Gabon · Wood / Hardstone Carving (musical instrument-making)
Ngombi (also ombi, the arched harp)
The carving of the ngombi, a sacred arched harp central to Bwiti religious practice among Gabon's Fang, Mitsogo, and related ethnic groups, carved from a single hollowed piece of lightweight wood -- traditionally cottonwood -- and covered with animal skin or snakeskin to form a resonant soundbox. Unlike a triangular European harp, the ngombi's arched form consists of two elements: a hollowed soundbox and a curved neck rising directly from it, strung with 6 to 10 strings traditionally made from gut, plant fiber, or horsehair, tuned via wooden pegs or studs. The instrument's neck terminates in a carved figural head, most commonly a Janus-faced or single female visage with a distinctive coiffure, almond-shaped eyes, and full lips, its facial features traditionally whitened with kaolin -- a substance directly associated with spirits and the dead, and the same material and decorative convention documented in the Punu mukudji/okuyi mask tradition (documented separately in this archive). The soundbox's resonator is symbolically understood to represent womanhood, while the instrument as a whole embodies male mythical ancestral figures; among the Fang specifically, the harp symbolizes the body and voice of Nyingwan Mbege, the 'Sister of God,' and functions as a means of communication between the living and the dead. Played primarily by initiated men, the ngombi holds sacred status within Bwiti ceremonies, used specifically to invoke ancestors and facilitate spiritual communication during initiation and healing rites; each traditional instrument in the wider Bwiti musical ensemble is documented as designated to a specific rite -- the mouth bow (mougongo) for Bwiti Misoko, the ngombi harp for Bwiti Dissoumba, and the balafon predominantly for Fang ceremonial use. A documented contemporary case study follows named craftsman Jean-Paul Mboumba, filmed over three full days in the suburbs of Libreville constructing a complete ngombi harp from raw tree trunk through to finished instrument, providing rare, directly documented contemporary evidence of the full construction process.
Risk level: Endangered · Not independently inscribed
The carving and kaolin-whitening of okuyi (mukudji) masks by Punu carvers of southern Gabon, representing an idealized female ancestral spirit and worn exclusively by male members of the mwiri society during acrobatic stilt-dance…
The carving and copper/brass sheet-cladding of reliquary guardian figures by the Kota, a Bantu ethnic group of the Ogooué-Ivindo province in northeastern Gabon, with related families living in neighboring Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon.
The single-piece hardwood carving of guardian figures and heads mounted atop bark reliquary boxes containing ancestral skulls, by the Fang peoples of northern Gabon, southern Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea.
The making of classical and traditional Neapolitan guitars — including the distinctive chitarra battente (strummed guitar with wire strings and angled top) and the Spanish-influenced classical guitar — by hand in a tradition rooted in…
A diatonic, single-row xylophone of the mestizo peoples of Nicaragua's Pacific region, distinguished from every other marimba tradition documented in this archive by its performance posture: a curved wooden bow (arco), traditionally made…
The Latvian kokle making tradition — the making of the distinctive Baltic plucked folk instrument (kokle in Latvian, kannel in Estonian, kanklės in Lithuanian) from a single piece of wood whose specific resonator box geometry produces the…
The hand-building of Guatemala's national instrument, a genuinely Afro-Indigenous syncretic tradition in which enslaved Africans introduced the sub-Saharan xylophone-and-gourd-resonator concept to Central America from the 16th century…
The Turkish ney making tradition — the making of the specific end-blown reed flute from the Arundo donax reed that is the central instrument of the Mevlevi Sufi tradition (the whirling dervishes of Konya), whose specific bore geometry,…
The making of the kobyz (qyl-qobyz) — an ancient two-stringed, horsehair-strung bowed instrument considered one of the oldest bowed instruments in Central Asia, with archaeological finds from the Kazakh Altai dated to the 6th–7th centuries…