musical bow, gboŋ-kpala

Musical bow system used by the Kpelle people o​f Liberia, mentioned in Stone (1972). The instrument itself (gboŋ-kpala in Kpelle) is an orally resonated musical bow struck with a bamboo stick; variations in oral posture "emphasize certain harmonics of the fundamental tone" (Stone 1972:5). The instrument is used for Kpelle "signal music":“Signal music is that music whose pitches reflect the relative pitches of speech in tone languages such as Kpelle. It is usually thought of as that music used to send messages over long distances, although among the Kpelle, the more important type of signal music is that played within small gatherings. It might be performed on a xylophone, musical bow, slit drum, membrane drum, or wooden horn to communicate a proverb, story, personal praise, or social ridicule. The knowledgeable listeners understand the stylized phrases which present the message in a large enough context to let the listeners positively identify it. A master drummer also takes signal patterns and intersperses them into all types of non-signal music, playing signals that tell a drummer to play faster, indicate a particular choreographic move to a dancer, praise the ensemble, or curse the players for poor playing… The musical pitches reflect the relative speech pitches of Kpelle, a three tone language."—Stone (1972:4)

Stone, R. M. (1972). Music of the Kpelle of Liberia. Smithsonian Folkways. https://folkways.si.edu/music-of-the-kpelle-of-liberia/world/album/smithsonian