mbira

Rectangular mbira with stainless steel keys.

Different groups of people have different names for the instrument e.g. likembe, mbira, zeze, ekende, sanza , kankobele and many more. The mbira consists of a series of metal or split cane strips (tongues) fitted to a piece of wood or a box. On some the pitch of the tongue is determined by its length, which can be altered by sliding the tongue under the lateral bar.
The number of tongues varies between 5 and 30. Mbiras with metal tongues often have pieces of wire around the tongues to produce a buzz. Nowadays beer bottle tops are used for vibration. The mbira is often placed over a small calabash or inside a large calabash: this increases the volume.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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