3.3 Mbira

Introduction

An mbira is an African musical instrument in which the sound is produced by plucking long, thin, fairly stiff strips, usually made of metal. The technical term for this type of instrument is a lamellophone . Lamellophones are classified as plucked idiophones . They are also sometimes called thumb-pianos , although many players of the instrument dislike that name.

There is a great variety of lamellophones played by the many different ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Within Africa, different groups may use the same or similar words to refer to different instruments, or different words to refer to instruments that look very much alike. Some of the most common words used to refer to a local lamellophone include mbira , kalimba or karimba , sanzhi , and likembe . Because so many of the instrument names are so local, there is a tendency outside of Africa to refer to any African lamellophone as either an mbira or a kalimba (or a thumb-piano).

One of the most well-known lamellophones outside of Africa, particularly among fans of world music , is the mbira dzavadzimu . This particular mbira is an important part of the traditional culture of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. The discussion below includes some general information on African lamellophones, but focuses on the widely popular mbira dzavadzimu .

The instrument

The sound of a lamellophone is produced by a row of long, narrow, stiff but flexible, strips, which English-speakers usually call keys (like the keys of a piano). The exact shape of the keys (for example rounded or squared ends) varies from one type of lamellophone to the next, as does the material used to make the keys (for example, brass, forged iron, drawn copper wire, flattened nails, or pieces of bamboo). Each key is clamped tightly near one end to a wooden sounding board or box, often using a bridge arrangement similar to the bridge of a stringed instrument (which transmits the vibrations to the sounding board while holding the strings, or keys, up high enough to vibrate freely). The other end of each key is left free to vibrate when plucked. This end is plucked with a downward motion of a thumb or an upward motion of a finger (or with a ring-shaped plectrum fitted onto the end of the finger or thumb). The pitch of each key depends on its size, so a row of keys of different sizes can produce a scale . Each key can be tuned by moving its attachment point (to make the vibrating section of the key longer or shorter), by cutting or filing it, by pounding it flatter, or by adding solder or wax to the underside of the key. In some lamellophones, the pitches are arranged, as in a piano, with the lowest notes at one end and the highest at the other. But on many lamellophones, the longest, lowest-sounding keys are in the middle of the row. Some larger types of lamellophone can have two or three different rows (like the different keyboards, or manuals , on a large organ). The different manuals may be side-by-side, but often they are mounted so that one is jutting out from underneath another, so that the player's thumbs can move very quickly from one manual to another.