Musical Instruments, Historic, Rare and Unique

A ZULU harmonicon in two views, the back and front. There are ten bars, each with a gourd resonator attached to it. It is played with drumsticks, one in each hand. This Marimba was presented to me by Mr. John Robertson, of Durban, Natal, and he has furnished the following details respecting it.

The Zulu name, Marimba, is varied by Izambilo; the former is the better known. This instrument is made by the Mindonga tribe, whose country marches with the Portuguese settlement of Inhambane on the East Coast. The wood of the bars is called Intzari. The resonators are the shell of a fruit known as Strychnos M'Kenii, or the Kafir orange. The balls of the drumsticks are of native rubber. The Marimba is played either resting upon the ground or suspended from the performer's neck by a cord. Native gum is employed to bind the larger and smaller shells forming each resonator. The cord used is the intestine of the aulacodus, or cane rat. As I have remarked in describing the Siamese instruments, harmonicons of wood and metal are very widely spread—throughout the Indian archipelago, in Siam and Burma, among the hill tribes of India and the Kafirs of Africa. The natives of the little American Republic of Costa Rica regard the Marimba as their national musical instrument. The tuning follows the equal heptatonic division, which allows of the mean or neuter thirds, ruling in Siam, and appreciated by many Eastern ears. In Java, however, it is not so; and, as far as could be judged, by examining the instruments played on by the native Javese at the London Aquarium in 1882 (other instruments apparently gave different results), there are two distinct Javese tunings,—the one, called Salendro, an ideally equal pentatonic, or five interval scale in the octave, the other, called Pelog, a heptatonic, or seven interval scale in the octave, the law of which has not been determined. From the latter are selected sets of five notes to form pentatonic scales, presenting remarkable differences.

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