| Name | Image | Description | Video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balafon |  | The balafon (bala, balaphone) is a resonated frame, wooden keyed percussion idiophone of West Africa. It’s a xylophone made with strips of wood, increasing in length, connected together with thread, and with hollow gourd resonators of varying sizes attached to the bottom to achieve a greater tonal range. Sound is produced by striking the tuned keys with two padded sticks. The image shows a young Mali balafon player. | |
| Bolombatto |  | The bolombatto is a traditional stringed instrument that features in the music of West Africa. It consists of four strings, stretched over a gourd, which serves as a resonator. In addition, the instrument also has a tin rattle attached to its body, which the musician plays by striking the strings and gourd simultaneously, adding an element of percussion to the music. In this way, it is similar to the sinding. The bolombatto was originally played by shepherds, who used the combined sounds of the strings and percussion to frighten away wild animals. | |
| Calabash |  | Large calabashes are used as percussion instruments after they are hollowed and dried, especially by Fulani (an ethnic group of people spread over many countries in West Africa, Central Africa and as far as East Africa), Songhai (an ethnic group from western Africa akin to the Mandé), Gur-speaking (the Niger-Congo languages) and Hausa peoples (a Sahelian people chiefly located in the West African regions of northern Nigeria and southeastern Niger). | |
| Ngoni |  | The ngoni is a popular traditional musical instrument which comes from West Africa. It looks like a guitar, its body is of hollowed-out wood with dried animal skin stretched over it like a drum. The ngoni is known to have existed since 1352, when Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveller reported seeing one in the court of Mansa Musa. In the hands of a skilled ngoni instrumentalist, the ngoni can produce fast rapid melodies. In recent years some great young instrumentalists have developed the ngonis technical range. | |
| Njarka |  | The njarka is a small, bowed fiddle made from gourd with long neck and one thin gut string from Mali. Afel Bocoum (born 1955) is a musician from Mali, noted as a singer and guitarist. His group, Alkibar (the name means 'messenger of the great river' in Sonrai) consists of two acoustic guitars, a njarka, a njurkle (a kind of lute), calabash and djembe percussion, and two female singers as well as male singers in the choruses. | |
| Njurkle |  | The njurkle is a traditional musical instrument from Mali. It is a monochord instrument similar to a banjo. | |
| Xalam |  | Xalam, also spelled khalam, is the Wolof name for a traditional stringed musical instrument from West Africa. The xalam is thought to have originated from modern-day Mali, but some believe that, in antiquity, the instrument may have originated from ancient Egypt. Many believe that it is an ancestor to the American banjo. The xalam, in its standard form, is a simple lute with one to five strings. The wooden body (soundbox) of the instrument is oval-shaped and covered with the hide of cattle. |
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