Dance in Zimbabwe - Music

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:

    The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.
    John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)

    Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s morning work in this world?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    This music crept by me upon the waters,
    Allaying both their fury and my passion
    With its sweet air; thence have I followed it,
    Or it hath drawn me rather.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)