ABSTRACT
Several references have been made to Chopi musicians who have gone up to the wind-swept open plateau where the gold-mines of the Witwatersrand stretch out in a wide arc for a hundred and fifty miles. Musicians widen their repertoire and dancers their routines to an extent which would have been unlikely if not impossible had they stayed at home in their villages. Musicians would gladly bring instruments with them from Zavala were it not for the expense incurred and the risk of having them confiscated at the border. The Timbila are classed as musical instruments by the railway officials and have to be paid for at the same rates as expensive European instruments of a hundred times their value. Chopi musicians merit a reputation far beyond their own borders, and, with the coming of recording apparatus, even though they never leave their familiar woods and lakes in Portuguese East Africa.
