Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones
Gourd idiophones
Musical instruments in Zambia: gourd idiophones. Mitungu (plural of mutungu) was the name of a set of three small gourds with narrow necks, 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).. Some 70 years later, mitungu are among the least known instruments, see List 5, and song and dance genres, see List 6, in Chibale.
In Chibale, no mitungu proper songs are remembered. Any song accompanied by the mitungu, at that moment, was a mitungu song.
Photo 172 ∵ Mutungu
A mutungu as found in the Moto-Moto museum in Mbala, 1981.
Bottles
Women also play the same music with three bottles, called mabotolo. Listen to Music example 50.
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.
Footnotes
- 1Doke (1931:367).