Over time I tried percussion instruments, drums, rattles, Spanish castanets, or harmonicas, that we had at our home, while my brothers eventually took up guitars: one of them bass guitar, the other one mainly Spanish guitars.
Of course I tried guitars too – in my ten years -, but I found the pressing of fingertips against strings somewhat uncomfortable and hard to get used to, and for that reason, I first took up playing keyboard.
Besides this practical reason, it also relates to musical preference. The keys/piano focus might have related to my early interest in Stevie Wonder. Moreover, I am musically broadly interested, but tended to favour music with strong, groovy rhythms: Funk, Reggae, African music. Therefore, I gravitated soon toward percussion and drumming, which I eventually took up.
GUITAR-PLAYING BROTHERS
It is however not as simple – or clear-cut - as that. Guitars and rhythm can of course combine. My older brothers could play a bit rhythmically too, and my bass playing brother loved Reggae too (as well as jazz and funk), and of course I could appreciate on occasion too nice guitar solos (in any genre), the rhythmical playing in Flamenco, and in Brazilian and Cuban music. The guitar patterns in Bossa Nova, for instance, originally more or less imitate Samba percussive patterns, in a “jazzy” way.
My Spanish guitar-playing brother pointed out, moreover, that you’re more a “complete” one-man band with a guitar, as it enables combining harmony, melody, and rhythm. I of course heard some good examples of that, with convincing “full” songs, with just a guitar.
AFRICA
Broader, the association of string instruments with “European music”, and percussion and drums with African or black music, is also simplistic. I already assumed that, more or less, having heard that the banjo is of African, Congo-region origin, and about “musical bows” like the Afro-Brazilian berimbau.
The fact remains, however, that “chord structures” as such are not really present in African music originally, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where other ways to achieve “harmony” are used, as part of wider polyrhythmic pieces. The emphasis on “rhythm” gives a larger role of percussion in all its variety throughout Africa. A varied, intriguing field, that strongly influenced my own percussion playing, with much polyrhythmic “Congo” or “Congo via Cuba” influences.
Africa is, however, a large and varied continent. Even smaller Europe is after all musically quite varied, with different instruments per region and culture.
The “Spanish guitar” (also “Classical guitar”) developed in Southern Spain under local, Persian and Moorish influences, in time from a four-string to a six-string instrument with nylon strings. Its form would serve as model for all global “guitars” to come, so it seems. Perhaps due to Spanish colonialism, although Classical guitars were soon fabricated more in France than in the Spain of its origins, spreading it soon internationally.
Smaller forms of the original Spanish/Andalusian guitar appeared in the Portuguese-speaking world, variants in the Canary Islands and parts of Latin America, while in the US a different steel-string type of guitar, called “country & western” guitar, developed, much used in US music, Country, Blues, and even more the later electric guitar.
Lutes, zither and harps are further known historically in the Middle East and Islamic world, in Europe, and are mentioned in the Bible. Violin-type instruments developed in Italy. The Hawaiian ukulele, furthermore, is based on a Portuguese/Madeira small-guitar model. So string instruments are international, yet somehow concentrated, you might say.
What intrigues me, however, as an African music-oriented percussion player, is whether there are truly indigenous string instruments in sub-Saharan Africa too. Not imported or as a reworked foreign influence (as e.g. the ukulele in Hawaii). Also, if they are a foreign influence (e.g. from Arabs or Portuguese), how are these string instruments “Africanized” through African musical principles?
GRIOT AND FOREST
An interesting distinction – I find this so interesting that I discussed it several times on this blog – is that between “Sahel” or “Griot” Africa on the one hand, and “forest Africa” on the other, a musical distinction made by scholars like Robert Farris-Thompson. It explains also musical influences of enslaved Africans in the Americas, giving through the generations birth to several music genres like Blues, Reggae, Son, Samba, Rumba, Merengue, Cumbia, Calypso, etcetera.
Well now, it is pointed out by Farris-Thompson and others that the “swing” element – playing “around” the beat – found in Jazz and Blues - stem from Griot African musical culture. More specifically relating to the use of string instruments in “Sahel” parts of Africa: the Senegambian, Mali, and Guinee regions. A region with historically Islamic influences, and known local string instruments as the Kora and Ngoni, used by the “Griots”, who were like travelling musicians and chroniclers.
The “Swing” around the beat, thus relates to the characteristics of string instruments, whereas in “forest Africa” (southern Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria, Congo region a.a., Bantu-speaking regions) drums and percussion – and thus “straighter” rhythms – and polyrhythms – were more common. The latter influenced e.g. Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian music.
The Griot “swing” style, on the other hand, clearly influenced Blues, also due to the relatively strong presence of Senegambian and Guinee region slaves in the Mississippi delta, where Blues originated.
By comparison, in Cuba, relatively many enslaved Africans came from “forest Africa”, notably the Congo region (estimated at about 40%), and from the Yoruba area (now southern Nigeria, Benin), shaping its music’s rhythmical structure. Perhaps not even in the case of Cuba, as a Spanish colony, all “guitar use” can be attributed solely to the Spanish/Andalusian influence from early on, or from the Canary islands. The influence from Southern Spain and the Canary islands is strong in early Spanish colonialism in Cuba (regarding early “white” inhabitants), to be sure (even on some music genres in Cuba, such as Punto Guajiro). It however got mixed, as guitars became part of Afro-Cuban music.
GUAJEO
When listening to how these string instruments are played, rhythmically, in Cuba, one hears often African influences, with echoes of the African thumb pianos like the Mbira, or derived Kalimba. Thumb pianos are undoubtedly indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, found not just in Zimbabwe, with the well-known Mbira, but also in Central (“Congo”) and Western Africa, with metal or bamboo tines.
An example of an “African guitar pattern” in Cuba can be found in a very influential pattern in Cuban music, stemming from the Son Changüí genre in Eastern Cuba: the original, more African Son from the Guantánamo region and around (musically Congo/Bantu-influenced). It included a large thumb piano (called later “rhumba box”), bongo drums (two attached drums of differing size, later spread internationally), shakers, scrapers, and guitars or tres (Canarian type double-stringed) guitars.
The typical “guajeo” pattern – syncopated offbeat/on beat - of guitars in Son Changüí, were the model for later (piano) patterns in later Son, but also for Salsa, as some would recognize. That “guajeo” is with a guitar/tres, but is as much about the “rhythm” and “groove” as it is about melody.
INDIGENOUS
Time to focus on the African continent, and my main reason for this post: the search for ‘indigenous African string instruments”.
Are the Ngoni and Kora truly indigenous to the Mali/Guinee region? If so, what differentiates them from other “string instruments” as known in Europe and the Islamic world?
Some may know this already, but I have yet to learn something about this. I played shortly a Ngoni at a friend’s place, learning that you did not use all your fingers (only two of each hand) to play, due to the grip. This differs from the Classical Guitar, where even missing one finger tip due to an accident can be problematic, as some well-known guitar players found out, like Django Reinhardt, that could use it to their advantage by creating their own style. More or less I saw how the one-string Afro-Brazilian musical bow called Berimbau (used in Capoeira) is plucked, but that’s about it. The Kora sounds nice and like a harp. How it is played I only vaguely know.
Time to learn more about it, and I do that not just by reading or Internet video searches (anyone can do that by themselves), but also through conversations with or questions to people I know in my personal circle playing those African string instruments (often combined with percussion), asking them some questions.
BERIMBAU
Carlos, a relative of mine, active in the Netherlands for an organization providing information on Afro-Brazilian and Capoeira culture (called Stichting Agogo) danced/played Capoeira himself, and played accompanying music, including on the “musical bow” the Berimbau.
The Berimbau can be considered a string instrument. Carlos himself described it a string instrument “in its initial stage”. It has only one string on a wooden, flexible bow, a resonator (usually calabash), but cannot produce too many tones (“two or three”), though variation is achieved with added objects like a coin when plucking.
Its playing is essentially rhythmic, Carlos emphasizes, having moreover a “leading” role in the music accompanying Capoeira (let’s call it “Capoeira music”). The Berimbau leads the “groove”, so to speak, which other instruments (drums, shakers, tambourines, scrapers) follow, or respond to.
In light of its limited tonal variety it can be considered rhythmic and percussive. After all, also by using your hand well, you can get different tones from hand drums too (muting, slapping, open tone, heel-tip, even with elbow, such as later conga players, etcetera).
The “string” of the Berimbau - however – certainly gives it a feel of atmospheric “tension”, remotely similar to the swing, though based on straight rhythms, as Capoeira’ – and the Berimbau’s - origins in Angola suggest.
I studied it before, and musical bows – like the models for the Angolan Berimbau, can be found in a large part of Central and Southern Africa, notably the Bantu-speaking Southern half, from Angola and DR Congo, to Zambia, Swaziland, or even Madagascar. The musical bow “Malunga” in India got there with East African immigrants.
Besides in Brazil, also on some Caribbean islands, such as Curaçao and Guadeloupe and Martinique one finds such African-descended musical bows, sometimes played with the mouth as resonator..
These one-string bows are however mainly seen as a percussion instrument, or as an “initial stage” of a string instrument.
NGONI AND KORA
The Ngoni, a harp-lute from Mali is made of a gourd and animal skin, having now between 6 or 18 strings. Variants of the Ngoni exist in the wider Senegambian and Guinee region. On Wikipedia, and in other sources, its history is confirmed as indigenous to the Mali region. So yes, indigenous (full) string instruments historically exist, not only in Northern Africa, but also in e.g. Mali, e.g. the Ngoni.
The Kora – also a calabash-bodied harp/lute – is historically newer than the Ngoni, found also in Mande-speaking parts like the Ngoni, including Mali, Guinee, and Senegambia, and (northern) parts of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. The Kora has a wider range and has typically 21 strings.
That increase in strings (the kora developed after all later than the Ngoni, that had initially 6 strings) is interesting, since the model for the “Western” guitar – the Spanish guitar – also initially had 4 strings, later 6.
Anyway, also the Kora is described in historical sources as indigenous to that part of Africa. The Ngoni and Kora, moreover, were said to be the models for the Banjo instrument in the Americas, influenced by Mande-speaking slaves in some parts, e.g. the Mississippi delta, explaining the banjo’s presence in US folk styles (like Bluegrass), but it is also used in some Caribbean folk genres (Mento, Calypso a.o.)..
Interestingly, for this post, sources refer also to an indigenous, triangular guitar-like instrument among the Igbo in SE Nigeria, so more in “percussive” forest Africa, outside of “kora/ngoni” Griot/Sahel Africa. This Igbo instrument is called the “Ubaw-Akwala”, and is seen as another possible predecessor of the banjo.
Interestingly, because enslaved Igbo Africans ended up in parts of the US (Georgia, Carolina), as well as of the Caribbean, notably Barbados and Jamaica.
OVERVIEW
A friend of mine sent me a photo as an overview of indigenous African string instruments, pointing also at Ethiopian string instruments. I found interesting to see also an indigenous harp in the Congo/Gabon region (called Wambi).
Further, the Kundi is a five-string harp among the Azande people (DR Congo/CAR) in Central-Africa, well into more “percussive” forest Africa.. Also the Enanga – an arched 7 or 8-string harp among the Ganda in Uganda - is worthy of mention in more percussion-oriented Ganda culture. It is played quite percussively.
Through my own research I further found also that the Akan (Ghana) had an own harp (not unsimilar to the Kora), the Seperewa, (see https://ghanagoods.co.uk/ashanti-musical-instruments/), not shown in this photo. There are also some Northern African ones, but for this post, I more or less exclude Arab-influenced Northern Africa, not as a rejection, but because the topic is indigenous string instruments.
It is more complicated though. Berbers (Imazigh) were original inhabitants of Northern Africa, though said to be of Middle Eastern origin far back. Tambourine-variants, like the Bendir, are the most used instruments in Berber folk music, which in itself forms an interesting contrast with the more “string” oriented Arabs.
ETHIOPIA
The Ethiopian population is African, but mixed with migrants historically from the nearby Arabian peninsula. These spoke Semitic languages and were mostly male, explaining why – genetical studies showed - the Ethiopians still today have more Semitic/Arabian DNA on their paternal side, and more indigenous African (related to Nilotic peoples like the Nuer and Luo) or Hamitic/Cushitic/Somali) on their maternal side.
This pre-Islam Arabian peninsula migration nonetheless shaped the culture too, but was more “indigenized” than the Arab influence in Northern Africa with the later spread of Islam (since the 7th c. AD). The connection to the Holy Faith of Islam gave Arab culture after all a special status.
In Ethiopia this kind of privileging was not absent, although mixture was more common. The Amharic speak an (audibly Africanized) Semitic language called Amharic, are Early Christians, and have string-like instruments, without a strong foreign, colonizing input (only some Islamic or Portuguese influences).
These string instruments play a role, but also drums and percussions. The big, two-sided Kebero drum – distantly related to the Ugandan/Kenyan Ngoma) - is used often, also as standard in Ethiopian Orthodox Christian services (big kebero drums). For secular events smaller kebero drums tend to be used. This connection between drum/rhythm and spirituality is deeply African. Other percussion during such church services include rattles and shaked “sistrums” (of metal).
Ethiopian string instruments among the Amhara peoples and others include the lyre Krar (five strings).
Another, larger harp-like lyre is called Begena (said to be brought from the Israel region to Africa), and the more indigenous, intriguing bowed lute, known as Masenqo, with one string played like a violin, used by singers to accompany themselves.
Rhythms tend to be “faster” in the South Region of Ethiopia, while the Nuer in the South West have thumb pianos, and more variety in drums.
CONCLUSION
Africa therefore, neither sub-Saharan Africa, is not without its indigenous string instruments, even without Portuguese or Arab influences, such as harp types. The musical bows are a very primary form of a string instrument, capable of not many tones, used mainly percussively, but creatively.
It is also a matter of shape and material. “African music is mainly focused on rhythm” is too simplistic, even in sub-Saharan Africa, though it has an element of truth. Yet, the various thumb pianos like the Mbira, show a melodic, tonal tradition as well, essentially with the same musical functions as harps in Africa, or guitars (or pianos) elsewhere. These typically African thumb pianos have their unique characteristics though, influencing later “guitar”-playing patterns in Africa and the African diaspora, for instance in Conglese Soukous, but also in Cuban Son, up to Salsa (and Dominican Bachata, Jamaican Mento a.o.).
The harp and lutes with more strings are also long present in Africa, the Ngoni and the Kora being the best known, combining melodic and rhythmic functions, often combined with percussion/drums.
The original Spanish guitar, finally, was neither only meant or used “melodically” or “harmonically”, despite its Middle Eastern/Spanish origin. Flamenco music and some other folk styles in Southern Spain (e.g. Fandango, Sevillanas) have recurring rhythmic elements as well, even relatively much rhythm for European folk genres.
Some attribute this to colonial (Cuban) influences returning to Spain, but only in part. Sources point at also existing early “rhythmic ways” of playing the Spanish guitar before colonialism, also when combining with Spain’s best known percussion instrument, namely the clacking castanets, already present (the castanets) in Spain when the Romans went there, and probably of Ancient Egyptian/Phoenician origin.
Again, it is not so clear-cut or simple. I guess the innate musicality of all people in all cultures are influenced by international movements, but remain an own, individual reworking to a higher level, moving in the magical - often overlapping -spectrum between melody, harmony, rhythm, and, as well, “mood” and spirituality. The beauty of culture and art.
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