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Kontigi
A kontigi or kuntigi is a one-stringed African lute played by the Hausa, Songhai and Djerma. A 3-string version ''teharden'' is used among the Tamashek. The instrument is used in Hausa music, primarily in northern Nigeria and Niger, and among Hausa minorities in Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. It is also found among Islamized peoples throughout West Africa (see Xalam). The best-known player of the kontigi is Dan Maraya. Characteristics The instrument uses a calabash gourd as the body of the instrument, covered by skin, with a stick for a neck. Modern instrument have had the gourd replaced by a can, such as a large sardine can. The neck on the Kontigi has "metal disk surrounded by small rings" which make noise as the instrument is moved or played. The tone is high pitched. Performance The instrument is used to perform "praise songs" by professional musicians or by Griots in Nigeria. A well-known musician who used the instrument was Dan Maraya, who recorded album ...
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Dan Maraya
Ɗan Maraya Jos (also known as Adamu Ɗan Maraya Jos ; born Adamu Wayya in 1946 – 20 June 2015) was a Nigerian Hausa griot known for playing the kontigi. He was also remembered as a man who did not limit his praise singing to the rich and famous, but sang praises for common people as well. He was a Member of the Order of the Niger (MON), an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) and a recipient of the Nigerian Federal Republic Medal, 1st class. A recording artist, by 1986 he had recorded at least 150 LPs and singles and composed 500 songs. Life Dan Maraya Jos, whose name means "The Orphan of Jos", was born in 1946 in Bukuru, near Jos in Plateau State, Nigeria. His birth name is Adamu Wayya, but his father died shortly after his birth and his mother died while he was still an infant, hence the name by which everyone knows him. Dan Maraya's father had been a court musician for the Sarkin Hausawa of Bukuru. After the father's death, the Emir (or Sarkin Hausawa) took ...
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Xalam
Xalam (in Serer, khalam in Wolof, and Mɔɣlo in Dagbanli) is a traditional lute from West Africa with 1 to 5 strings. The xalam is commonly played in Mali, Gambia, Senegal, Niger, Northern Nigeria, Northern Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mauritania Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Maghreb, Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to Mauritania–Western Sahara border, the north and northwest, ..., and Western Sahara. The xalam and its variants are known by various names in other languages, including bappe, diassare, hoddu ( Pulaar), koliko ( Gurunsi), kologo ( Frafra), komsa, kontigi, gurmi, garaya ( Hausa), koni, konting ( Mandinka), molo ( Songhay/ Zarma), ndere, ngoni ( Bambara), and tidinit ( Hassaniyya and Berber). In Wolof, a person who plays the xalam is called a ''xalamkat'' (a word composed of the verbal form of xalam, meaning "to play the xalam", and the agentive s ...
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Griot
A griot (; ; Manding languages, Manding: or (in N'Ko script, N'Ko: , or in French spelling); also spelt Djali; or / ; ) is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and/or musician. Griots are masters of communicating stories and history orally, which is an African tradition. Instead of writing history books, List of oral repositories, oral historians tell stories of the past that they have memorized. Sometimes there are families of historians, and the oral histories are passed down from one generation to the next. Telling a story out loud allows the speaker to use poetic and musical conventions that entertain an audience. This has contributed to many oral histories surviving for hundreds of years without being written down. Through their storytelling, griots preserve and pass on the values of a tribe or people, such as the Senegalese, who are Muslims. The Wolof people in Senegal, many of whom cannot read or write, depend on griots to learn abou ...
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Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Cameroon's population of nearly 31 million people speak 250 native languages, in addition to the national tongues of English and French, or both. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad and the Baka people (Cameroon and Gabon), Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese discoveries, Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area ''Rio dos Camarões'' (''Shrimp River''), which became ''C ...
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Nigerian Musical Instruments
The music of Nigeria includes many kinds of folk and popular music. Little of the country's music history prior to European contact has been preserved, although bronze carvings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries have been found depicting musicians and their instruments. The country's most internationally renowned genres are Indigenous, Apala, Aurrebbe music, Rara music, Were music, Ogene, Fuji, Jùjú, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Igbo highlife, Afro-juju, Waka, Igbo rap, Gospel, Nigerian pop and Yo-pop. Styles of folk music are related to the over 250 ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments, and songs. The largest ethnic groups are the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. Traditional music from Nigeria and throughout Africa is often functional; in other words, it is performed to mark a ritual such as the wedding or funeral and not to achieve artistic goals. Although some Nigerians, especially children and the elderly, play instruments for their ...
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Krar
The ''krar'' (Geʽez: ክራር) is a five-or-six stringed bowl-shaped lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is tuned to a pentatonic scale. A modern ''krar'' may be Instrument amplifier, amplified, much in the same way as an electric guitar or electric violin, violin. The ''krar'', along with the ''masenqo'' and the ''washint'', is one of the most widespread musical instruments in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Role in society Historical In Amhara People, Amhara society, the ''krar'' was viewed as an instrument inspired by the Devil and was therefore inferior, whereas the ''Begena'' was for praising God and seen as sacred. The ''krar'' was used to adulate feminine beauty, create sexual arousal, and eulogize carnal love. The Derg regime banned playing the krar and imprisoned people who played it, especially in the big cities such as Asmara and Addis Ababa. The instrument has been associated with brigands, outlaws, and ''Wata'' or ''Azmari'' wanderers. Wanderers played the ''krar ...
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YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and , there were approximately 14.8billion videos in total. On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Google expanded YouTube's business model of generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by and for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subs ...
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Calabash
Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh. Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are typically called calabash gourds. The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to have been g ...
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Instruments De Musique Traditionnelle Au Musée BOUBOU HAMA De Niamey
Instrument may refer to: Science and technology * Flight instruments, the devices used to measure the speed, altitude, and pertinent flight angles of various kinds of aircraft * Laboratory equipment, the measuring tools used in a scientific laboratory, often electronic in nature * Mathematical instrument, devices used in geometric construction or measurements in astronomy, surveying and navigation * Measuring instrument, a device used to measure or compare physical properties * Medical instrument, a device used to diagnose or treat diseases * Optical instrument, relies on the properties of light * Quantum instrument, a mathematical object in quantum theory combining the concepts of measurement and quantum operation * Scientific instrument, a device used to collect scientific data * Surgical instrument * Vehicle instrument, a device measuring parameters of a vehicle, such as its speed or position * Weather instrument, a device used to record aspects of the weather Music * Musical ...
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West Africa
West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, as well as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom Overseas Territories, United Kingdom Overseas Territory).Paul R. Masson, Catherine Anne Pattillo, "Monetary union in West Africa (ECOWAS): is it desirable and how could it be achieved?" (Introduction). International Monetary Fund, 2001. The population of West Africa is estimated at around million people as of , and at 381,981,000 as of 2017, of which 189,672,000 were female and 192,309,000 male.United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, custom data acquired via webs ...
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