User:StruMus/Andrew Tracey

Andrew Tracey
Tracey with his father, Hugh, looking on from the wall
Born	5 May 1936 Durban, South Africa
Died	12 January 2024 Gqeberha, South Africa
Occupation	Ethnomusicologist
Known for	Contribution to African music pedagogy and applied ethnomusicology

Andrew Tracey (5 May 1936, Durban, South Africa -12 January 2024, Gqeberha, South Africa) was a South African ethnomusicologist, promoter of African music, and musician. Tracey was a leading authority on African music and the son of pioneering ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey (1903–1977). He is best known for his extensive research on African musical instruments, particularly the mbira and kalimba, as well as his contributions to African music pedagogy. He served as the director of the International Library of African Music (ILAM) from 1977 to 2005 and played a pivotal role in developing African Musical Instruments (AMI), a company founded by his father​.

Education and Early Years

Tracey was exposed to African music from an early age as he observed his father's research on Chopi xylophone music at the family home in Durban. He attended the traditional African dance performances his father arranged on Sunday afternoons for the dock workers, and listened to his father's radio broadcasts which featured traditional African stories and African music. Following the divorce of his parents, Andrew moved to England with his mother, Ursula Campbell Tracey (1910–1987), and his brother Paul. After school, he completed his two-year national service in the British Army, which included a stint in Kenya where he learned to speak Swahili and play Swahili songs on the guitar. He subsequently studied anthropology and languages at Oxford University, where he also became interested in folk music. He was especially intrigued by calypso and Brazilian music – rhythmic world music with strong African roots.

Early years at ILAM

Following his studies, Andrew Tracey returned to South Africa to join his brother Paul and his father at "The Farm", the property in Krugersdorp outside of Johannesburg where Hugh Tracey started ILAM and AMI. Here Andrew began to teach himself how to play as many instruments as he could.

The mbira (left) and the karimba or mbira nyunga nyunga in Tracey's hands

In 1960, Andrew Tracey helped Robert Sibson establish the Kwanongoma College of African Music (now United College of Music), in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Part of Andrew's responsibilities was to scout around in the townships for players of traditional instruments who could come and teach at the new college. Here he met Jege Tapera, who played the mbira nyunga nyunga (also known as the karimba). Tapera taught Andrew how to play the mbira (a complex 24-note lamellophone used by the Shona people of Zimbabwe), in what was to be his first experience of learning from a traditional player of African music.

Wait a Minim!

Starting in 1961, Tracey co-wrote, with Jeremy Taylor and his brother Paul, the songs for two musical reviews that played in Johannesburg and in Rhodesia. After combining the best material into a single musical review, Wait a Minim!, they had a hit on their hands, and they performed in Wait a Minim! between 1962 and 1968 in South Africa, Rhodesia, England, United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, including 461 shows spanning more than a year on Broadway in New York.

Ethnomusicology

The relationship between the karimba and mbira note layouts

Whilst he never had any formal training in ethnomusicology, Tracey was an influential figure in South African (and African) ethnomusicology, notably writing several papers on African music for the journal African Music. His work was driven by "the imperative to apply knowledge of African music through research, instrument building, teaching, and the digitization of recordings". Apart from his teaching activities, one of his major innovations was the establishment in 1980 of the Ethnomusicology Symposium: an annual gathering of researchers on music in sub-Saharan Africa that gave rise to Proceedings that are still a major source for (southern) African music research.

When Tracey returned from touring with Wait a Minim! in 1969, he quickly got back to his research on African music, carrying on as an associate at ILAM under his father. His field research centred on Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, South Africa, and Namibia, focused on the playing technique of members of the mbira and xylophone families.

The Hugh Tracey Karimba, made by African Musical Instruments.

A highlight of Tracey's research was the identification of the lower course of tines on the karimba (i.e., Jege Tapera's mbira nyunga nyunga) as the logical ancestor of essentially all mbiras. Those eight notes can be traced through every mbira and karimba played in the Zambezi Valley, and those eight notes form the core of all kalimba music in that region, which is considered to be the birthplace of the metal-tined kalimba about 1300 years ago. Tracey asserts that the first written account of the kalimba by Portuguese missionary Father Dos Santos, in Mozambique in 1589, was in essence these eight notes. Other instruments, such as the mbira, or the modern karimba (mbira nyunga nyunga), are based on those eight notes, with other notes and other courses of notes having been added over the centuries. While it is impossible to say when those eight notes first started appearing in kalimbas, Tracey's work convinces that the note layout of the karimba is truly ancient and gave rise to all other kalimbas in the region.

The Shona karimba song, Kana ndoda, written out in kalimba tablature. The tablature reads from bottom up. The shaded vertical lines in the tablature represent the shorter upper course of tines, while the white vertical lines represent the longer lower course of tines. This is one of many traditional karimba songs which Tracey wrote down.

In the 1980s Tracey made a design for a 17-note karimba, based on Tapera's 15-note instrument, using the same hardware as the Hugh Tracey treble kalimba, and AMI began selling it as the African Tuned Karimba.

While Tracey's seven-year stint performing in a Broadway musical did not leave any time for ethnomusicological research, his studies at ILAM did allow him to perform. When he returned to Africa in 1969, he started the Andrew Tracey Steel Pan Band, which performed around Grahamstown and South Africa and in festivals such as the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown until 2007.

Director of ILAM

Upon the death of his father Hugh in 1977, Tracey formally took over his job as Director of ILAM and editor of the journal African Music, roles he filled until his retirement in 2005. Following ILAM's increasing financial woes in the late 1970s (brought on both by the loss of financial support from colonial governments in Africa and the increasing international criticism of apartheid South Africa), Tracey was instrumental in arranging ILAM's affiliation to Rhodes University. Both ILAM and AMI subsequently moved from Krugersdorp to Grahamstown. During Andrew Tracey's tenure as ILAM's director, he expanded its collections and digitized its vast archive of field recordings. Under Tracey’s leadership, would become a vital institution for the study and preservation of African music.

Tracey standing in his old office at ILAM with author Mark Holdaway, discussing the mbiras and karimbas on the wall.

During the 28 years Tracey headed ILAM, he lectured on African music at universities in South Africa, Zimbabwe, United States, Germany, Portugal, for various schools and societies, TV, & radio. He received his own honorary doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Natal in Durban in 1995.

Retirement

Tracey retired from ILAM in 2005, but continued to live in Makhanda (previously Grahamstown). Following his retirement, Tracey remained active in the academic and music communities, serving as an examiner for ethnomusicology students at Rhodes University and continuing to teach mbira lessons. He has also worked on various projects, including writing new articles and contributing to podcasts about African music. Tracey passed away on 12 January, 2024 in Gqeberha due to complications after colon surgery.

Selected publications

• Tracey, A. (1961). ‘Mbira Music of Jege A.Tapera’. African Music, 2(4), 44-63.
• Tracey, A. (1963). ‘Three Tunes for Mbira dzaVadzimu’. African Music, 3(2), 23-26.
• Tracey, A. (1969). ‘The Tuning of Mbira Reeds’. African Music, 4(3), 96-100.
• Tracey, A. (1970a). How to Play the Mbira (DzaVadzimu). Roodepoort: The International Library of African Music.
• Tracey, A. (1970b). ‘The Matepe Mbira Music of Rhodesia’. African Music, 4(4), 37-61.
• Tracey, A. (1971). ‘The Nyanga Panpipe Dance’, African Music, 5(1), 73-89.
• Tracey, A. (1972). ‘The Original African Mbira?’ African Music, 5(2), 85-104.
• Tracey, A. (1974). ‘The Family of the Mbira’. Zambezia, 3(2), 1-10.
• Tracey, A. (1981) ‘White Response to African Music’, in Tracey, A. (ed.) Papers Presented at the Symposium on Ethnomusicology. Makhanda: ILAM, Rhodes University, 29–36.
• Tracey, A. (1983). ‘Music in Mozambique: Structure and Function’. Africa Insight, 13(3), 227-233.
• Tracey, A. (1984). ‘A Musical Use for the Kudu’. Pelea, 3, n.p.
• Tracey, A. (1984a). ‘Mbila’. In Sadie, S. (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Vol.2. London: Macmillan, 627-629.
• Tracey, A. (1984b). ‘Valimba’. In Sadie, S. (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Vol.3. London: Macmillan, 706.
• Tracey, A. (1989). ‘The System of the Mbira’. In Tracey, A. (ed.) Papers Presented at the Seventh Symposium on Ethnomusicology. Makhanda: ILAM, 43-55.
• Tracey, A. (1992). ‘Some Dance Steps for the Nyanga Panpipe Dance’. African Music, 7(2), 108-118.
• Tracey, A. (1994). ‘Values in African Music’. In Schmidhofer, A. and Dietrich Schuller, D. (eds.) For Gerhard Kubik: Festschrift on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 269-289.
• Tracey, A. (2001). ‘Mozambique: Instruments and Instrumental Music’. In Sadie, S. (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol.17. London: Macmillan, 256-261.
• Tracey, A. (2011). ‘Chopi Timbila Music’. African Music, 9(1), 7-30.
• Tracey, A. (2013). ‘Predicted Mbira Found’. African Music, 9(3), 20-24.
• Tracey, A. (2013). ‘Transcribing the Venda Tshikona Reedpipe Dance’. African Music, 9(3), 25-39. (With L. Gumboreshumba.)
• Tracey, A. (2015). ‘System of the Mbira’. African Music, 10(1), 127-149

See also

• Music of Africa
• Music of Zimbabwe
• Music of Mozambique
• Gravikord

External links

• International Library of African Music (ILAM)
• African Musical Instruments (AMI)
• Kalimba Magic's interview with Andrew Tracey
• Obituary by Diane Thram, issued by the South African Society for Research in Music