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A slender, rectangular wooden board. There are five round perforations on one narrow side and five round slots burnt into the other. Above the surface of the board [there is] a string made of twisted animal tissue, [which] is stretched out five times. Its direction [is] reversed by two neighbouring perforations/slits. Crosswise under the string [are] two plano-convex wooden bars. The board, resting in a right-angled recess in the edge of a calabash open at the top, moves into the resonator and abuts against its rear wall. A cord end [is] guided from there inside the resonator to a central bottom perforation and outside to the free end of the board. There [it is] tied around a carved tenon. The calabash [is] replaced (reconstruction of the resonator connection according to Ankermann: 25). [A] transverse wood binding of the other end of the string, below a perforation. from Ulrich Wegner: Afrikanische Saiteninstrumente, Staatliche Museen Berlin - SPK, 1984 (Appendix Object Catalogue)

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Cataloguing data

Object type
musical instruments
Dimensions
Length: 39,7 cm
Width: 6,5 cm
Material/Technique
Wood, Plant fibre , Pumpkin peel
Current location
Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Inventory number
III E 8709

Provenance and sources

  • Production
    where
    Malawi
    Western Lake Nyassa
  • Assignment to a curated holding:
    Africa

Information about the record

Legal status metadata
CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

Related objects

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