African musical instruments

Africa has thousands of traditional instruments, and no short list can cover them. This guide begins with six that readers search for most, and that between them show the main families: strings, xylophones, drums and thumb pianos. Each page explains where the instrument comes from, how it is made and played, and who its best-known players are.

Strings. The kora is a 21-string harp-lute played by the griot families of the Mandinka, in The Gambia, Senegal, Mali and Guinea.

Xylophones. The balafon is the gourd-resonated xylophone of the Mande peoples; the Sosso-Bala of Niagassola, in Guinea, is on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage.

Drums. The djembe is the goblet drum of the Mande world that the national ballet of Guinea carried abroad; the talking drum is an hourglass drum whose pitch follows the tones of speech.

Thumb pianos. The mbira of the Shona of Zimbabwe is played to call the ancestors, and the kalimba is the modern instrument adapted from it.

Many of these instruments belong to West Africa, where hereditary musicians, the jeli or griots, have kept histories and praise songs for centuries; see West Africa and, for Zimbabwe's mbira, Southern Africa. For the popular music these instruments feed into, from highlife to mbalax, see our music genres.