Mapeh

• African music has a very wide range of genres that include all the major instrumental genres of western music including strings, winds, and percussion, along with a tremendous variety of specific African musical instruments for solo or ensemble playing.
• Idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow, strings, membranes, or electricity.
• Agogo is a single bell or multiple bells and is considered as the oldest samba instrument based on West African Yoruba single or double bells.
• Shekere is a type of gourd and shell megaphone from West Africa, consisting of a dried gourd with beads woven into a net covering the gourd.
• Slit/Log drum is a hollow percussion instrument, known as a drum, but is an idiophone, usually carved or constructed from bamboo or wood into a box with one or more slits in the top.
• Atingting Kon (Slit Gong) is a hollowed cylinder of wood with a narrow longitudinal opening or slit whose edges are struck to produce a deep, sonorous tone.
• Balafon is a kind of wooden xylophone or percussion idiophone which plays melodic tunes and has been played in the region since the 1300s.
• Rattles are vessels made of seashells, tin basketry, animal hoofs, horn, wood, metal, cocoons, palm kernels or tortoise shells, which may range from single to several objects that are either joined or suspended to create sound as they hit each other.
• Rasp or scraper is a hand percussion instrument whose sound is produced by scraping the notches on a piece of curved wood with a stick, creating a series or rattling effects.
• Membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibrating stretched membrane.
• Body Percussion is a method of percussion where the performer uses their body as an instrument, clapping their hands, slapping their thighs, pounding their upper arms or chests, or shuffling and stomping their feet.
• Talking drum is used to send messages to announce births, deaths, marriages, sporting events, dances, initiations or war and is believed that the drums can carry direct messages to the spirits after the death of a loved one.
• Djembe is the West African djembe, one of the best-known African drums, shaped like a large goblet and played with bare hands.
• Lamellophone is one of the most popular African percussion instruments, a set of plucked tongues or keys mounted on the sound board.
• Chordophones produce sound by the vibration of a string or strings that are stretched between fixed points.
• Musical bow is the ancestor of all string instruments and consists of a single string attached to each end of a curved stick, similar to a bow and arrow.
• Lute originated from the Arabic states and is played in a similar technique to a modern guitar.
• Kora (harp lute) is the most sophisticated harp of Africa and is made from gourd or calabash.
• Zither is a stringed instrument with varying sizes and shapes whose strings are stretched along the body.
• Aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound.
• Horns are a type of Aerophone made from the horn of kudu antelope and can release a mellow and warm sound that adds a unique African accent to music.
• Whistles are small signaling flutes and can be made from wood or any materials.
• Mbira (Kalimba/Thumb Piano) is a set of plucked tines or keys mounted on a sound board and is being played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs.
• Mouth bow is a type of Musical Bow where the string is attached to each end of a curved stick, similar to a bow and arrow.
• Resonator bow is a form of the mouth bow with calabash resonator attached at its mid-point.
• Mbira is a hand-crafted instrument with a unique harp or bell-like sound and is a popular traditional instrument of the Shona people in Zimbabwe.
• Zeze is a fiddle from Sub- Saharan Africa that is played with bow, a small wooden stick, or plucked with fingers and has one or two strings, made from steel or bicycle brake wire.
• Earth bow, also known as ground bow or pit harp, consists of a flexible pole which is planted in the ground with a string attached to one end and a stone, a piece of bark, or a small piece of wood attached to the other end, thus bending the pole.
• Flute is a type of Aerophone that consists of cane pipes of different lengths tied in a row and is blown across the top, each producing a different note.
• Reed pipes, also known as Reed Instruments, have single or double reeds and sound when the player's breath or air from a wind chamber causes a reed to vibrate, thereby setting up a sound wave in an enclosed air column or in the open air.
• Trumpets can be made of wood, animal horn, elephant tusks, and gourds, ornamented with snake or crocodile skin or the skin of zebras, leopards, and other animals.
• Array Mbira is a radical redesign of the African Mbira and consists of up to 150 metal tines attached to a wooden board, comprising up to five octaves.