The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African-Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and The Allman Brothers, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as Bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional ("trad") jazz. Banjo is also a common instrument for Caribbean genres like Biguine, Calypso and Mento.
The musical bow is a simple string instrument used by a number of South African peoples, which is also found in the Americas via slave trade. It consists of a flexible, usually wooden, stick 1.5 to 10 feet long, and strung end to end with a taut cord, usually metal. It can be played with the hands or a wooden stick or branch. It is uncertain if the musical bow developed from the hunting bow, though the San or Bushmen people of the Kalahari Desert do convert their hunting bows to musical use.
Buxus is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood.
The music of Guinea-Bissau is most widely associated with the polyrhythmic genre of gumbe, the country's primary musical export. Tina and tinga are other popular genres.
The highly diverse and distinctive music of Madagascar has been shaped by the musical traditions of Southeast Asia, Africa, Arabia, England, France and the United States over time as indigenous people, immigrants, and colonists have made the island their home. Traditional instruments reflect these widespread origins: the mandoliny and kabosy owe their existence to the introduction of the guitar by early Arab or European seafarers, the ubiquitous djembe originated in mainland Africa and the valiha—the bamboo tube zither considered the national instrument of Madagascar—directly evolved from an earlier form of zither carried with the first Austronesian settlers on their outrigger canoes.
The viola caipira, often simply viola, is a Brazilian ten-string guitar with five courses of strings arranged in pairs. It was introduced in the state of São Paulo, where it is widely played as the basis for the música caipira, a type of folk-country music originating in the caipira country of south-central Brazil.
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work and for religious ceremonies of birth, naming, rites of passage, marriage and funerals. The beats and sounds of the drum are used in communication as well as in cultural expression.
Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate. Plucking can be done with either a finger or a plectrum.
Música sertaneja or sertanejo is a music style that had its origins in the countryside of Brazil in the 1920s. Its contemporary developments made it the most popular music style in 2000s and 2010s Brazil, particularly throughout the southern/southeastern and center-western countryside Brazil. Subgenres include sertanejo de raiz, sertanejo romântico, and sertanejo universitário.
D'Gary is a Malagasy musician of Bara ethnicity. His primary instrument is the acoustic guitar.
The Tandroy are a traditionally nomadic ethnic group of Madagascar inhabiting the arid southern part of the island called Androy. Tracing their origins back to the East Africa mainland. In the 17th century however, the Tandroy emerged as a confederation of two groups ruled by the Zafimanara dynasty until flooding caused the kingdom to disband around 1790. The difficult terrain and climate of Tandroy protected and isolated the population, sparing them from subjugation by the Kingdom of Imerina in the 19th century; later, the French colonial authority also struggled to exert its influence over this population. Since independence the Tandroy have suffered prejudice and economic marginalization, prompting widespread migration and intermarriage with other ethnic groups, and leading them to play a key role in protests that sparked the end of President Philibert Tsiranana's administration in 1972.
The Black Society for Salvation was a secret Albanian nationalist society established in 1909. Its main task was to organize uprisings in southern Albania and Macedonia struggling for the unification of the four Ottoman vilayets with the substantial Albanian population into one autonomous political unit with its own government and parliament. The members of the society considered the armed rebellions as legitimate means for achieving their aims.
Bamboo's natural hollow form makes it an obvious choice for many musical instruments.
An idiochord is a musical instrument in which the "string" of the instrument is made from the same material as its resonating body. Such instruments may be found in the Indian Ocean region, disparate regions of Africa and its diaspora, and parts of Europe and North America.
Bar zither is class of musical instruments within the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system for a type of simple chordophone, in which the body of the instrument is shaped like a bar.
3MA is a contemporary African music group, consisting of three players of different string instruments: Ballaké Sissoko from Mali on kora, Driss El Maloumi from Morocco on oud and Rajery from Madagascar on valiha. The band takes its name from the first two letters of each member's country of origin in French: Madagascar, Mali, and Maroc.
The tube zither is a stringed musical instrument in which a tube functions both as an instrument's neck and its soundbox. As the neck, it holds strings taut and allows them to vibrate. As a soundbox or it modifies the sound and transfers it to the open air. The instruments are among the oldest of chordophones, being "a very early stage" in the development of chordophones, and predate some of the oldest chordophones, such as the Chinese Se, zithers built on a tube split in half. Most tube zithers are made of bamboo, played today in Madagascar, India, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Tube zithers made from other materials have been found in Europe and the United States, made from materials such as cornstalks and cactus.
