Description: The week after Christmas 1974 I spent with a group of missionaries at Karora Camp on the shores of Lake Kivu in Rwanda. I was the surgical supervisor at a hospital an hour’s drive away over dirt roads, Mugonero Hospital. One night, walking through the bush, I came across a blind wandering musician named Enoke Rwamera playing an Iningiri (pronounced In-NING-gee-ree) for some Rwandans gathered near a hut. (Sometimes called an Iningira. The photo of Enoke is from my book “They Don’t Eat Missionaries Anymore: A Student Missionary’s Journal.”) An Iningiri is a one string fiddle made from a section of cowhorn from one of those famous Rwandan longhorns, a banjo-type skin head made from rawhide, pegged to the horn with long thorns, a detachable neck carved from a branch, a tuning peg carved from a branch, a little bow made from a bent branch with a bow string made not from horsehairs but a piece of thick grass or reed attached with a simple half hitch at each end (missing). The fiddle string was made of untwisted strands of jute string or something similar. The bridge (lost) was a simple half inch chunk of split but uncarved wood an inch from the neck end of the body, yielding a string length of about 12 inches. The next day I saw Enoke Rwamera again and bought his Iningiri from him (he had another one), paying twice what he asked for it. He was pleased to have the money. I brought the instrument back to America in 1975, and it has been on display since then. I didn’t play it. It didn’t have a pleasant sound. I don’t think Enoke Rwamera knew anything about using rosin on the bow, so it’s amazing that it played at all. Instruments like this can be found in a number of places in Africa. Like the gourd banjo with a skin head, it is probably derived from one of several instruments carried and used or sold by Muslim traders between 1100 and 1600 AD. They had one string fiddles with skin heads. (Also like the Erhu found in China and still used in Beijing opera.) They also had three string fiddles. They also had multi-string instruments with a skin head, one or more long strings, and one short string—the banjo forerunners. Also multi-string harps or lyres of several designs. Africans saw these instruments and built their own from scratch. While it is generally thought that Africans brought some of these instruments to the Americas, I think it’s more likely that a number of people had owned and played instruments like this and made their own in the Americas. These were folk instruments and quite easy to make if one knows how. Thus, there may well have been one-string instruments like the Iningiri made in America by Africans in the 1600s. Perhaps with a small gourd instead of cow horn, or a piece of a small hollow tree. There are several YouTube videos that show the Iningiri being played. Check out one called Iningiri Play and Sing Rwanda. Note that the horn is held to the chest, not under the chin. Also, the string is not touched with the fingertips or held to the neck, but with the inside first joint of the index or middle fingers. The horn is five inches wide and a little over seven inches long. The neck has cracked where the tuning peg slides in. Before playing, you should wrap thread a dozen times around the neck, both above and below the peg, and knot them. This will prevent a break. Or if you ask me, I’ll do it for you. If I were going to play this, I would take off the current string and put on Nylgut ukulele string. This could also be played with a well-rosined violin bow.
Price: 85 USD
Location: The Villages, Florida
End Time: 2024-02-24T17:39:11.000Z
Shipping Cost: 6.35 USD
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All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Country/Region of Manufacture: Rwanda
