The cimboa also known as the cimbó sĩˈbɔ, is a musical instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

 from Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...

. It is a bowed chordophone

Chordophone

A chordophone is any musical instrument that makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification....

 that was traditionally used to be played with the batuque

Batuque (music)

The batuque is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde.- As a music genre :As a music genre, the batuque is characterized by having an andante tempo, a 6/8 or 3/4 measure and traditionally it is just melodic, i.e., it is just sung, it has no polyphonic accompaniment...

 dances.

The cimboa is composed  of the instrument proper and its bow

Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....

. The instrument belongs to the lute family, and so it possesses a neck

Neck (music)

The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks.The...

 attached to a sound box

Sound box

A sound box or sounding box is an open chamber in the body of a musical instrument which modifies the sound of the instrument, and helps transfer that sound to the surrounding air. Objects respond more strongly to vibrations at certain frequencies, known as resonances...

. The sound box is made of a calebash, or when it is hard to find, with a coconut

Coconut

The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is a member of the family Arecaceae . It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word...

 shell, with a soundboard

Sounding board

A sound board, or soundboard, is the surface of a string instrument that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of bridge. The resonant properties of the sound board and the interior of the instrument greatly increase loudness over the string alone.The sound board operates by the...

 of stretched kid

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

 skin, fixed with reed

Arundo donax

Arundo donax, Giant Cane, is a tall perennial cane growing in damp soils, either fresh or moderately saline. Other common names include Carrizo, Arundo, Spanish cane, Wild cane, and Giant reed....

 pieces. Attached to the sound box there is a neck made of flexible wood (pine

Pine

Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...

). At the end of the neck is a tuning peg

Tuning peg

A tuning peg is used to hold a string in the pegbox of a stringed instrument. It may be made of ebony, rosewood, boxwood or other material. Some tuning pegs are ornamented with shell, metal, or plastic inlays, beads or rings....

 of mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

 to tune the sole string

Strings (music)

A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...

 of the instrument which is stretched between the nut

Nut (instrumental)

The nut of a string instrument is a small piece of hard material which supports the strings at the end closest to the headstock or scroll. The nut marks one end of the speaking length of each open string, sets the spacing of the strings across the neck, and usually holds the strings at the proper...

 set in the neck, and the bridge

Bridge (instrument)

A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.- Explanation :...

 placed on the soundboard. The bow is made of a curved wood (called barnelo

Grewia villosa

Grewia villosa is locally endangered in some parts of its distribution.Grows only in natural habitats in rock crevices.Last seen in Shimba Hills in Kenya and in Ein Gedi oasis in Israel, common in South Africa.-External links:* *...

in Cape Verde) piece and strung with horse mane

Mane (horse)

The mane is the hair that grows from the top of the neck of a horse or other equine, reaching from the poll to the withers, and includes the forelock or foretop. It is thicker and coarser than the rest of the horse's coat, and naturally grows to roughly cover the neck...

. Sound is produced by rubbing the bow on the instrument's string, which is also made of horse mane. The pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

 of the note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

s is changed by pressing the string against several points on the neck. The neck's flexibility allows bending effects of the notes by bending the neck.

The exact origin of this instrument unknown, but it may be from continental Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

. Researchers have noted a resemblance between the cimboa and several African instruments, such as the kiki of the Teda

Teda

The Teda are a Toubou people who live mostly in northern Chad, but is present also in Libya, Niger and Nigeria. They speak Tedaga, a Nilo-Saharan language, and are very close ethnically and culturally with the Daza. They likely number more than 50,000, and are Muslims....

 and the Daza

Daza

The Daza people are a semi-nomadic ethnicity living primarily in the Sahara regions of south-eastern Niger and north and central Chad. They consider themselves a warrior people, and are almost entirely Muslim. The Daza speak the Dazaga language. The increasing desertification of Africa has resulted...

 of the Tibesti and Borku

Borku

Borkou, or Borku, is a region of Central Africa, mostly in Northern Chad, forming part of the transitional zone between the arid wastes of the Sahara and the fertile lands of the central Sudan. It is bounded N. by the Tibesti Mountains, and is in great measure occupied by lesser elevations...

, the nini of the Zaghawa, the fini of the Kanembu

Kanembu people

The Kanembu are an ethnic group of Chad, generally considered the modern descendants of the Kanem-Borno Empire. The Kanembu number an estimated 655,000 people, located primarily in Chad's Lac Prefecture but also in Chari-Baguirmi and Kanem prefectures. They speak the Kanembu language, a variant...

, and still the kiki of the Maba

Maba

Maba is an ethnic minority in Chad and Sudan. Their population is estimated at several hundred thousand. All of them belong to Islam. By some accounts, they are the most educated people in Chad, and were the first people in Chad to convert to Islam. They founded the Ouaddai Empire in the 15th...

 of the Ouaddaï region

Ouaddaï Region

Ouaddaï is one of the 22 regions of Chad and its capital is Abéché. It is composed by the former Ouaddaï Prefecture. Its main ethnic groups are the Arabs and the Maba. The economy is based on subsistence agriculture and breeding...

.

The usage of this instrument is considered extinct. In spite of having revivals of its construction, nowadays it is used more as a decorative piece, rather than a musical instrument.

External links

• Toca Cimboa, Rapica Tambor Article (in Portuguese) about the Cimboa in Kriolidadi
• The power of Culture — Cimboa Page with a sound clip of the cimboa
• Cimboa workshop revives endangered musical instrument Article published on the on-line newspaper A semana