Musical instruments in Zambia: familiarity

Musical instruments in Zambia: familiarity. With respect to local cultures, many implicitly assume that everyone within that culture knows everything about it. Like any other ‘local culture’, Chibale serves as a counterexample to this implicit assumption. Many cases on this site indicate its inaccuracy, including familiarity with musical instruments and familiarity with musical genres among the ‘general public’. Chibale is a relatively small area, which most inhabitants consider to be a single, Lala, culture, with many musical occasions. Nevertheless, fewer than 50% of all musical instruments are generally known.¹‘All’ meaning: all musical instruments still present and still remembered.

In the surveys conducted in 1985/86, 1987, and 2004, the participants were asked to name as many musical instruments as they could. When they could not name another instrument, the interviewer read out the unmentioned instruments one by one from a list. Participants then indicated whether they recognised them as musical instruments. The assumption was that the instruments neither named nor recognised were unknown to the interviewee.

Familiarity of musical instruments/instrument names

See List 5.

We see that in 2004, 17 instruments were known by almost everyone. These are the instruments still used frequently. Yet, although they are played rarely, the lupenga, the mankubala, the kazoos, and the kankobele are known by more than half. Hunters and boys still use the first and third, albeit rarely. The second and fourth are considered to underline local identity. The remaining 16 instruments are known to ever smaller numbers of people.

In the 1980s, many of the named instruments were true instruments. Some people did not consider a certain instrument to be a musical instrument and therefore did not name or recognise it. This influenced the scores somewhat. See the article about true instruments. Another, smaller, influence was that some of those interviewed, especially some of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, did not want to come across as connoisseurs of Chibale music. Both influences were almost absent in the 2004 survey.

Changes in familiarity over the years

Musical instruments in Zambia: familiarity. The differences between the 1980s surveys and that of 2004 amount to the following.
People name well-known instruments more often (instead of only recognising them) in 2004. The reason is likely that the influence of the idea of true instruments is much smaller: instruments other than true instruments are named and recognised much more. The musical instruments that were less known in the 1980s are even less known, but still, known, in the 2000s.

The area opened up in the period between the first two and the third surveys and saw a large growth in christianity and more wealth (less poverty). Still, the familiarity with musical instruments did not change very much. The concept of what a musical instrument is shows a change in orientation: from particular attention to instruments that are worth evaluating to all musical sound-producing instruments.