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African harps, particularly arched harp, are found in several Sub-Saharan African music traditions, particularly in the north-east. Used from early times in Africa, they resemble the form of harps in ancient Egypt with a vaulted body of wood, parchment faced, and a neck, perpendicular to the resonant face, on which the strings are wound.
The oldest depictions of harps in Africa date back to the 4th Dynasty of Egypt (around 2500 BC). They represent the already fully developed type of bowed harp with a short spade or shovel-shaped resonance box, which presumably dates back to the 1st dynasty (beginning of the 3rd millennium) and is an independent Egyptian development. Curt Sachs (1928) recognizes the musical bow as the starting point in the gently curved arch of the man-high ancient Egyptian harp , whose attached resonating body was adapted to the lower end of the string carrier and from whose ceiling instead of one string several strings now appear in one plane up to the upper area of the support rod.
Towards the end of the Second Intermediate Period (around 1600 BC), new forms of harp appeared, above all the naviforme large bow harp, a head-high standing harp with a long, slender body that only gradually merges into the string carrier. In the Theban tomb TT367, which is dated to the reign of Amenophis II (second half of the 15th century BC), there is also a transportable, smaller, deep-arched harp of the singers (shoulder harp) and, for the first time, a small angular harp. The latter supplanted the ancient Egyptian bowed harps, which continued to exist at best in folk music or in surrounding areas. The Egyptian angular harp later made its way to West Africa, where it survived in the form of the Mauritanian ardin. The angular harp also appears further south, such as the angular harp used by the Efe people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.[1] The portable shoulder harp played in the New Kingdom had a slender boat-shaped body and a strongly curved neck.
According to Klaus Wachsmann's (1964) theory, portable bowed harps gradually made their way from Egypt up the Nile to East Africa and, branching off from this route, also to Central and West Africa. In the south, their range hardly extends beyond the equator. It includes Uganda, the center of African bowed harps. Here, in the middle of the 20th century, 12 of 25 ethnic groups had their own harp tradition. Harps also come from the north and north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur in Sudan, South Sudan , Gabon , the Central African Republic and north Cameroonbefore. In West Africa they are restricted to areas south of Lake Chad. According to the different ways of attaching the truss rod to the body, Wachsmann differentiates between three main types of African bowed harps, which allow conclusions to be drawn about their distribution routes.
File:Bow harp ca. 2030–1640 B.C., Egypt, Middle Kingdom.jpg|Harp from the Middle Kingdom, with soundboard-skin gone. The wooden bar that the strings were tied to is visible, as are the pegs on the neck.
File:Egyptian harp.jpg|Egyptian harp in the British Museum, from the Tomb of Ani (Thebes). New Kingdom, 18th dynasty.
File:Britannica Harp Egyptian Harp Variety.png|Picture shown variety of Egyptian harps.
File:Egyptian vertical harp, kneeling harper.jpg|Egyptian vertical harp, kneeling harper
File:Harp from the New Kingdom.jpg|Arched harp, New Kingodom
File:A Musical Entertainment (1878) - TIMEA.jpg|Egyptian spade-shaped harp
File:PSM V40 D492 Various forms of egyptian harps.jpg|Picture with multiple Egyptian harps
File:Harp MET LC-25 3 306 EGDP026451.jpg|Harp, Late Second Intermediate Period–early New Kingdom, Dynasty 17–18. Naviform harp, shoulder harp.
File:Arched Harp (shoulder harp) MET DP302724.jpg|Egyptian harp, New Kingdom, 18th dynasty
File:Tomb chapel of paätenemheb (RMO Leiden egypt saqqara 1333-1307bc) (3970065130).jpg|bow harp
Abalanga (harpist) are skilled performers and composers who work within a very structured paradigm to ensure that no two abalanga performances are the same.
==Gallery ==
This type, which occurs exclusively in Uganda, includes the ennanga of the Baganda, the ekidongo of the Nyoro , the kimasa of the Basoga, the five-stringed opuk agoya (or lotewrokuma ) of theAcholi and the tum of the Langi , also consisting of a turtle shell as a resonator . Due to the relatively limited range, Gerhard Kubik (1982) concludes that this type arrived in the region long ago and independently of the other types.
It is unclear how the "spoon in the cup" type came south through Sudan, but this probably happened before the Luo immigration to Kenya in the 16th century. Like many other Nilotic peoples, the Luo are predominantly not players of harps but of lyres (like the tom ). The oral tradition can be summarized in the case of the ennangaas far back as Kabaka Nakibinge (ruled c. 1494–1524), to whom it was played on the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria.
Also known as the tanged type , it occurs in central Africa north of the equator. Typical harps are the kundi of the Azande in northern Congo , the domu of the Mangbetuin north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in Uganda, the kinanga of the Bakonjo of the Rwenzori Mountains , the ore or orodo of the Madi in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, and the adungu of the Alur.
In general, there are considerable differences in form and playing style between the musical instruments of the Nilotic peoples of northern Uganda (including the Alur adungu ) and those of the Bantu ( Baganda ennanga , Basoga kimasa ) of southern Uganda.
The distribution region extends along the Atlantic Ocean from Gabon to southern Cameroon and includes two isolated occurrences in Ghana and Ivory Coast.Klaus Wachsmann, 1964, map p. 85; Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 29
A bowed harp of this type is in the musicological text Syntagma musicum by Michael Praetorius(1619) pictured. In addition to a pluriarc , Plate XXXI also shows a Central African bowed harp for the first time. The representation of a body made of several boards was probably modeled on an eight-string bowed harp observed among the Kele (Bakele, Kélé -speaker) on the coast of Gabon. Portuguese sailors had landed there in 1470 and had soon established trade relations.
Gerhard Kubik (2000) concludes from Praetorius' figure that type 3 in Gabon may have evolved from type 2 well before the 17th century through the adoption of local forms in Gabon and the Congo, primarily from the Pluriarc.Gerhard Kubik, 1982, p. 341
In this diffusion theory, there are some differences between the ancient Egyptian and southern African bowed harps, which have moved away from them in terms of playing technique and construction: Unlike in ancient Egypt, some modern African harpists holds their instrument with his neck away from his body. The ancient Egyptian harps were generally believed to have fixed tuning pegs to keep the strings wrapped around the neck from slipping, but no movable tuning pegs like all contemporary African harps. When and from where the tuning pegs were first introduced is unclear.
The Alur and Acholi also call adungu or adingili a multi-stringed musical bow, which consists of a semicircular curved stick over which a cord is stretched in such a way that three Z-shaped strings with different pitches result.29
According to descriptions from the first half of the 20th century, this musical bow is played by Acholi and Alur girls who place the bow staff on an inverted gourd bowl to amplify the sound.Klaus Wachsmann, 1953, pp. 383–385, 408 plate 89D From a musical bow amplified in this way, the developmental path to the bowed harp leads via the intermediate stage of a resonator attached to the semicircular string carrier. The rare Afghan waji , classified inconsistently as a musical bow or bowed harp, has such a wooden resonator equipped with a skin cover, the strings of which are individually stretched.
Ulrich Wegner, 1984, p. 28
''Adingili'' is a probably onomatopoeic Bantu-Timbrh language word, phonetically connected with [[timbili|Timbrh]] for a Cameroonian lamellophone.
Names
African harps have many names in different languages and dialects. These include:
See also
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