Tiv Musical Instruments: Drums, Gongs, Horns and Trumpets

Tiv music is played on a rich set of instruments. The 2013 book Tiv Swange Music and Dance sorts them into the standard classes: self-sounding instruments such as the kwen gong, the slit drums indyer, gbagede and ilyu, sticks, rattles, bells and the xylophone (gbange); wind instruments such as the gida trumpet, the akya flute and the korugh horn; skin drums such as the gbande, genga, ajo, akerangu and kunkun; and string instruments such as the adigyuve. Gbande, the drums The gbande is a carved wooden drum with an animal skin stretched over one or both ends, held taut with hoops and cords, and beaten with the hands (ave) or drumsticks. According to the 2013 book and a 2022 study of Tiv drum language from Benue State University, the drums range in size from the tiny ichôrugh to the birim and the great drums that reach 11 to 13 feet, and in shape from cylinders to casks. Small drums are held between the knees or slung over the shoulder; large ones stand on the ground, and a skilled drummer may play several laid on a platform. The book names gbaaye as the best wood for the frame, because insects and water cannot destroy it, with others such as kongbande, mho and gbagbongum. The skins come from goats, sheep, deer and even the electric fish, and are prepared with camwood and aloe. The same sources date the craft of drum-making to a renowned stone mason and blacksmith, Gyar Anyi, in about 1758. Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, describes the agbande as a tall standing drum set in the ground, with a leather top and a deep voice, used for dancing and singing. Heavy agbande drumming greeted a chief at every important occasion, and it is from this that the Tiv took the chief's title tor agbande. Akiga adds that genga is a Hausa word for drum, and that the agbande was played together with a long flute-like instrument, the tiam, in the days before the Tiv knew the Hausa kakaki trumpet. When young men courted a girl, they sang at her door half the night to a calabash rattle or a small conical drum, the wangbande; the Kparev, he says, danced at first to gongs (kwem) and later to a pair of drums, male and female. The slit drums The indyer is a great slit drum hollowed from a mahogany log, the most powerful means of sending messages in old Tivland; any message beaten on it was taken with grave seriousness. Only noblemen could own one, with the consent of both their father's and their mother's kin, and it was made by a specialist carver; see the Indyer Festival entry. The ilyu is a lighter slit drum used to call villagers to meetings or to the market square, to announce a death, and at weddings of important people. Akiga describes the ilyum as a huge hollowed log with two "lips" and a slit "mouth" that could be heard for miles. The kwen gong The kwen is a metal gong named after its "kweng-kweng" sound. The 2013 book lists one-way and two-way gongs, and male (nomkwen) and female (ngôkwen) gongs, and notes that a two-way gong belongs in every swange band. Horns, flutes and rattles The korugh, a horn, is played with drums and bibi rattles in the girinya warrior dance, which depends on a drum language that only initiates can read. The akya is a flute. The gida trumpet The gida is a borrowed instrument. According to the 2013 book, Tiv horse traders first saw a double-mouthed royal trumpet, the alaketa, blown to herald the arrival of kings in Gombe and of the Aku Uka in about 1872, and the gida was modified into its present form by Antyu Abwa around 1917. It is built in sections from wood, brass, silver or steel and hide, has four main notes, and is now heard in almost every form of Tiv social music, secular and Christian. Sources: Richard A. Tsevende, Tim C. Agber, Don S. Iorngurum and Nancy N. Ugbagir, Tiv Swange Music and Dance (2013); Esther I. Shagba, Terver Udu, Christopher O. Erenje and Elizabeth Ugechi, "The Use of Drum Language for Security Education and Awareness in Tiv", Awka Journal of Linguistics and Languages, Special Edition 2, 2022; Nancy N. Ugbagir and Tim C. Agber, Humanities and Social Sciences 3(6), 2015; Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Bergsma and Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapters seven and eight.