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Xalam (in Serer, khalam in Wolof, and Mɔɣlo in Dagbanli) is a traditional lute from West Africa with 1 to 5 strings. [2] The xalam is commonly played in Mali, Gambia, Senegal, Niger, Northern Nigeria, Northern Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Western Sahara.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: "West African plucked lutes such as the konting, khalam, and the nkoni (which was noted by Ibn Baṭṭūṭah in 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." [15]
Since then, many museums around the world have updated their collections to include the akonting and other members of the West African folk/artisan lute family, while banjo historians and ethnomusicologists have begun to broaden the range of their focus to include these instruments as well those used by griots.
The akonting ([ə'kɔntiŋ], [1] or ekonting in French transliteration) is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.It is a string instrument with a skin-headed gourd body, two long melody strings, and one short drone string, akin to the short fifth "thumb string" on the five-string banjo.
This category is for articles about birds found in West Africa which, for the purpose of this category, is defined as Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo.
Gassire's Lute is an epic by the Soninke people of West Africa.It was collected by Leo Frobenius and published in 1921. An English prose translation was made by Douglas Fox, published in African Genesis (first printed 1937).
Kora; String instrument; Classification: Malian stringed instrument with 21 strings: Hornbostel–Sachs classification: 323-5 (Acoustic instruments which have a resonator as an integral part of the instrument, in which the plane of the strings lies at right angles to the sound-table; a line joining the lower ends of the strings would be perpendicular to the neck.
The simbing is a Malian harp-lute, used by the Mandinka people of Mali, and the Mandinka and Jola peoples of Senegal and Gambia. [2] [3] The instrument consists of a calabash resonator, a (usually curved) stick for a neck, a metal jingle attached to the neck, and a bridge that holds the string over the skin soundboard in a vertical line. [2]