Musical instruments in Zambia: kazoo and horn

Kazoo

Musical instruments in Zambia: kazoo and horn. There are two types of kazoo in Chibale. One is for hunting and the other is for fun.

Cinyenye

Hunters make the cinyenye from the tip of a duiker (mpombo) horn. They make a blowing hole in the horn and cover its open side with a thin membrane.
The sound resembles the cry of an antelope calf for its mother. The cinyenye may attract a female antelope but its use is not without risks. It may attract an antelope predator as well.

Lambo describes the cinyenye for the Congo part of the Lala region: “The hunter by means of a whistle made of the tip of a horn of the Mpelembe (Hippotragus Niger) imitates the call of the female. The horn is drilled in the top and the hole is closed by means of a tandala [spider web] found under the bark of the Mulikaputu tree.”¹Lambo (1946:61). Original in French, translation by Jan IJzermans.
Kaluwe mediums or hunters sometimes use the cinyenye during their dances.

Kameme

Occasionally a boy uses a kazoo-like instrument, made with a special thick spider web (lembalemba) into which he sings his favourite songs.

Horn

Musical instruments in Chibale, Zambia: kazoo and horn. People in Chibale remember the use of horns to give signals.
People made the lumbeta, or lupenga, from the horns of antelopes (mapeba, muyongo, kansonto, mpulupule).²The musuku, cupping horn, and the kazoo are made of the same horns using only the straight beginning of the horn. The blowing hole was in the middle of the horn at the outer side of the curve. One would play one or two natural overtones.
The chief used it for warning and signalling. ‘Lumbeta lwalila, the horn sounds: the chief calls us’. It could also signal the beginning and the end of a beer party. And, during the Cila young men blew it ‘to make the session lively’.
In the 1980s and later, people do not use the horns anymore. Hitting a drum shell with a hoe or axe sometimes signals a beer party.