Hey everyone! For today’s blog post, we’ll be discussing the mbira, an instrument that captured our attention because it initially looked like a bunch of silverware on a cutting board. With further research, we realized its complexity and its creators: the Shona people of Zimbabwe. we were fascinated because we had previously associated instruments of Africa with rhythm rather than melody (drums, for example).
Digging deeper, we found that the plucked keys were called tines, which is the same word used to describe prongs on pitchforks or rakes. The keys are mounted above a board called a gwariva, with a hole in the bottom right for the player’s pinky finger. we thought this was odd because the tines on the mbira are much wider and flatter than tines on forks. Some mbiras we saw were placed in what we believed to be tambourines. It turned out that the outer part functioned like a tambourin, only the player does not shake it. The outer ring is called a deze and is made with a calabash gourd that has been sliced in half and has vibrating objections strung to it to create buzzing sounds when the mbira is played. In this specific example above, shells are used, but the one that drew our attention had bottle caps attached to it, which we thought represented the industrialized world meeting extensive cultural history.
In the 70s, Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire performed with the kalimba, a smaller version of the mbira, which gave the instrument mainstream exposure. Earth Wind and Fire’s piece, Kalimba Story, begins with the kalimba, as its title suggests. The kalimba was actually created after the 1920s by Hugh Tracey, who used the mbira as its inspiration.
The mbira can produce many notes; each note typically has 2 or 3 notes of the same pitch but different octave. Something that we found interesting was the pattern these keys followed. Some of the notes on the left side correspond to each other (marked by color in the image to the left), but others, such as keys 5 and 12, are not directly above and below each other like notes 9 and 16.
Here is a sample of a mbira performance.
You can hear the buzzing from vibrating objects fastened to the mbira, and a pattern the performer follows. The left hand plays lower notes while the thumb and index finger on the right plays the melody. Overall, we really enjoy the echo-sound of the notes on the mbira, which sound amplified by the buzzing created using the vibrating caps or shells present.