Malam Mamane Barka (1958/1959 – 21 November 2018) was a Nigerian musician, and one of the world's most prominent players of the biramAfrican harp.[1] He died on 21 November 2018, aged 59.[2]
Biography
Malam Mamane Barka was born in 1958 or 1959 in Tesker, a town in the east of the then autonomous republic of Niger. He came from the nomadic people of Toubou. As a player of the Ngurumi, a two-string plucked instrument, he gained popularity in his homeland and neighboring Nigeria. In 2002 he decided to devote himself to the study of Biram. It is a five-stringed instrument used by the Boudouma people, a fishing community on Lake Chad, for traditional songs.[1][3]
References
Biram, an African bow harp of the Boudouma people in Eastern Niger.
^ abSole, Deanne (18 May 2009). "Mamane Barka: Introducing Mamane Barka". Pop Matters. Retrieved 4 February 2018. A biram looks like a small canoe with hide stretched and bound over the top. The instrument's five strings are attached to a point at the centre of this canoe and radiate outward like a triangular sail fastened to a 'mast' that comes out of the prow of the boat and moves up and back with a curve...this instrument belongs to, the Boudouma or Buduma, are "fishing nomads," and it likens the shape of the biram to that of the shallow, narrow boat known as the pirogue.
^Sadie Stanley, ed. (1984). "Yom biBagirmi". The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3. London: MacMillan Press. p. 885. Six-or-seven stringed arched harp of the Birom people...reputed to originate from the Bagirmi people...formerly restricted to use by men by men to accompany singing...not appears on instrumental ensembles for general entertainment
