One of the most popular african percussion instruments is the lamellaphone, which is a set of plucked tongues or keys mounted on a sound board. The lamellaphones of africa have taken many names such as the mbira, kalinga, kisangi so on and so forth, but they all describe very similar instruments that have origins in west and sub. The lamellaphone family of instruments includes a wide variety of african musical instruments that are all played by plucking the tuned tongues (or lamellae) of the instrument.
The mbira, one of the most advanced types of traditional instrument, is. Using a broad range of such information, it is possible now to reconstruct the early history of lamellophones in some detail. An excellent overview of what is known about the.
Lamellaphone, any musical instrument consisting of a set of tuned metal or bamboo tongues (lamellae) of varying length attached at one end to a soundboard that often has a box or. A lamellophone (also lamellaphone or linguaphone) is a member of the family of musical instruments that makes its sound by a thin vibrating plate called a lamella or tongue, which is. These small versions of 8 to 14 or more tongues, are played with the thumbs. It is known by different names according.
Mbira, sanza, likembe, kadongo, ilimba—all phonetic transliterations from diverse african languages of a few of the specific names for a typology of musical instruments, the. The larger type (karimba) are emblematic of the shonas cultures, with 14 to 25 tongues and are. There are over 100 kinds of traditional african lamellophones, each with its own tuning, note layout, and name.