The djembe drum dates back roughly between 400 and 800 years, created during the Malian Empire by the Mandé people across regions including Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast. Picture a goblet ...

African music, with its distinctive emphasis on polyrhythm and beats flowing from percussive instruments, was long treated as subordinate in the international music arena. Music from the continent ...

Africa Music Library (AML), a non-governmental music collective dedicated to the archiving, preservation and study of African music, and connecting older and newer generation of African musicians ...

One of Tanzania’s most endangered possessions isn’t its wildlife; it’s its music. Dozens of musical instruments – and the skill set to play them – are facing extinction in Tanzania, which is why ...

Indigenous musical instruments have long been central to cultural expression in South Africa. They carry history, identity and social meaning. Many of these instruments were developed within specific ...

A traditional musical instrument, shantu, which is an important part of Hausa culture in Nigeria, has fallen into obscurity with the emergence of different musical instruments and genres. In its ...

The mbira, or “thumb piano,” a traditional African instrument, is declining in popularity in big cities, a musician and seller of traditional musical instruments from Cape Town, South Africa told ...

A conversation between scholar Umi Vaughan and author Mahealani Uchiyama in celebration of the release of her book The Mbira, An African Musical Tradition. The book is an overview steeped in the ...