mbira

The tradition & historical record

Mbira ( əm-BEER-ə; Shona pronunciation: [ᵐbira]), also known as kalimba and zanza (or variant spellings), are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. The instruments consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs and/or fingers. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. The kalimba was commercially produced and exported by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in the late 1950s, popularizing similar instruments outside of Africa. Tracey's design was modelled after the mbira nyunga nyunga and named kalimba after an ancient predecessor of the mbira family of instruments. It was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s largely by such musicians as Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire and Thomas Mapfumo. ¹

Various kinds of plucked idiophones and lamellaphones have existed in Africa for thousands of years. The tines were originally made of bamboo but over the years metal keys have been developed. These types of instrument appear to have been invented twice in Africa: a wood or bamboo-tined instrument appeared on the west coast of Africa about 3,000 years ago, and metal-tined lamellophones appeared in the Zambezi River valley around 1,300 years ago. Metal-tined instruments traveled all across the continent, becoming popular among the Shona of Zimbabwe (from which the word mbira comes) and other indigenous groups in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The mbira was differentiated in its physical form and social uses as it spread. Kalimba-like instruments came to exist from the northern reaches of North Africa to the southern extent of the Kalahari Desert, and from the east coast to the west coast, though many or most groups of people in Africa did not possess mbiras. There were thousands of different tunings, different note layouts, and different instrument designs, but there is a hypothetical tuning and note layout of the original metal-tined instrument from 1,300 years ago, referred to as the 'kalimba core'. In the mid 1950s mbira instruments were the basis for the development of the kalimba, a westernised version designed and marketed by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, leading to a great expansion of its distribution outside Africa. ¹

Lamellophones are instruments which have little tines, or "lamellae", which are played by plucking. Unlike stringed instruments or air-column instruments like flutes, the overtones of a plucked lamella are inharmonic, giving the mbira a characteristic sound. The inharmonic overtones are strongest in the attack and die out rather quickly, leaving an almost pure tone. When a tine is plucked, the adjacent tines also create secondary vibrations that increase the harmonic complexity of an individual note. ¹

Mbira music, like much of the sub-Saharan African music traditions is based on cross-rhythm. An example from the kutsinhira part of the traditional mbira dzavadzimu piece "Nhema Musasa" is given by David Peñalosa, who observes that the left hand plays the ostinato "bass line," while the right hand plays the upper melody. The composite melody is an embellishment of the 3:2 cross-rhythm (also known as a hemiola). ¹

It is common on African mbira and other lamellophones to have the lowest notes in the centre with higher notes to the far left and the far right—this is an ergonomic nicety, in that the thumb can pivot such that all the tines are easy to reach. However, traditional African tunings use notes that do not lie on the grid of the Western tempered scale, and traditional mbira note layouts are often idiosyncratic, sometimes with adjacent tines making part of a scale, but then an odd note thrown in that defies the pattern. Historically, mbira tunings have not mapped exactly onto Western scales; it is not unusual for a seven-note sequence on a mbira to be "stretched" over a greater range of frequencies than a Western octave and for the intervals between notes to be different from those in a Western scale. Tunings have often been idiosyncratic with variations over time and from one player to another. A mbira key produces a rich complex of overtones that varies from one instrument to another depending on its maker's intentions and accidents of fabrication, such that some instruments simply sound better when some notes of a familiar tuning are pushed. With the increased popularity of the mbira dzavadzimu in North America, Europe, and Japan in recent decades, Zimbabwean mbira makers have tended to tune their instruments more uniformly for export, but much variation is still found among mbira in their homeland. Tunings vary from family to family, referring to relative interval relationships and not to absolute pitches. The most common tuning played throughout Zimbabwe and among non-Zimbabwean mbira players worldwide is Nyamaropa, similar to the western Mixolydian mode. ¹

Common names for tunings are: ¹

Nyamaropa (close to Mixolydian mode) (considered the oldest and most representative in Shona culture) It emphasizes togetherness through music, creating polyrhythms through having two Mbira players at once, having singing styles accompany an Mbira such as Huro (High emotional notes that are at the top of a singer's range) & Mahon'era (a soft breathy voice at the bottom of the singer's range) or both elements. A single Mbira is considered incomplete for a performance. Dambatsoko (close to Ionian mode), played by the Mujuru family. The name refers to their ancestral burial grounds. Dongonda, usually a Nyamaropa tuned mbira with the right side notes the same octave as the left (an octave lower than usual). Katsanzaira (close to Dorian mode), the highest pitch of the traditional mbira tunings. The name means "the gentle rain before the storm hits". Mavembe (also: Gandanga) (close to Phrygian mode), Sekuru Gora claims to have invented this tuning at a funeral ceremony. The mourners were singing a familiar song with an unfamiliar melody and he went outside the hut and tuned his mbira to match the vocal lines. Other mbira players dispute that he invented it. Nemakonde (close to Phrygian mode), same musical relationship as the mavembe, but the nemakonde tuning is a very low pitched version. Saungweme (flattened whole tone, approaching seven tone equal temperament). ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mbira”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

mbira is family of African lamellophones with metal or wooden tines on a resonating body, plucked with thumbs and fingers; especially associated with the Shona people of Zimbabwe, where it holds deep spiritual significance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 23 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²