Musical instruments OF AMERICAN MUSIC

Outsiders have often overlooked the enormous variety of musical instruments in Africa
in the mistaken belief that Africans play only drums. Yet even Hanno the Carthaginian,
who recorded a brief visit to the west coast of Africa in the 5th century BCE during a naval
expedition, noted wind instruments as well as percussion. Of an island within the gulf of
Hesperon Keras, he wrote:
By day we saw nothing but woods, but by night we saw many fires burning, and heard
the sound of flutes and cymbals, and the beating of drums, and an immense shouting.
Fear therefore seized on us, and the soothsayers bid us quit the island.
Ensembles fitting this description may be found over a wide area of West Africa today,
serving as accompaniment to dancing and merrymaking or as an essential ingredient of
ceremonial or cultic activities.
Besides the percussion and wind instruments noted by Hanno, there are also stringed
instruments of many kinds, ranging from the simple mouth bow to more complex
varieties of zithers, harps, lutes, and lyres. While the aggregate of instrumental
resources distributed over the continent is vast, each society tends to specialize in a
limited assortment, and there is a wide variety from region to region. In some areas
interesting new hybrid varieties emerged in the 20th century in response to outside
influence, notably the endingidi spike fiddle of Uganda, malipenga gourd kazoos of
Tanzania and Malawi, and chordophones such as the ramkie and segankuru of South
Africa.
Musical instruments in African societies serve a variety of roles. Some instruments may
be confined to religious or cultic rituals or to social occasions. Among some peoples
there may also be restrictions as to the age, sex, or social status of the player. Among
the Xhosa, for example, only girls play the imported jews harp, a modern replacement
for the traditional mouth bow, which was formerly their prerogative.
Besides recreational applications, or as accompaniment for dancing, instruments may
serve many other roles. In Lesotho it is claimed that cattle graze more contentedly when
entertained by the sound of the lesiba mouth bow. Among theShona in Zimbabwe, a
local form of lamellaphone known as likembe dza vadzimuserves in rituals of ancestor
worship, while in the kingdom of Buganda the royal drums formerly held higher status
than the king. In West and central Africa, pressure drums may serve for the
transmission of messages or, together with trumpets, for the declamation of praises, by
mimicking the tonal and rhythmic patterns of speech. All sub-Saharan languages
(except Swahili) are tone languages, in the sense that the meaning of words depends

on the tone or pitch in which they are said. Consequently, instrumental musicor even
natural sounds such as birdsongoften imitates or suggests meaningful phrases of the
spoken language. Sometimes this is intentional and sometimes it is merely fortuitous,
but in either case it escapes the notice of uninformed outsiders.
Certain instruments are used solely for song accompaniment. Here the interplay
between voice and instrument is often intricate and delicately balanced. Zulu solo
songs, in earlier times, were often self-accompanied on the ugubhu gourd bow. In such
bow songs, while the instrumental melody was influenced by the tone requirements of
the songs lyrics, the tuning of the bow determined the vocal scale to which the singer
conformed. Today when Zulus use the modern Western guitar, precisely the same
antiphonal relationship and mutual interdependence between voice and instrument is
maintained.
The following is a brief sampling of the principal instruments found in sub-Saharan
Africa.

Idiophones
In this class the substance of the instrument itself, owing to its solidity and elasticity, yields
sound without requiring strings or stretched membranes. Some are sounded by striking, others by
shaking, scraping, plucking, or friction. Idiophones are numerous and widely distributed
throughout the continent. On musical grounds they may be divided into instruments used mainly
for rhythm and several varieties tuned and used melodically.

RHYTHMIC IDIOPHONES
Among the vast array of nonmelodic, rhythmic idiophones, the most common and widespread
are probably rattles, sounded by shaking. One type, the sistrum, which has small metal disks
loosely suspended on rods, is important in the Coptic and Ethiopian churches (it is known in
Ethiopia as tsenatsil) and is also used in Guinea. More widespread are hollow rattles, consisting
of a gourd enveloped in a net of shells or beads or of a container such as a calabash with seeds or
pebbles inside. Besides handheld varieties, there are many other kinds of rattles, often strung on
cords, which may be attached to the limbs or other parts of the body and shaken while dancing or
playing another instrument, or which may be fastened onto another instrument, such as the
lamellaphone, to serve as a supplementary jingling device. In Zimbabwe, bottle tops, instead of
the traditional snail shells, serve this purpose on the likembe dza vadzimu of the Shona.
Struck and concussion-sounded idiophones are found everywhere. These include
stone clappers and multiple rock gongs (in Nigeria); wooden clappers and percussion beams; and
implements such as hoe blades, weapons, and shields (in fact, all kinds of domestic items serve
as temporary idiophones when required). Further examples are metal or wooden bells, either
with internal pellets or clappers or externally struck; inverted half calabashes; bottles; and clay
pots, partially water-filled, which in West Africa are struck with fanlike beaters. Stamping sticks
are also used in West and central Africa, as are stamping tubes made from bamboo or from long,
open-ended gourds. In Ghana and Nigeria the latter are used for accompanying certain womens
songs. Scraped and friction idiophones are quite widely distributed, the most common form
being a notched stick or piece of bamboo that is scraped by another stick.

SLIT DRUMS
Falling between rhythmic and melodic instruments, the largest and most distinctive member of
the African struck-idiophone family is the slit drum, made from a hollowed log. By careful
thinning of the flanks at certain places, the instrument may be tuned so as to yield as many as
four distinct pitches. Besides their use for transmitting messages, West and central African slit
drums are often played in combination with membrane drums and other instruments.

XYLOPHONES
Two markedly different species of xylophone are distinguishable in Africa: one has free,
unattached keys, and the other has fixed keys. With free-key xylophones, found in parts of West
and East Africa, loose slabs may be laid across the players outstretched legs or supported on
logs or straw bundles, sometimes above a resonating pit. In Uganda and Congo (Kinshasa), from
two to six players may perform together on the same instrument.

Fixed-key xylophones are more elaborate. Mounted below each key, there is
usually an individually tuned calabash resonator, often with a mirliton (a vibrating membrane)
attached to add a buzzing quality to the sound. A mid-14th-century account mentions a calabashresonated xylophone in the West Africankingdom of Mali, and similar instruments were reported
on the east coast in the 16th century. Xylophone ensembles are common in some areas, notably
among the Chopi of Mozambique, wheretimbila orchestras of up to 40 xylophones, of six
different sizes, have been reported.

LAMELLAPHONES
These thumb pianos are plucked idiophones unique to Africa and widely distributed
throughout the continent. In construction they consist basically of a set of tuned metal or bamboo
tongues of varying length fitted to a board, box, or calabash resonator, their free ends being
twanged by the players thumbs and fingers. Supplementary rattling or buzzing devices are often
added, and board-mounted varieties are often played inside a half calabash or bowl to enhance
the resonance. They serve mainly for song accompaniment. Some common names for regional
varieties of the instrument are likembe, mbira, and timbrh.

Membranophones
All African drums except the slit drum fall within this class, sharing the basic feature of having a
stretched animal skin as their sounding medium. The mirliton, or small singing membrane, is
often added to the bodies of drums and xylophone resonators as a supplementary buzzing device.
It is an essential component of the malipengagourd kazoos used in Tanzania and Malawi to
simulate military band music.

Africa has a wide variety of drums, which may serve in a number of different roles, some of
them not primarily musical. Their manufacture is often steeped in ritual and symbolism, and their
use may be restricted to specific contexts. In many societies, only men may play them; in others,
certain drums are used only by women (as among the Venda, Sotho, and Tswana of southern
Africa). Playing techniques differ widely: some drums are beaten with the bare hands, others
with straight or curved sticks.Friction drums are also occasionally found, such as
the ingungu used in Zulu girls nubility rites. Except in the extreme south, drums of contrasting
pitch and timbre are frequently played in ensembles, with or without other instruments, to
accompany dancing. Though the role of drums is usually rhythmic, the entenga drum chime in
Uganda, comprising a set of tuned drums, plays vocally derived melodies.

The body of a drum may be either bowl-shaped, tubular, or

shallow-framed. Bowl-shaped drums include those made from gourds and pots as well as the
small and large kettledrums found in and around Uganda. Tubular and frame drums may have
either one skin or two, which are either pegged, pinned, glued, or laced onto the body. Tubular
drums come in many sizes and shapes, such as cylindrical, conical, barrel-shaped, goblet-shaped,
footed, and hourglass-shaped. The atumpan talking drums of the Asante are barrel-shaped with a
narrow, cylindrical, open foot at the base. East African hourglass drums are single-skinned. In
West Africa double-skinned hourglass drums are held under one arm, their pitch rapidly and
continually changed by as much as an octave by squeezing the lacing that joins the two heads. In
some areas wax may be applied to the centre of the drum skin, and a mirliton, shells, or jingles
may be attached to the body to modify the tone.

Chordophones
This class, comprising instruments that produce sound from strings stretched between fixed
points, is well represented in Africa. There is an abundance of specimens in the form of zithers,
lutes, and harps.

MUSICAL BOWS
These consist of a string stretched between the two ends of a flexible stave. There are three
types: bows with a separate resonator; bows with attached resonators; and mouth bows, which
use the players mouth for resonance. Though it is conjectural whether all varieties evolved from
the shooting bow, the San of the Kalahari often convert their hunting bows to musical use.
Sometimes it is held against the mouth, yielding a range of mouth-resonated harmonics, as with
the jews harp, or it is pressed against a hollow container. Apart from adapted shooting bows,
more specialized types of musical bows are widespread. Most are sounded by plucking or
striking the string, but the Xhosa umrubhe is bowed with a friction stick, the xizambiof
the Tsonga has serrations along the stave that are scraped with a rattle stick, and
the Sotho lesiba (like the gora of the Khoekhoe) is sounded by exhaling and inhaling across a
piece of quill connecting the string to the stave. Bows with more than one string are rare, but
the tingle apho of the Kara people in southern Ethiopia has three.

Besides mouth-resonated bows, the gourd bow, which has an attached gourd resonator, is
commonly used in southern, central, and East Africa for self-accompanied solo singing. The
string is struck with a thin stick or grass stem. The Zulu ugubhu is a typical example. Harmonic
tones are selectively resonated by moving the mouth of the gourd closer to or farther from the
players chest. The fundamental pitch of the string can be altered by finger stopping; with other
types, like the Swazi makhweyane, a noose or brace divides the string so as to yield two different
open notes, and resonated harmonics are selected in the same way.
While all the above types of musical bow are simple forms of the zither, the so-calledground
bow or earth bow of equatorial Africa, which has one end planted in the ground, qualifies as a
ground harp.

LUTES
Characterized by strings that lie parallel to the neck, the lute is found in Africa in several
varieties. The multiple-necked bow lute, or pluriarc, of central and southwestern Africa is the
oldest. This has a separate flexible neck for each string and resembles a set of musical bows
fixed at one end to a sounding box. West African plucked lutes such as the konting, khalam, and
the nkoni (which was noted by Ibn Bat t t ain
h 1353) may have originated in ancient Egypt.
The khalam is claimed to be the ancestor of the banjo. Another long-necked lute is the ramkie of
South Africa.

FIDDLES
The bowed-lute family is represented by three types of one-string fiddle, as exemplified by the
rebeclike goje of Nigeria and the spike fiddles masenqo of Ethiopia and Eritrea and endingidi of
Ugandathe last being a 20th-century invention.

HARP LUTES

The sophisticated kora of the Malinke people of West Africa is classified as

a harp lute. Its strings lie in two parallel ranks, rising on either side of a vertical bridge, which
has a notch for each string. The long neck passes through a large hemispherical gourd resonator
covered with a leather sounding table.

LYRES
These have been termed yoke lutes, the strings running from a yoke supported by two side arms.
Their distribution in Africa is confined to the northeast. In Ethiopia and Eritrea two types occur:
the largebeganna, with 8 to 10 strings and a box-shaped body (corresponding to the ancient
Greek kithara); and the smaller six-string krar, with a bowl-shaped body (resembling the
Greek lyra). The latter type, with four to eight strings and varying in size, is also used in South
Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya. The litungu is a typical specimen.

HARPS

These are confined to a belt, north of the Equator, running from

Uganda to Mauritania. All African harps (like those of ancient Egypt) are classed as open harps,
as they have a neck and a resonator with a string holder but lack a supporting pillar to complete
the triangle. In most cases some form of buzzing device is incorporated. Examples are
the ennanga (Uganda),ardin (Mauritania), kinde (Lake Chad region), andngombi (Gabon).

Aerophones
The archaic bull-roarer (a board attached by rope to a stick and whirled about in the air) survives
in various localities, notably in southern Africa among the San and neighbouring peoples. Of
the wind instruments proper, the three main divisionsflutes, reed pipes, and trumpetsare all
well represented, though the second of these is more restricted in distribution than the others.

FLUTES
At the southernmost tip of the continent the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1497 encountered a
band of Khoekhoe people playing upon four or five flutes of reed. Ensembles of single-note
stopped flutes playing on the hocket principle, with each flute blowing its note in rotation, have
been reported from various regions, ranging from southern Africa through eastern Congo
(Kinshasa), Uganda, and South Sudan to southern Ethiopia. Panpipe ensembles are less common,
but notable examples have been witnessed in central Africa, and particularly among the
Nyungwe of Mozambique. There are many other types of open and stopped flutescylindrical
and conical; transverse and end-blown; made from bamboo, reed, roots, stems, wood, clay, bone,
and horn. Globular flutes made from small spherical gourds or from hard-shelled fruits such
as Oncoba spinosa are found in southern Africa, Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Guinea, and
elsewhere. End-blown notched flutes, with a U- or V-shaped embouchure, either with or without
finger holes, are widely distributed across the continent. The long Zulu umtshingo has an
obliquely cut embouchure; there are no finger holes, but a double range of overblown harmonics
is produced by alternately stopping and unstopping the lower end with a finger. Such instruments
and many others throughout the continent are played singly, but in many areas flutes are played
in pairs or in combination with other instruments.

REED PIPES
Transverse clarinets are used throughout the West African savanna region, from Guinea to
Cameroon. These are single-reed pipes made from hollow guinea corn or sorghum stems, the
reed being a flap partially cut from the stem near one end. Single and double clarinets are found
in southern Sudan and South Sudan among the Dinkapeople. Conical double-reed instruments of
the oboe or shawm type have spread around the northeastern and northwestern fringes of Africa
wherever Islam has taken root. Despite local variations, they are basically related to the
Arab zrn, having a disk (or pirouette) below the reed that supports the players lips.

TRUMPETS

Lip-vibrated aerophones made from a variety of

materials are widespread in Africa. Apart from musical uses, some serve for signaling. In West
Africa, side-blown ivory or horn instruments may transmit verbal praises of chiefs and rulers.
Among the Hausa, the long metal kakaki and wooden farai, both end-blown, fulfill this role in
combination with drums. In East and central Africa, the instruments are often made from gourds,
wood, hide, horn, or a combination of these materials. In the historic kingdom of Buganda (now
part of Uganda), trumpet sets were part of the royal regalia. Throughout Africa, more than one or
two notes are seldom produced from a single trumpet, but trumpet ensembles are common,
playing in hocket fashion.