Harp with human head (kundi)

Nineteenth-century Zande kings owned five-stringed harps that were played at the king's pleasure by royal harpists residing in the palace (fig. 51). According to an Italian visitor of the day, itinerant singers took their harps to war, and those who owned figurative harps treasured them as precious possessions.(35)

The arched neck of the Dallas harp ends in a sculpted head with eyes made of precious imported blue beads. It has been suggested that the head alludes to the ancestors whose voices sound through the harp.(36) The shape of the head is echoed in the lozenge-shaped sounding box covered with leather and decorated with geometric designs. Figurative pegs fitted into the arched neck tuned the strings stretched between the pegs and the sounding box. Both the tuning pegs and the strings are missing.

The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art, cat. 92, pp. 244-245.

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NOTES:

35. Casati, Gaetano. Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha. Trans. J. Randolph Clay and I. Walter Savage Landor from the original manuscript. London: Warne, 1891.

36. Maquet, J.-N. Note sur les instruments de musique congolais. Mémoires in-80; n.s., 6, no. 4. Brussels: Académie royale des sciences colonials, Classe des sciences morales et politiques, 1956. p. 50.