Ikembe, is a type of

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

of the

lamellaphone A lamellophone (also lamellaphone or linguaphone) is a member of the family of musical instruments that makes its sound by a thin vibrating plate called a lamella or tongue, which is fixed at one end and has the other end free. When the musician ...

group, common amongst the people of

Rwanda Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...

Burundi Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa, with a population of over 14 million peop ...

and the Congo. The instrument consists of several iron

lamellae Lamella (: lamellae) means a small plate or flake in Latin, and in English may refer to: Biology * Lamella (mycology), a papery rib beneath a mushroom cap * Lamella (botany) * Lamella (surface anatomy), a plate-like structure in an animal * Lame ...

, fixed to a rectangular wooden soundbox. In

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language officially used in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes. * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa. * Swahili culture, the culture of the Swahili p ...

the word imba means

song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...

. Kuimba means to sing, as in the phras
"nitakwenda kuimba"
(I go to sing). Swahili, as in many languages, uses a type of

binomial nomenclature In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

to create new words to describe unfamiliar or new objects, occurrences or people, based on existing words or concepts. By combining part of the word for

mother A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of ges ...

= ma with the word for song = imba using r as a connector we come up with the word

marimba The marimba ( ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the mari ...

= mother of song. We can then extrapolate from the research of A.M. Jones, quoted by Osborne that ka = small combined with the word imba = song should mean little mother of song. Osborne cites examples of various names for these

mbira Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal Tine (structural), tines, played by holding the instrument ...

from all over the continent, which have the Swahili word for song as their root. Admittedly, Swahili, like English, is not a virgin language, but rather a combination of a variety of languages making it useful for trading purposes. However, at the root it's still based on the

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

of the peoples of Central and

East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...

, which again is why it is so useful as a language of trade. A cursory examination of the root of these words gives us these common variations: imba, imbe and embe. The following variations are used: likimbe,

likembe Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal Tine (structural), tines, played by holding the instrument ...

Amba
of

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

and the Tabura of the Congo Basin), lulimba ( Yao of

Malawi Malawi, officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south, and southwest. Malawi spans over and ...

, Tanzania and Mozambique),

lukembe Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and ...

( Alur and

Acholi Acholi may refer to: * Acholi people, a Luo nation of Uganda, in the Northern part of the country. * Acholi language, a Nilotic language * Acholi Inn, a building in Gulu, Uganda * Acholi nationalism, a political ideology of Acholi people {{dab ...

of Uganda), irimba and kajimba ( Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique), itshilimba (

Bemba Bemba may refer to: Languages and ethnic groups * Bemba language, or Chibemba, a Bantu language spoken in Zambia * Bemba people, or AbaBemba, of Zambia * Bemba, a dialect of the Buyu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo People * Jea ...

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

), karimba (

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

kalimba Mbira ( ; ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and ...

and ikembe Bahutu of Rwanda and Burundi. There are many other names for this instrument, but the predominance of names with this root is undeniable. The spelling is not as important as the sound that is made in vocalizing the name

References

*Anderson, Lois. The Miko Modal System of Buganda, Kiganda

Xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

Music. 2 vols. Phd Diss.

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, 1968. * Galpin, Francis. A textbook of

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an musical instruments, their origin, history and character. (reprint) Westport, Conn:

Greenwood Press Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG) was an educational and academic publisher (middle school through university level) which was part of ABC-Clio. Since 2021, ABC-Clio and its suite of imprints, including GPG, are collectively imprints of B ...

, 1976. *Wiggins, Trevor and Joseph Kobom.

music from

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

. Crown Point, IN:

White Cliffs Media White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wavelen ...

, 1992. *Warner Dietz, Betty and

Olatunji Ọlátúnjí is both a surname and a given name of Yoruba origin meaning "nobility/wealth has resurrected, has returned and becomes stronger, is reasserted". Notable people with the name include: * Olatunji Akin Euba (1935–2020), Nigerian ...

, Michael Babatunde. (1965). Musical Instruments of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

: Their Nature, Use, and Place in The Life of a Deeply Musical People. New York:

John Day Company The John Day Company was a New York City-based publishing firm that specialized in illustrated fiction and current affairs books and pamphlets from 1926 to 1968. It was founded by Richard J. Walsh (publisher), Richard J. Walsh in 1926 and named a ...

. *Ottenberg, Simon. Seeing with Music: The Lives of 3 Blind African Musicians.

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, WA: University of Washington Press, 1996

Journal articles

* Tracey, Hugh, 'A Case for the Name Mbira' in the ''

African Music Society Journal African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** List ...

'', no. 3 (1964)

External links

World Musical Instrument Database
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240319115312/http://www.arcmusic.org/begin.html , date=2024-03-19 .

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

ARChive of Contemporary Music The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) is a non-profit music library and archive based in New York City. It contains over five million items. People The ARC was founded in 1985 by current Director, B. George and David Wheeler (1957–1997) in ...

World Music and Percussion, Frame Drums, Riq, Tambourines, by N. Scott RobinsonThe ku-marker in Swahili, by Anna-Lena LindforsEthnologue.com – languagesSoundclick artist: Fatai Rolling Dollar
ethnomusicological archive of instruments and recordings from Central Africa. Comb lamellophones