1917.14.6

Collection type

Object

Description

Sansa.

Long description

Sansa. Backrest and bridge are small thin lengths of reed. The bar is a piece of vegetable fibre tied down by another between each tongue holding each firmly in place. The box is pinned together with wooden pins and painted green. There is a sound hole in the board under the central tongues. [HLR]

Geographical reference

Suriname

Latin America and the Caribbean > South America > Suriname

Person

Field collector Unknown Collector

PRM source Beatrice Braithwaite Batty

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1917

Date collected

circa 1800 - 1850

Acquisition information

Donated: 07/1917

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Bamboo Plant, Material Reed Plant, Material Pigment, Process Carpentered, Process Tied, Process Painted, Process Incised

Dimensions

Length: max 188 mm, Width 118 mm, Depth 46 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1917.14.6

Associated publications

Illustrated in black and white (top and bottom views) as figure 1.35a,b on page 55 of 'African and African American Lamellophones: History, Typology, Nomenclature, Performers, and Intracultural Concepts', by Gerhard Kubik, in Turn Up the Volume: A Celebration of African Music, edited by Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999), pp. 20-57. Caption reads: 'Lamellophone with box resonator, nine notes of bamboo in VI-shape layout, and decorative engravings collected in northern South America, probably Dutch Guiana (Suriname).' Text (same page) reads (but see original for diacritics): 'In the nineteenth century there existed many more types of lamellophones in the Americas. One remarkable specimen was collected by Mrs Braithwaite Batty in northern South America, probably Dutch Guiana (Suriname) in the early twentieth century...; it was acquired by the Museum in July 1917.... This instrument has nine bamboo lamellae in a characteristic VI-shaped layout, mounted on a small rectangular soundboard nailed to a box. Bridge and bracket are identical horizontal bars, also of vegetable material, and the straining bar is bound to the soundboard in the same manner as some Calabar lamellophones, the Edo asolugun, and the Igbo ubo aka. This establishes convincingly the ancestry of this specimen in southeastern Nigeria or any other place on the West African coast where southeastern Nigerian lamellophone technology had spread before this type became known in Suriname. Only the decoration carved into the balsa-type wood of the soundbox with a shell shows a pattern that may be based in local (Suriname) decorative art. This does not exclude the possibility that a comparable southeastern Nigerian decorative style might still be found.' [JC 26 5 2000]

Search terms: Music, Musical Instrument, Lamellophone