A Unique African Musical Instrument – Characteristics and Historical Overview of The Lamellophone

Abstract

Lamellophone instruments represent an idiophonic string instrument type that is unique to Sub-Saharan Africa. The subtype characterized by its lamellae being made of bamboo must have emerged first in the first millennium B.C. in West Africa, and then it may have evolved again, either owing to the Bantu migrations or independently, in the Lower Congo region around the 7th century. This latter evolution is amply attested by excavated iron lamellae dating from the 10th to 14th centuries as well as by travellers’ reports from the late 16th century. The original function of this instrument type in the Lower Congo basin was to reinforce the rhythm of the walk of porters, but later on versions serving an exclusively musical purpose also appeared. Ethnomusicologists hold that subtypes of this instrument having metallic plates began spreading inland along the Congo River around the late 19th century by the agency of Lingala-speaking porters and servants employed in the colonial administration. In the early 20th century the use of such instruments spread towards the northeast into what is today Uganda, where Nilotic-speaking ethnic groups adopted them. From the northern regions of Uganda the instrument type spread southwards and ended up being adopted by Bantu-speaking local ethnicities as well. Meanwhile the use of lamellophones was borrowed from Kasai Province (Southeast Congo) by the inhabitants of Eastern Angola, and in the 1950s they were further adopted by the !Kung (Bushmen) of southeast Angola, a Khoisan-speaking group. It was from Central Africa that lamellophone instruments with metallic lamellae reappeared among the speakers of Bantoid languages and neighbouring Voltaic peoples in West Africa. In East Africa too this instrument type is typically used by Bantu-speaking ethnic groups, while Nilotic speakers tend to have adopted it on a much more limited scale; it is virtually unknown among the Arabs and Berbers of North Africa. Under the influence of slaves originating in Sub-Saharan Africa, similar instruments have also spread into South America and the Caribbean.