Culture Contact and Musical Style: Ethnomusicology in the Comoro Islands

Abstract

The Comoro Islands, four in number, are located approximately twelve degrees below the equator in the Mozambique channel, midway between the northern tip of Madagascar and Mozambique. Two languages, both related to the Swahili language family are spoken on the islands. One, Shingazija, is spoken primarily on the island of Grande Comore. The other, Shinzwani or Shimasiwa, is spoken, with dialectical variation, on the remaining three islands: Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte. The archipelago is of volcanic origin; the climate is tropical. Agriculture, fishing and a small amount of husbandry provide the basic sources of subsistence. In the past, trade with Africa, Arabia, India and Madagascar was also an important economic activity. The population is grouped into dense townships ranging from five-hundred to tenthousand inhabitants along the coast. Smaller villages predominate in the inland mountainous areas. The islands are an overseas territory of France with internal autonomy. Arab, Shirazi, African, Malagasy and European peoples have contributed to the present population of the Comoros. Some Arabs, probably from the Hadramut, Southern Arabia, sailed to the islands before the time of Mohammed. The Shirazi arrived on the islands around the twelfth century A.D., followed later by an immigration of Arabs. The Arabs participated actively in the slave trade and were responsible for bringing a large number of Africans to the islands, particularly from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries A.D., when the islands served as a way station for slavers. African slaves were also utilized on plantations in the islands. The exact origin of these slaves is unknown but East Africa is the most likely source. In the mid-nineteenth century events in Madagascar spurred groups of Sakalava princes and their followers to flee Madagascar and settle in the Comoros. Today most of their descendants remain in Mayotte and Moheli. Between 1843 and 1905, when the islands came under the protectorship of France, a small number of French ierre Centlivres, a Swiss anthropologist, is currently completing an extensive ertation on the socio-econ mic aspects of Tashqurghan, which will be the first epth study of a northern Afghan town. 458