#african instruments

[i-scavenger]

A kalimba found in a dumpster.

[kemetic-dreams]

🌍 Many modern instruments trace their roots back to ancient African traditions. From the pulsating rhythms of the djembe to the ethereal melodies of the kora, African music has influenced and laid the foundation for countless instruments we use.

Today, we explore the diverse sounds of Africa, from South to West, Central to East. 🥁🎸

📍Southern African Instruments


🎶 Uhadi: A traditional 🇿🇦Xhosa musical bow with a resonator, played with percussive strokes.

📍Western African Instruments


🥁 Djembe: A goblet-shaped drum from the Mandinka people, with roots in the 12th-century 🇲🇱Mali Empire.

📍Central African Instruments


🎶 Kisanji: A pentatonic-tuned instrument from the 🇨🇩DRC, often played with polyrhythms.

🎶 Adungu: A 9-stringed harp from 🇺🇬Uganda, played in nightclubs or as therapy.

📍East African Instruments


🎶 Washint: An 🇪🇹Ethiopian flute, known for its melismatic style.

🎶 Orutu: A single-stringed fiddle from 🇰🇪Kenya, popular among the Luo people.

#africa #africanmusic #amplifyafrica #kenyamusic #kenya #uganda #xhosa #congo #ethopian #mali

[afrotumble]

Mamamuso

[carolina-old-line]

African Musical Instruments 6, American Museum of Natural History

[megwesnsick]

A picture of some African instruments. I attempted to name them individually. Can you?

[capoeirablog]

A Vida Longa - Photo Gallery!

Mestre Joao Grande and Mestre Poncianinho a film by Bertie for Channel Random Acts  Link to video

Mestre Joao Grande and Mestre Poncianinho; two capoeira artists separated by generations. United by passion, ritual and respect... Visually rich, culturally loaded, 'Vida Longa' is an intimate journey between one of the oldest and youngest Capoeira Masters solar panels wholesale in history. Great players of our time captured in a film that surpasses age, era and expectation. Directed by Bertie Films for Channel 4 as part of the Big Dance Shorts and Random Acts series.

[lowcountrydigitallibrary]

Belly harp (Zither)

A six-string belly harp with two sistra (or zistra) attached and a gourd resonator. The gourd has animal skin stretched over it and contains a rectangular opening. The sistra are triangular with circular metal rings that produce noise when shaken. 

The instrument was collected by Catherine and James Yatso on their trips through West Africa while they were both stationed in Liberia working as an educator and a doctor.

From the Catherine and James Yatso Collection held by the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

[kemetic-dreams]

Blues has evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves imported from West Africa and rural Africans into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. Some scholars identify strong influences on the blues from the melodic structures of certain West African musical styles of the savanna and sahel. Lucy Durran finds similarities with the melodies of the Bambara people, and to a lesser degree, the Soninke people and Wolof people, but not as much of the Mandinka people. Gerard Kubik finds similarities to the melodic styles of both the west African savanna and central Africa, both of which were sources of enslaved people.

No specific African musical form can be identified as the single direct ancestor of the blues. However the call-and-response format can be traced back to the music of Africa. That blue notes predate their use in blues and have an African origin is attested to by "A Negro Love Song", by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, from his African Suite for Piano, written in 1898, which contains blue third and seventh notes.

The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South sometimes referred to as a jitterbug or a one-string in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. The banjo seems to be directly imported from West African music. It is similar to the musical instrument that griots and other Africans such as the Igbo played (called halam or akonting by African peoples such as the Wolof, Fula and Mandinka). However, in the 1920s, when country blues began to be recorded, the use of the banjo in blues music was quite marginal and limited to individuals such as Papa Charlie Jackson and later Gus Cannon.

Blues music also adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs", minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music"