Musical Instruments

Musical Instruments have great value in African society. They were usually owned by the rich. Priests and rulers used musical instruments to heal and to overcome evil. The balafon is a resonated frame, wooden keyed percussion idiophone of West Africa; part of the idiophone family of tuned percussion instruments that includes the xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel, and the vibraphone. Sound is produced by striking the tuned keys with two padded sticks. The horn is a side-blown trumpet topped by a seated, pipe-smoking figure. It would probably have been used to announce the arrival of an important person.

A bowl drum is a drum elevated by two figures, one of a mother nursing her child and the other of someone writing in a book. The membrane of the drum, made of leather or cow hide, is attached with seven pegs. African music has been a major factor in the shaping of what we know today as blues and jazz. These styles have all borrowed from African rhythms and sounds, brought over the Atlantic Ocean by slaves. As the rise of rock and 'roll music is often credited as having begun with 1940s blues music, and with so many genres having branched off from rock, pop music and many more. It can be argued that African music has been at the root of a very significant portion of all contemporary music.