Descriptions:
The portal of African and Caribbean cultures. Indigenous African musical and dance expressions that are maintained by oral tradition and that are stylistically distinct from the music and dance of both the Arabic cultures of North Africa and the Western settler populations of southern Africa. African music and dance, therefore, are cultivated largely by societies in sub-Saharan Africa.
The musical instruments of sub-Saharan Africa include a wide variety of resonant solids (idiophones) such as rattles, bells, stamping tubes, the mbira (thumb piano), and the xylophone. Parchment-head drums (membranophones) are found in many forms, such as goblet drums; kettledrums; cylindrical, semicylindrical, and barrel-shaped drums; and hourglass drums with variable-tension heads. Among wind instruments (aerophones) are flutes made of bamboo, millet, reed, or the tips of animal horns and gourds; ocarinas; panpipes; horns (made from elephant tusks or animal horns) and trumpets (made of wood, sections of gourd, or metal tubes); single-reed pipes made from millet stalks; and double-reed pipes adopted from Arabic culture. Stringed instruments (chordophones) include musical bows, zithers, bowed and plucked lutes, harp-lutes, arched harps, and lyres.
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