Every Afrobeats hit and amapiano banger sits on top of a much older toolkit. Long before drum machines, African instruments were sending news across 20 miles, telling royal histories and shaping the sound that later became the banjo and the blues. Some of them now turn up on stadium stages; others survive thanks to a handful of devoted players.
Here are ten African instruments every music fan should know, where they come from and where you can still hear them.
1. The kora (Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea)
The kora looks like a harp, plays a little like a guitar and is classified by musicologists as a “double-bridged harp-lute”. It is built from half a large gourd covered in cow skin, with a long hardwood neck and 21 strings: eleven for the left hand, ten for the right. Skilled players run a repeating pattern called the kumbengo and an improvised solo line, the birimintingo, at the same time.
It has traditionally belonged to jali (griot) families, the hereditary historians of the Mande world. Senegal’s national anthem even opens with an instruction to pluck the koras. For the greatest modern player, read about Toumani Diabaté, who came from 71 generations of griots, and for a new generation see Sona Jobarteh, the Gambian player who broke into a tradition long passed from father to son.
2. The talking drum (Nigeria, Ghana and across West Africa)
Squeeze the leather cords of this hourglass drum under your arm and the pitch rises and falls like a human voice. In tonal languages such as Yoruba and Twi, that means a skilled drummer can play whole sentences. The big Yoruba dùndún and the Asante atumpan and fontomfrom were used to send messages up to 20 miles, with other drummers relaying them onward.
The talking drum is still the lead instrument in fuji and jùjú in Nigeria and part of mbalax in Senegal. In Ghana, the atumpan still speaks at durbars and funerals.
3. The mbira (Zimbabwe)
A wooden board, a row of metal tines and two thumbs: the mbira of the Shona people is one of Africa’s most recognisable sounds. It is played at religious ceremonies, weddings and gatherings, often with the hosho shaker. In 2020 UNESCO added the art of making and playing the mbira in Zimbabwe and Malawi to its list of intangible cultural heritage.
Its smaller cousin, the kalimba, was mass-produced for export by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in the late 1950s. Earth, Wind and Fire’s Maurice White made it famous in American pop, while Thomas Mapfumo built chimurenga music around mbira patterns played on electric guitar. Read about Stella Chiweshe, the mbira queen, who played it when women were told to leave it alone.
4. The djembe (Mali, Guinea and the Mande world)
Bambara tradition says the name comes from “Anke djé, anke bé”, meaning “everyone gather together in peace”. The goblet-shaped drum is carved from a single piece of hardwood, topped with goatskin and played with bare hands. It is loud enough to cut through a whole percussion ensemble.
Until the 1950s it was barely known outside its home region. That changed when Fodéba Keïta founded Les Ballets Africains in 1952 and the Guinean troupe toured the world. Today it is played in drum circles and schools around the world, a story we told in how a Mande drum became one of the world’s most popular instruments.
5. The balafon (Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Ghana)
The balafon is a wooden xylophone with gourds hanging under each key. Oral history dates it to at least the rise of the Mali Empire in the 12th century, and the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta saw one at the court of the Mali Empire in 1352. In northern Ghana and Burkina Faso, the Dagara and Lobi version is called the gyil, with spider-web silk stretched over holes in the gourds to make it buzz.
One balafon, the Sosso Bala in Guinea, is said to be eight centuries old and is kept by a single family. Here is the legend of the Sosso Bala.
6. The ngoni (Mali)
This small lute with a wooden or calabash body and a goatskin head is thought to be one of the ancestors of the American banjo, carried in memory by enslaved Mande people. Ibn Battuta reported seeing it in 1352 too. There are two main kinds: the jeli ngoni of the griots and the bigger six-string donso ngoni, the “hunter’s harp”.
Its modern master is Bassekou Kouyaté, who plugged it in and fronted a whole band of ngonis.
7. The seperewa (Ghana)
Ghana’s own harp-lute has 10 to 14 strings and a square wooden box instead of a calabash. It has been played by the Akan since at least the 17th century and was a court instrument in Asante. Then the guitar arrived in the late 19th century, and the seperewa slowly lost ground to the palm-wine guitar.
Osei Korankye is among the players who have kept it alive. The guitar that replaced it went on to give Ghana palm-wine music and highlife, the world of Koo Nimo.
8. The krar (Ethiopia and Eritrea)
The krar is a five- or six-string bowl lyre tuned to a pentatonic scale. In old Amhara society it was considered the Devil’s instrument, used for love songs, while the larger begena was kept for praising God. Under the Derg military regime, playing the krar was banned in big cities and players were jailed.
Today it is plugged in like an electric guitar and played by the azmari, Ethiopia’s wandering poet-musicians, often next to the one-string masenqo fiddle. Ethiopia’s music story is in our pieces on Mulatu Astatke and the Éthiopiques series.
9. The valiha (Madagascar)
Madagascar’s national instrument is a tube of bamboo with 21 to 24 strings running around it. Old strings were cut from the bamboo itself; modern players often use unwound bicycle brake cable. Under the Merina kingdom, long fingernails for plucking the valiha marked out the aristocracy from labourers.
Malagasy tradition even says the instrument was “inherited from King David”. Rakotozafy, born in 1938, and Sylvestre Randafison are among its most celebrated players.
10. The nyatiti (Kenya)
The Luo people of western Kenya play the nyatiti, an eight-string lyre with a cow-skin bowl, while sitting on a low stool. The player wears an iron ring on the big toe of the right foot and bells on the leg, so one musician becomes a whole band: strings, voice and rhythm at once.
Its best-known voice internationally was Ayub Ogada, whose song “Kothbiro” reached Hollywood film soundtracks.
Where to hear these African instruments today
They have not disappeared into museums. Talking drums still lead fuji bands in Lagos, the mbira is protected by UNESCO, and kora players such as Sona Jobarteh tour international festivals. Events such as Sauti za Busara in Zanzibar put many of them on one stage. Listen closely to the oldest records on the continent and you will hear where a lot of today’s music began.
