Zimbabwe Music Instrument Collection

The Zimbabwe Music Instrument Collection is a collection of music instruments from Zimbabwe. The archives are housed at Grinnel College. The collection features 13 items chief among them the karimba, njari, manja, kankobela, hosho, magagad, hwamanda, chizambi, mbira dzava Ndau, chigufe, kayamba and many others.

The music instruments are objects in the inventory of a college music department and are used for studio instruction, by ensembles, and in classroom teaching. They were not acquired as part of a coherent, planned collection building project, but come together as a collection.

The project originated in 1999 as a collaboration between Professor Roger Vetter and Dr. David Berk, who at the time was the Curricular Technology Specialist (CTS) for the Fine Arts at Grinnell College.

The institute has a searchable database that is intended to provide its users with visual, sonic, and written information about a broad sampling of acoustic music instruments of both Western and non-Western origins. Its primary audience is envisioned as students in undergraduate general education music courses (Western music history/appreciation classes, introductory ethnomusicology/’world music’ courses).