The Chizambe Mouth Resonated Bow

This is one of the most ancient instruments from southern Africa. In this post, I will explore the amusing context and playing technique of this awesome instruments. As one of the instruments that is becoming increasingly hard to find, I want to highlight it in hopes of getting more people to know about it and eventually play it.

Anesu Ndoro

3/19/20241 min read

(Re)Building Music - The Chizambi

I'd like to showcase one of the classic instruments from southern Zimbabwe/Mozambique/northern South Africa - the Chizambi (or chizambe/chinyamazambe/xizambi/tshizambi - depends on who you ask). Headphones recommended since this is a quieter instrument.

Many thanks to Mr Solomon Madhinga who was exceedingly indispensible in helping me make this one when I visited Chipinge last year. Certainly one more instruments for my students to learn!

The Chizambi is quite straightforward to play. The shaker staff is moved across the notched bow to vibrate it and this in turn vibrates the palm frond stretched across the bow. The palm frond has considerable tension which mean that it can produce sound. I can then shape the overtones with my mouth, and I can lightly touch the palm frond to shorten its length and thus vary its fundamental note/its overtones as well.

This last part is a similar concept to playing the uhadi (a Xhosa classical instrument), and so in the last video I tried playing a traditional Xhosa composition Umzi KaMzwandile on the chizambi; think of it as a cross-pollination of African musics.