NIgerian Musical Instruments: A Symbol of Its Diversity

We have various musical instruments across Nigeria. Diversity in weather, culture, tradition and trade are great reasons for this variety. I will attempt to discus how these environmental and social/lifestyle distinctions work to create a dynamic music landscape across Africa's most diverse gathering.

In the east, south and coastal areas (Akwa ibom, Abia, Bayelsa and Delta States), musical instruments like gongs and xylophones are made purely from wood materials. The lush vegetation of southern Nigeria makes it common to create these huge wooden musical instruments from their forests. In this region there are gourds which are used as resonators for constructing thumb pianos.

On the other end, northern Nigeria is a Savannah region with sparing grasses reserved for cattle rearing, the skins of those cattles serve as material for construction of string instruments like Goge, and also bows for playing those string instruments.

Suffice to mention that Nigerian musical instruments are produced from local materials in the environments.

Trade and occupation also influence greatly the design of instruments originating from the distinct regions. In areas where blacksmiths dominate, it is normal for metal gongs to be the most common musical instruments. We already saw how the dominance of cattle rearing in the grassland, Savannah areas of Sokoto, Kaduna and Kwara has an influence on musical instruments in the region. Here wood and metals are used as resonators, not as vibrators. Membranophones are most common in these areas.

How Nigerian Musical Instruments are Classified

Curt Sachs and Erick Hornbostel (German Ethnomusicologists) in 1914 came up with a scientific criteria for the classification of musical instruments. These are Idiophones, Menbranophones, Chordophones, Aerophones and Electrophones. I will touch briefly the first four and offer examples of Nigerian instruments that match those classifications.

Idiophones

These are musical instruments that depend on the vibration of the entire body for the production of sound. They can be either wooden or metal. Examples are xylophones, gongs, maracas (shekere) and thumb piano (mbira). Idiophones can be struck, plucked or shaken. It is also worthy of note that we have both primary and secondary idiophones. secondary Idiophones are attached to the body to produce sounds passively during other musical functions, like dancing and drumming. An example is a dancer who attaches secondary rattles to her ankles, and so also a master drummer.

Dancer with Shekere || image source

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Membranophones

This class depend on a stretched membrane which mostly are animals skins for sound production. Example are talking drums, hourglass drums, kettle drums.

Talking Drum Player || image source

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Chordophones

This class of musical instruments depend on the vibration of a stretched string for sound production. Goge, raft zither and molo are the most common examples in Nigeria.

Raft Zither || image source

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Aerophones

Aerophones are musical instruments that depend on the vibration of the air column inside the musical instruments for sound production e.g Kakaaki and Oja (flute).

Kakaaki || image source

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Conclusion

Nigeria is a country with at least 371 tribes, all with unique cultures and practices. The musical instruments in Nigeria resonates this dynamism, portraying the richness and uniqueness of Nigerian/African music. It also illustrates how humans tend to adapt to their environment by making utmost use of resources which nature has provided them, in this case for music creation. I hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope you learnt a thing or two.

In a subsequent posts I will write about the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic roles /functions of these musical instruments.

Just like that, this post is over ;-)

Mfoniso Udeme Akpan,
Nigeria