Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones

Gourd idiophones

Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones. Mutungu is a gourd with a narrow neck. Mitungu (plural of mutungu) was the name of a set of three mutungu played by two women. One player held a gourd in each hand, the other one gourd in one hand. They struck the gourds on the ground. While doing that, they closed the small opening at the top of the gourd with the thumb (percussive sound). Or left it open (percussive sound plus soft tone).
Girls and women played the mutungu Pa kwisha, accompanying the women’s repertoire. Because of this, a certain part of the women’s repertoire in the past was called mitungu, as was the case in the Lamba region in the 1910s1Doke (1931:367).. In the 1980s, mutungu was among the least known instruments and song and dance genres in Chibale. See List 5 and List 6.
In Chibale, no mitungu proper songs are remembered. Any song accompanied by the mitungu, at that moment, was a mitungu song.

Photo 172 Mutungu

Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones.

A mutungu as found in the Moto-Moto museum in Mbala, 1981.

Bottles

Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones. Women also play the same music with three bottles, called mabotolo. Listen to Music example 50.

Mabotolo, the playing of mitungu with bottles instead of gourds, as remembered by Alube Mika. He plays two bottles: kace and ikulu and Basil Chisonta one bottle: cibitiku. The kace bottle never closes. The cibitiku opens every other hit. The ikulu opens panono (slowly) meaning that it opens just after hitting. The rhythm is a simple alternating eighth notes beat while the cibitiku plays quarter notes. Another, not recorded, pattern was: cibitiku: 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2; kace: 3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3; ikulu: 1-1-1-3-1-1-1- 1-1-1-1-1-1-3-1-1-1-3 or 1-1-1-3-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-3-3-3. Here the ikulu opens just after hitting a 3.

Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones.

Footnotes

  • 1
    Doke (1931:367).

IJzermans, Jan J. (2025) Amalimba. Music and related dance, text & ritual in one African region. https://amalimba.org/musical-instruments-gourd-idiophones/

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