The Fruitless Cashew-Apple

The Fruitless Cashew-apple is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originating in The Moldy Bitter-Melon-Leaf. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A speaker recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on two toslo. The musical voices are joined in melody. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. Never more than an interval sounds at once. It is performed using the oyifolewe scale and in the ebecari rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to use grace notes and locally improvise.

• The speaker always should feel agitated.
• Each toslo always does the main melody, should evoke tears and uses mordents.
• The Fruitless Cashew-apple has a well-defined multi-passage structure: three to five unrelated passages, a bridge-passage and a finale.
• Each of the simple passages is extremely fast, and it is to be soft. Each passage should sometimes include a rising melody pattern with flattened seventh degree as well as rapid runs and legato, sometimes include a falling-rising melody pattern with flattened seventh degree on the rise as well as glides and rapid runs, often include a rising-falling melody pattern with flattened fifth degree on the fall and sharpened fourth degree on the rise as well as glides, staccato and legato and sometimes include a falling melody pattern with flattened fourth degree.
• The bridge-passage is at a free tempo, and it is to fade into silence. The passage should always include a rising melody pattern with staccato and legato.
• The finale is fast, and it is to be very soft. The passage should often include a rising melody pattern with mordents, rapid runs and arpeggios, often include a falling-rising melody pattern with arpeggios and staccato and often include a falling melody pattern with sharpened second degree as well as legato.
• Scales are constructed from twenty notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1-xxxxxxxx-x-xxxxx-xxxxxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is a fixed tone passed from teacher to student. Preferred notes in the fundamental scale are named. The names are ifiyo (spoken if, 2nd), izeli (iz, 3rd), bone (bo, 5th), umamalu (um, 6th), emayethi (em, 7th), ithi (ith, 16th) and seyawi (se, 19th).
• The oyifolewe heptatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 3rd, the 8th, the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the 18th.
• The ebecari rhythm is a single line with fourteen beats divided into two bars in a 7-7 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - - X x - - x | - - - x x'- - |
• where X marks an accented beat, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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