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Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right Index finger (most mbira), and sometimes the left Index finger. Musicology classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.
A Western interpretation of the instrument, the kalimba, was commercially produced and exported by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in the late 1950s, popularising similar instruments outside of Africa. Tracey's design was modelled after the mbira nyunga nyunga and named kalimba after an ancient predecessor of the mbira family of instruments. The kalimba is basically a westernised younger version of mbira. It was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s largely due to the successes of such musicians as Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire and Thomas Mapfumo in the 1970s. These musicians included mbira on stage accompanying modern rock instruments such as electric guitar and bass, drum kit, and horns. Their arrangements included numerous songs directly drawn from traditional mbira repertoire. Other notable influencers bringing mbira music out of Africa are: Dumisani Maraire, who brought marimba and karimba music to the American Pacific Northwest; Ephat Mujuru, who was one of the pioneer teachers of mbira dzavadzimu in the United States; and the writings and recordings of made by Paul Berliner.
Joseph H. Howard and Babatunde Olatunji have both suggested that mbira (and other metal lamellaphones) are thoroughly African, being found only in areas populated by Africans or their descendants. Similar instruments were reported to be used in Okpuje, Nsukka area of the south eastern part of Nigeria in the early 1900s.
In the mid 1950s mbira instruments were the basis for the development of the kalimba, a westernised version designed and marketed by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, leading to a great expansion of its distribution outside Africa.
Historically, mbira tunings have not mapped exactly onto Western scales; it is not unusual for a seven-note sequence on a mbira to be "stretched octave" over a greater range of frequencies than a Western octave and for the intervals between notes to be different from those in a Western scale. Tunings have often been idiosyncratic with variations over time and from one player to another. A mbira key produces a rich complex of overtones that varies from one instrument to another depending on its maker's intentions and accidents of fabrication, such that some instruments simply sound better when some notes of a familiar tuning are pushed. With the increased popularity of the mbira dzavadzimu in North America, Europe, and Japan in recent decades, Zimbabwean mbira makers have tended to tune their instruments more uniformly for export, but much variation is still found among mbira in their homeland.
Tunings vary from family to family referring to relative interval relationships and not to absolute pitches. The most common tuning played throughout Zimbabwe and among non-Zimbabwean mbira players worldwide is Nyamaropa, similar to the western Mixolydian mode. Names may also vary between different families; Garikayi Tirikoti has developed a "mbira orchestra" that has seven different tunings, each starting on a different interval of the same seven-note scale, where it is possible to play all instruments in a single performance. The seven tunings that Garikayi uses are: Bangidza, Nyabango, Nhemamusasa, Chakwi, Taireva, Mahororo, and Mavembe (all of which are also names of traditional songs save for Mavembe and Nyabango). The closest to what is commonly named "Nyamaropa" is his "Nhemamusasa" tuning.
A typical mbira dzavadzimu consists of between 22 and 28 keys constructed from hot- or cold-forged metal affixed to a hardwood soundboard ( gwariva) in three different registers—two on the left, one on the right.
While playing, the little finger of the right hand is placed through a hole in the bottom right corner of the soundboard, with the little finger entering from the front of sound board, and the ring finger and middle finger reaching around the back to stabilise the instrument. This leaves the thumb and index finger of the right hand open to pizzicato the keys in the right register from above (thumb) and below (index finger). The fingers of the left hand stabilise the left side of the instrument, with most fingers reaching slightly behind the instrument. Both registers on the left side of the instrument are played with the left thumb. Some mbira possess an extra key in the upper left register which is hit from below by the left index finger.
, Exoskeleton, or other objects (" machachara"Williams, B. Michael. (2001) Learning Mbira: A Beginning. Everett, PA: HoneyRock. ) are often affixed to the soundboard to create a buzzing sound when the instrument is played. In a traditional setting, this sound is considered extremely important, as it is believed to attract ancestral spirits.
During a public performance, an mbira dzavadzimu is frequently placed in a deze (calabash resonator) to amplify its sound.
The mbira dza vadzimu is very significant in Shona people Shona religion and Shona culture, considered a sacred instrument by the Shona people. It is usually played to facilitate communication with ancestral spirits, bringing the spirit of the dead back on its homestead. Within the Shona tradition, the mbira may be played with paired performers in which the kushaura, the caller, leads the performed piece as the kutsinhira, the responder, "interlocks" a subsequent part. (1978). 9780520042681, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520042681 The ritual is known as the Bira. During these all-night ceremonies, people call upon the spirits to answer questions. The variations of notes in an Mbira piece aid the participants in going into trance, which in Shona culture aids the spirits in taking over the participant's body.
Albert Chimedza, director of the Mbira Centre in Harare, has estimated that "there are at most ten thousand people in the world who play mbira."
Zimbabwe's Dumisani Maraire originated mbira nyunga nyunga number notation. The upper row keys (from left) are keys 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 while the bottom row keys are notated as 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15. Maraire brought awareness of this instrument to the United States when he came to the University of Washington as a visiting artist from 1968 to 1972.
Recently a Midlands State University (Gweru, Zimbabwe) lecturer in the department of music and musicology has suggested a letter notation; the upper keys as (from first left upper key) E, D, C, F, C, D, and E and the lower or bottom keys as (from the first lower key) A, G, F, A, F, C, D, and E. But the Maraire number notation has remained the internationally accepted system (Chirimumimba, 2007).
Dutch composer Maarten Regtien (1963) uses a Mbira Nyunga Nyunga in the electronic composition Daddy Mbira - Mbira Penguin Talks (2014), creating soundscapes and using western composition techniques like the canon, impossible to play on a mbira.
In Cuba African along with the Cajón influenced the origins of the marimbula, whose history is poorly documented but is suspected to have originated in eastern Cuba.
The diatonic western kalimba tuning which Tracey used was practical for a worldwide instrument—with hundreds of African kalimba tunings, the chosen Western standard would maximise the number of people who would immediately connect with the kalimba. The practicality of this note arrangement, with notes going up the scale in a right-left-right-left progression, is that modal 1-3-5 or 1-3-5-7 chords are made by playing adjacent tines. If chords are played in the lower octave, the same notes will appear on the opposite side of the kalimba in the upper octave, which makes it very easy to simultaneously play a melody in the upper octave and an accompanying harmony in the lower octave. So, the arrangement of notes on the Hugh Tracey kalimba (and on virtually any kalimba that copies the instrument) makes certain complex musical operations very simple.
Alternative tunings are possible, as the tines of most kalimbas are easily pushed in and out to sharpen or flatten their pitch. Some alternative tunings simply change the key of the kalimba, without changing the note layout scheme. C major is a popular tuning, sold by multiple manufacturers. Other alternative tunings move the kalimba to non-modal scales (such as Middle-Eastern scales). Each note of the kalimba can be tuned independently (unlike a guitar), so any scale, western or non-western, is possible, and traditional African scales are still accessible to this modern African instrument. Composer Georg Hajdu has tuned the Hugh Tracey alto kalimba to the chromatic steps of the Bohlen–Pierce scale in a piece called Just Her – Jester – Gesture. The Bohlen–Pierce scale subdivides the just twelfth into 13 steps.
In the 2010 video game Donkey Kong Country Returns, one of main antagonists of the game is named Krazy Kalimba. Being a member of the musical instrument-themed Tiki Tak Tribe, his design features a "crown" evoking the keys of a kalimba, and he plays kalimba music as part of his hypnotic chant used to make various animals do his bidding.
On May 21, 2020, as part of Zimbabwe Culture Week, Google honoured the mbira with a Google Doodle which included a button allowing users to hear and play the instrument virtually. The doodle also featured the animation story of a young girl who learns to play the mbira, later inspiring a new generation of mbira players after becoming an established artiste herself as an adult. Celebrating Mbira
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