Source [1,2]: @amyasnaegele
Source [3]: “Mbira music master piece Live” by Coolboy on YouTube
Source [4-7]: “The soul of mbira : music and traditions of the Shona people of Zimbabwe” by Paul Berliner. Seen on @internetarchive.
Source [8]: “How to Make Mbira with Garikayi Tirikoti” by Stephen Watts on YouTube
Source notes [1,2]:
“This type of Zimbabwean lamellophone and tuning style is called mbira dzavadzimu, meaning “mbira of the ancestral spirits.” The mbira dzavadzimu instrument form was popularized after the 1920s, supplanting the mbira matepe style. This example does not have resonators…8 in W”
Source notes [4-7]:
“…people from the same culture that supports missionary education in Africa continually referred to his instrument in ethnocentric terms as “finger piano,” “thumb piano,” or “hand piano,” and showed little interest in learning its African name. Throughout black Africa, however, where the mbira is one of the most popular traditional instruments, it has many regional names…These and similar names often have interesting linguistic associations. For example, it has been suggested that the literal meaning of mbila is “the aggregate of wooden slabs (or of metal tongues), and perhaps even the succession of sounds constituting the scale or mode to which the instrument is tuned.”
Source notes [8]:
“The full process of making an mbira with the Tirikoti family. These are traditional sacred intruments of the Shona people, used for prayer, worship, calling the ancestral spirits and assisting the work of the Svikiro.”
