Music
The three distinctive instruments of Zimbabwe include drums (ngomas), the mbira, and the marimba. Different sizes, shapes, tightness of the membranes, and materials used to make drums produce different tones and pitches, just as the different sized wood strips of a marimba create different tones. The mbira is perhaps the most important instrument used. It is plucked with the fingers to produce the melody, and is often used during religious rituals by spirit mediums in order to communicate with ancestral spirits. The mbira, and consequently the mbira dance, has been around for a long time, according to archaeological digs. Mbiras have been uncovered and dated back to the twelfth century.
Read more about this topic: Dance In Zimbabwe
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears.... It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)