The ground-bow, also known as an earth-bow or ground harp, is a single-string bow-shaped folk musical instrument, classified as a

chordophone In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

. It is known in cultures of equatorial "Ground Bow"
''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'' and south Africa, and in other cultures with African roots. It consists of a flexible stick planted into the ground (possibly a stripped sapling or a branch), with a string from its free end to a resonator of some kind based on a pit in the ground."Arco de tierra"
referring to

François-René Tranchefort François-René Tranchefort (30 June 1933 – 22 May 2019) was a contemporary French musicologist. Biography Tranchefort has written, edited or directed, alone or in collaboration with other musicologists, a number of reference works on a wide ...

, ''Los instrumentos musicales en el mundo'', , 1985, and later editions It looks like a game trap or a child toy, therefore its distribution over Africa used to be overlooked. Hornbostel (1933) classified is in the category of

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...

s, although it has combined characteristics of a harp and a

musical bow The musical bow (bowstring or string bow, a subset of bar zithers) is a simple string instrument used by a number of African peoples as well as Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It consists of a flexible, usually wooden, stick 1.5 to 10 feet ...

.Jaco Kruger
"Rediscovering the Venda Ground-Bow"
''Ethnomusicology'', Vol. 33, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 391-404 The resonator may be a pit covered by a board, with string attached to it. Kruges describes several other constructions by Venda, e.g., the other end of a string is tied to a stone dropped into the pit, with string passing through the board covering the pit, etc. Other names include ''kalinga'' or ''galinga'' by

Venda people The Venḓa (VhaVenḓa or Vhangona) are a Bantu people native to Southern Africa living mostly near the South African-Zimbabwean border. The Venda language arose from interactions with Sotho-Tswana and Kalanga groups from 1400. The Venda ...

. In their language "galinga" means simply a hole in the ground, while the origins of "kalinga" are uncertain. It is known as ''gayumba'' in

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

, and ''tumbandera'' in Haitian traditions of

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

.''Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History'' , vol.2
p.210
/ref> Baka people call it ''angbindi''. It is also known in Cuba under the

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

name ''tingo-talango'' (''tingotalango'')."TINGO TALANGO, son, Auteur : Julio CUEVA
/ref>

Julio Cueva Julio Cueva ( Trinidad, Cuba, 12 April 1897 – Havana, 25 December 1975) was a Cuban trumpeter, composer and band leader. He was an important figure in the spread of Cuban popular music in the 1930s. Life and career Cueva played cornet in the l ...

's song ''Tingo Talango'' dedicated to this musical instrument describes its construction thus:

''Tingo Talango'' is also the song by Ñico Lora. The instrument is reportedly nearly-extinct in the native cultures.

Playing techniques

''Kalinga'' may be struck by a stick or plucked in various ways. The bow stick may be bent to change the tension of the string, and hence the tone. It can be played in a

glissando In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...

manner: the stick is bent, struck, and released, producing a peculiar sound. The produced pitches are not always stable. Kalinga is usually played to provide repetitive accompaniment to the choral song.

Playing techniques

See also

References

Further reading