Mbira

The “Thumb Piano”: A Survey of Nomenclature
By Eddie Osborne

The “thumb piano,” so-called because the thumbs are used to pluck its metal or cane keys, occurs virtually throughout sub-Saharan Africa under a variety of indigenous names. In some instances, the names incorporate the stem san, as in kisanji (among the Bateke of the Congo), issanji (among the Bena Lulua of southern Congo and northern Angola), ochisanji (among the Ovimbundu of Angola), chisansi or kansansi (among the Sena/Nyungwe of Mozambique), and sansa, chisanza, sanzhi and isanzu (among various groups in parts of Congo, southern Angola and northwestern Zambia).

In other instances, the stem limba (or its variant forms rimba, imba, imbe, embe, eme) figures in the various designations. Among the Amba of Uganda and the Tabura of the Congo, for example, the word for the instrument is likembe. Closely related forms occur among the Alur and Acholi of Uganda (lukembe), the Bahutu of Rwanda and Burundi (ikembe), the Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique (irimba and kajimba), the Bemba of Zambia (itshilimba), the Yao of Malawi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Mozambique (lulimba), and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania (malimbe).

Interestingly enough, in several regions of the continent the thumb piano and xylophone share the same name, a fact that has caused no small amount of confusion on the part of outsiders. Among the Wagogo people of Tanzania, for example, the thumb piano and xylophone both are called marimba. Such is also the case among the Nsenga of the Congo, whose name for both instruments is kalimba. This occurrence can be explained by the fact that some groups consider the thumb piano to be a kind of portable xylophone. As A.M. Jones has observed, in some Bantu languages ka- is a diminutive prefix; thus, the meaning of kalimba, for example, is “little”-limba, or xylophone.

In the more southerly portions of Africa, the various names for the instrument incorporate the prefix mbi. Thus, among the Mashona, Zezuru and other groups in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique the thumb piano is called mbira, and among the Lemba and Venda or South Africa it is mbila. These, however, are generic designations. Most groups also have specific names for the instrument sub-types, such as the Mashona matepe, karimba, njari, etc.

Quite often, those groups who use two or more forms of the instrument assign different names based on their methods of construction; i.e., whether the instruments incorporate metal or cane keys, whether they are resonated or unresonated, etc. The Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria are fairly typical. One of their instruments, called opanda, consists of a small oblong box with eight or so split cane or wooden keys. The other, called ubo, features seven or eight metal keys mounted on a soundboard affixed to a large gourd hemisphere.

Similarly, the Dagarti of Burkina Faso have two instruments with different names – guidiga and ciau. The former consists of metal or cane keys mounted either on an unresonated soundboard or one attached to a gourd resonator. The latter, for its part, features cane for both the keys and the body.

Actually, the small hand-held thumb piano is but one type found in Africa. A popular version in some areas of the continent features several large metal keys mounted on a large box that serves as a resonator and a seat for the player. This form of the instrument is called agidigbo by the Yoruba, kongoma by the Wolof of Senegal and the Vai of Liberia, kònkoma by the Kpelle of Liberia, and by various other names in Ghana, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

Africans enslaved in the Americas brought with them the tradition of making both the small and large forms of the thumb piano. The small type once was fairly widespread in parts of the Caribbean, South America, Central and South America and the United States (one form, the so-called marimba Brett, was documented in Louisiana in the late 1800s); however, over time it has become extinct except for in a few pockets such as Suriname, where a split-cane type called papái bèntá continues to be made and played by the Saramaka people.

The large box type (featuring anywhere from four to eight metal keys mounted on a packing case) has fared considerably better. It occurs widely in the Caribbean and in South and Central America under several names, including marímbula (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama), manouba, manimba or malimba (Haiti), mento box, rumba box (Jamaica), and bass box (Trinidad). In those areas, the instrument is used to provide the bass rhythm in folkloric ensembles.

Eddie Osborne has been crafting musical instruments for more than 25 years. He also heads up Panaf Press, publisher of a series of how-to booklets covering assorted African and African-derived musical instruments (beaded gourd rattles such as the sekere and the axatse, the berimbau, thumb pianos, xylophones) and a line of phrase books (Haitian creole, Jamaican creole, Bambara, Wolof).

Eddie can be reached at:
PO Box 814643
Hollywood, FL 33081-4643
(954)893-1695
panafpro@netscape.net

Last Updated: Thursday, May 01, 2003