Gurmi (lute)

Hausa musician playing a gurmi

The gurmi is a two or three-stringed lute of the Hausa people of northern Nigeria.[1][2] May also be called gurumi or kumbo.[1][2] In looking at the two-finger playing style used by musicians who play the gumbri, researchers have listed it as a possible relative to the banjo.[3][4] Researchers have talked about the gurmi and gurumi as if these are two different but similar instruments.[2][5]

The instrument is also played by Toubou people and "other peoples of Niger and northern Nigeria."[5]

  1. ^ a b Gourlay, K. A. (1984). "Gurmi". In Sadie Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2. London: MacMillan Press. p. 111.
  2. ^ a b c Shlomo Pestcoe; Greg C. Adams (2018). "3 List of West African Plucked Spike Lutes". In Robert B. Winans (ed.). Banjo Roots and Branches. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. 47.
  3. ^ Shlomo Pestcoe; Greg C. Adams (2018). "1 Banjo Roos Research, Changing Perspectives on the Banjo's African American Origins and West African Heritage". In Robert B. Winans (ed.). Banjo Roots and Branches. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. 11.
  4. ^ Kristina R. Gaddy (4 October 2022). Well of Souls. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-0393866803.
  5. ^ a b Shlomo Pestcoe (2018). "7 "Strum Strumps" and "Sheepskin" Guitars, The Early Gourd Banjo and Clued to Its West African Roots i the Seventeenth-Century Circum-Caribbean". In Robert B. Winans (ed.). Banjo Roots and Branches. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. p. 126.