Ankle dancing rattles are made from a coccon of particular moth species which attaches itself to a tree. After harvesting they are filled with small pebbles and sewn to a piece of isikhumba hide. Tied to ankles and wrists, they are used by sangoma diviners and their initiates when dancing to drumming, song and clapping. During these performances participants attain a state of trance which enables them to divine lost possessions, missing relatives, livestock, and herbs for healing various ailments.

Pan pipes made from umhlanga river reed. Whistles of various materials are associated with indigenous medicine, divinatory practices, casting spells and ventriloquism among the Bantu. They are normally made of animal bones, horns, wood and reed and typically filled with potent ointments, powders, sometimes with snuff or various snake-poison antidotes.

Home-made tin guitars and tin-fiddles are made by young boys in most parts of formerly colonised Africa. In the early 1960s our maternal cousins taught my older brother to make, tune and play six-string tin guitars. Tin guitars normally were incorporated into informal mission school ensembles comprising metal flageolets (pennywhistles) and wooden tea-box single-string bass. Nightlong mission school dances sustained by this type of ensemble were the highlight of modern rural popular entertainment as well as black Christian wedding dances. The popular kwela style of the 1950s urban black South African music owes its roots to the widespread practice of tin-guitar making and playing. My odler brother (who turned fifty in 2007) continues to make tin guitars, which I have used them to teach and perform with children and record documentary film music.

Large drum used originally for large ensemble isiBhaca or isiKhuze style dancing. Formation dances were a spectacular aspect of mine and other urban industrial performance culture of African migrant workers. A staple of foreign tourism since the 1920s, performances took place in purpose-built stadiums, with traditionally-adorned troupes – up to 80 and above for the largest teams. The garments, drums, shields and various regalia were normally sponsored by the patron employer. The drum is made out of a used oil-drum, isikhumba ox-hide and sewn up with uqhotho thong. Before a dance, the drums are placed in sunshine, whereby they become tautly stretched and thus sharp in response. They are normally played in ensemble with other drums of the same size to accompany rhythmic choral call-and-response dance songs, with a chorus of singers who also clap hands and/or flat, hand-sized pieces of wood or timber.

The mbira is a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It's history dates back more than a thousand years. The music is an extension of the culture, folklore, wisdom and spirituality of the Shona people. The instrument consist of a wooden board which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a deze that functions as a resonator. Mbira is usually classified as part of the lamellophone family of musical instruments.

Read more about the mbira at wikipedia.org.

This is an original harp made from materials of ox-horn, iselwa gourd, uqalo reed, umthathe timber and usinga strings. It is named after a quiet pool among the reeds along one of the tributaries of the Amahlongwa river, which ultimately drains into the Indian Ocean on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, south eastern Africa. In the spring and summer during my boyhood in the early 1960s, the rainbow used to drink from the silent pool in seven colours at the bottom of my mother’s cornfield. This model has five strings, typically tuned in either African minor or major African pentatonic scale.

A Zululand single-string friction-bow. Since industrialisation the bows are normally made using recycled oil-tin as resonator, although this version employs a large iselwa gourd and a wire string from a bundled sling-cable. The bow is played by means of a shorter, tensioned usinga bow to elicit scale pitches from the harmonics of the tuned single-string. It is typically played in accompaniment to indigenous melodies sung in the southern Bantu languages of isiZulu, seSotho, isiXhosa and isiSwati

This is the largest of five south-east African Bantu single-string musical bows, made from wood and gourd materials. Originally harvested from uthaka vine of the high Zululand cliff faces, the single string is today made from thin-gauge metal wire, usually shop-bought or obtained from unravelling an ankle-bangle. Ugubhu is played on using a dried stalk of uqunga grass, to accompany the slow amahubo dirges employed in indigenous storytelling and ceremonial song.

A short mouth-resonated musical bow. Normally played by prepubescent females while relaxing in their huts in the evenings, or while running errands for their mothers and older siblings, or while performing outdoor chores like fetching water and firewood. The high-pitched single string is struck with uqunga grass-stalk to accompany youthful, and rhythmically brisk melodies suitable for fast-paced walking. Sazi’s version of umqangala has been enhanced with a double iselwa gourd for extra resonance.

The three seven-holed flutes are made from uqalo bamboo. They can also be made of umhlanga river-reed or dried ummbila corn-stalk. Among the Bantu of south eastern Africa (particularly rural KwaZulu-Natal) the flutes were made and played by prepubescent boys when herding cattle and goats. The name ‘umtshingo’ [isiZulu] is literally translated as ‘that which has to be discarded’ because there was a strict rule against whistling and blowing on flutes either indoors or within the grounds of a homestead, for fear of disturbing the family’s departed spirits, or ‘the sleeping ones’. On returning with their animals at the end of the day, the young people had to hide, or discard their flutes, hence the name ‘umtshingo’.

This is an original flute-apron that can be worn as a garment, the flute being horizontally draped, yoke-like, behind the shoulders with the ncema grass mat-strips hanging in front and behind the body. The strips may be adorned in any manner, using sewn or drawn patterns, with text, beads, shells, totems, amulets, reflectors, etc. This five-holed variation on umtshingo is blown in the middle. The normal Bantu hexatonic and pentatonic scales of either minor or major modes are obtainable from upwards of an octave above the fundamental.