steve

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 05:23 AM

Then there was the couple who were browsing in a junk shop, the husband was attracted to a pile of old musical instruments. He picked up a silver metal object and put it in his mouth and managed a couple of twangs. His wife came over and said: "What are you doing?""I've found a silver jaws harp." he said.
"You fool, that's a cheese slicer." she replied, dragging him away.
RtS (I've been waiting for an opportunity to work that one in! Wasn't worth the wait was it ?)

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 05:26 AM

Even worth missing an "R" out of a break tag, Roger!

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 05:47 AM

Will you come and visit me when they take me away, Steve? Can't be long now!
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 06:45 AM

I'll ask 'em to put you in the bed next to me!

Steve

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 06:46 AM

I mean the "next bed to me"!!

Steve

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Francine
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 09:20 AM

YOu guys are craaaaaaaazy! But very helpful... I wrote a note to John Rice Irwin at the Museum and am waiting for a reply... excellent leads...

... and pretty good jokes at that too!

Thanks!

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 09:36 AM

Damn, Steve, I thought I'd clicked! (don't tell the missus!)
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: Grab
Date: 26 Jan 01 - 01:04 PM

Out of curiosity, why is it called a "Jew's harp"? And is "jaws harp" a corruption of this to make its name less politically incorrect, or is the "Jew's" a corruption of "jaws", or are the two entirely independent?

Grab.

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 05:08 AM

This is an alarming area to get into discussion on. My current thoughts are that the 'Phillipine mouthbow' I gave to Animaterra's school is in fact a Phillipine wooden jaw's harp, rather than a mouth bow. I've met a couple of world experts (never even whisper the word fanatic) on the jaw's or jew's harp or trump, and they were together on a concert programme with me in an old Netherlands town called Veere in September. One, Lindsay Porteous, is a Scot and told me he was recently a judge at the US Jew's Harp Championships (I have the title inaccurate, I expect). The other is a Dutch radio producer who once broadcast an eight hour (count them) programme on the jew's harp. The Dutch guy and his jew's harp quartet played some startling music based on harmonic and overtone possibilities rather than on melody. Each of the quartet had some 60 instruments. Lindsay however has hundreds.
I must stop. I have already said too much. I refuse to tell about the Rasputin-like character who sold me a metal one from the far north of Russia when I met him on a Moscow street in October.

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From:
Date: 27 Jan 01 - 04:59 PM

Jew's Harps/Trumps are different than Mouth Bows in that M.B.s are really bows (like, "bow-&-arrow"), that, as the Jew's Harp, use your body cavity as resonator.

The U.S. version I've often heard referred to as a "Chickasaw Mouthbow". These are strummed with a feather quill or some such plectrum. The African mouthbows (Central and Southern) I know of are either plucked, or percussed with a small stick.

Subject: RE: Help: Help on mouthbow info, please!!!!
From: GUEST,Ewan McVicar
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 07:25 AM

And the body cavity need not be the mouth - some bows have a cupped shell that rests on the stomach and can be raised and lowered onto the belly skin to vary tone and volume. Others have a ligature a third of the way along the bowline, attached to the bow shaft, to give two notes. Other players hold a coin on the bowline to get the two note effect.