The instrument displayed in the 3-D viewer below was made by Sekuru Chigamba in 1979. It is the oldest of his instruments still in his possession, and the story of how he came to keep it is told his account of making mbira. The 3-D rendering of this instrument was done by the University of Rochester’s Digital Scholarship Lab. The team is currently developing technology that will allow this image to be annotated with Sekuru Chigamba’s explanations of the various parts of the instrument, including the soundboard, bridge, buzzer plate, keys, and the right and left-hand registers of the instrument. This technology will be available in early 2020. For now, Sekuru Chigamba’s brief description of the instrument appears below the 3-D viewer.
Gwariva: The Instrument
Sekuru Chigamba offers the following biref overview of the mbira dzavadzimu:
Mbira keys are set on a gwariva. The gwariva is made from mubvamaropa. And it’s carved out inside, and there is a hole to handle it with the right hand.
And there are majaka, the buzzers. We used to put shells from the river, and even the shells from the ocean. And now we are using bottlecaps, which sound the same. And there is a metal plate that we cut into a shape that you can put three or four, or five, or more majaka. And they’re tied on with wire.
And then there is the bridge, which we call gadziko. That is the blade that we put under the keys, to make a better sound. And mutanda is the bar we put on top of the keys, and we tie it with wire through the holes. There must be six holes – some put four holes, but I put six, to make sure the gwariva is tightened.
Then the keys. You know, you suggest the tuning that you want. Either you want the high tuning, or the middle tuning, or the lowest. The high tuning, we call it kanyuchi [a small bee that make a high-pitched buzzing sound], the middle is nyuchi [a bee with a medium-pitched buzzing sound], and the lowest is mun’ere [a type of bee that doesn’t sting, and makes a low-pitched buzzing sound]. All these are related to the bees. And then we play mbira.
That’s mbira. When it is all set up, it’s mbira. When it is separate, the body is gwariva, the keys are minzwa, and the tune is munzwo.