“THE LITTLE MAN IN THE BOX”

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 150, 21 March 1925, Page 18

“THE LITTLE MAN IN THE BOX”

A GRAMOPHONE IN CENTRAL AFRICA

zX. gramophone which has been carried by a native boy for 1200 miles through the African bush has just returned to London. It was part of the equipment of the Livingstone film expedition, whose leader, Mr. M. A. Wetherell, has some amusing stories to relate regarding its adventures. “They called the gramophone ‘The Little Man in a Box,’ ” lie said, in an interview, “and they would have sat there for twenty-four hours of the day listening to it. The records they looked upon as food , for the Little Man. We played the gramophone at almost every village. At one place, it must have been 600 miles from a railway station, the entire village—they weie Wasufwas came across and clustered round it. Eirst of all they sat at a distance; then they started coining a little nearer and a little nearer, until they were quite close, and had a look inside. They always wanted to look inside to see where the man was, and what sort of a man he was. In some of the villages at which we camped we would not play the gramophone; but the news of the wonderful ‘box that talked’ had always gone on before us, and the old headsman would come out and ask us to put it on. One of these gentlerfien, a member of the Wakonougo tribe, was sb very keen that he brought with him a jar of native beer made from corn, in order that the .Little Man in the Box might have a drink. The old chap thought that the fellow who was doing all the singing would like to wet his throat.

“The moment the Little Man began to sing the entire population, anything up to 20 natives, would come out of a village and join our 00 carriers. They are all born musicians, and the whole time when they are on the march all day they are singing their monotonous yet somehow very beautiful, songs. Kreisler was the only instrumental rnjisic which they seemed to appreciate, and that because it was a stringed instrument, which they could undei stand —for all their own instruments are stringed. But Caruso was their favourite. Whenever we wanted to cheer them up we would put on a Caruso record. It did not bring the house down, because there never was any- house, but it did make the bush shake, especially if it was a number from Pagliacci, of which every tribe in that part of Africa is very . fond.

‘‘The reason why they liked Caruso was unusual. They used to laugh heartily at him, regarding him as a supremely comic singer. On the other hand, when he put on something which he thought was ffinny they all got solemn. E'or example, they remained perfectly solemn upon hearing Harry Dander. Harry Lauder always went well. They like T Love a Lassie’ very much indeed. They did not see anything funny in Lauder. He never raised one laugh. “I need' not say how great a godsend these bu.«ii concerts were to the European memuers of our expedition, and not once did the gramophone go wrong the whole time. It was the job «of the same- native boy to carry it fcr the whole ‘2O miles of our trip, with another boy behind him carrying the records. Nothing went wrong until on its way home, when a railway company got hold of it in Erance and one of the doors came off. And not one lof our 100 gramophone records was broken in the carrying; the only one that got smashed was the victim of another railway company—this time in Zanzibar. We did run out of needles, but in the place of the needle of civilisation we used the long hard thorn of the acacia tree, and got the most beautiful results. “The records we left in Zanzibar, but the gramophone we have brought back with us, because we regard it as a fine memento to have, although one man in Zanzibar said that he would give us £2O fpr it as it stood, din the bush' some weeks earlier an old Wabungo -headsman went several better. He offered us a bullock for it, with one dusky daughter thrown in!”