Thumb piano

A Zimbabwean mbira dza vadzimu.

The thumb piano is an African musical instrument, a type of plucked idiophone common throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Thumb pianos traditionally consist of a wooden board to which metal tines of varying lengths are affixed. The longest tines are typically in the center, with shorter (and thus higher-pitched) tines arranged in ascending order towards both sides of the instrument. The thumb piano is most commonly held in both hands, with both thumbs being used to pluck tines either simultaneously or in turn. It may be used as a lead instrument or for accompanying other instruments or vocals.

The instrument is known by different names in different regions of a Africa, including Mbira, Mbila, Mbira Huru, Mbira Njari, Mbira Nyunga, Marimba, Karimba, Kalimba, Likembe, Okeme, as well as marímbula (also called kalimba) in the Caribbean Islands.

The thumb piano originated as an instrument typically played while walking by traveling Griots. It is also often played at religious ceremonies and social gatherings. It is a particularly common musical instrument in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The phrase "African Thumb Piano" is misleading, as the instrument has nothing to do with the pianoforte, which is a chordophonal instrument in the percussion family. Technically speaking, each note of a kalimba, mbira, and other such instrument of this family is a separate idiophone, and in orchestral terms, the instrument as a whole belongs in the bar percussion family (specifically: lamellophones). Further, the thumbs are not explicitly used; the mbira dza vadzimu is played with thumbs and an index finger, and various other "thumb pianos" utilise yet more digits.

Modern variations of the instrument may have more than the traditional array of 15 tines, with as many as four fully chromatic octaves, making playing more complex music possible. They may have hollow resonating chambers for increased volume, and mechanisms for readily tuning the tines to different scales. While the arrangement of notes on a thumb piano is considerably different from those on a piano or guitar, their arrangement is fairly intuitive, and it is considered to be an instrument easily learned. This quality is exploited in many elementary schools who use the thumb piano as an entry-level instrument.

Other variants

A special type of thumb piano is the Array mbira, consisting of approx. 100 thumbs configurated in a special order based on the circle of fifths, allowing a certain logical chord structure. The Guitaret is an electric lamellophone made by Hohner and invented by Ernst Zacharias, in 1963. Noise rock band Neptune and the African band Konono No.1 made several electric thumb pianos. Experimental instrument builder Yuri Landman constructed a two string guitar with twelve additional thumbs on the body for Jad Fair and a bass variant for These Are Powers.