Musical bow
Videos
Page
The musical bow is a simple string instrument used by a number of African peoples, which is also found in the Americas via the 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.
India, ca. 1725, Bundi style. A divine musician plays a hunting bow with its tip placed in a resonance pot. Possible pinaka vina or ravanahatha.
Lithograph of scene from the Trois Frères cave, showing a figure on the wall whose bow(?) has been thought to possibly be musical.
Madosini playing the umrubhe mouth bow.
The Uhadi or 'thomo' musical bow used by the Basotho people.
String instrument
Videos
Page
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Bow Harp or Harp Lute, West Africa
Hellenistic banquet scene from the 1st century AD, Hadda, Gandhara. Lute player far right.
Spanish stele of a boy with a pandura.
Viol, fidel and rebec (from left to right) on display at Amakusa Korejiyokan in Amakusa, Kumamoto, Japan