The udu is a plosive

aerophone An aerophone () is a musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes (which are respectively chordophones and membranophones), and without the vibration of the inst ...

(in this case implosive) and an

idiophone An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow (as with aerophones), strings ( chordophones), membranes ( membranophones) or electricity ( electroph ...

of the

Igbo Igbo may refer to: * Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria * Igbo language, their language * anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria See also * Ibo (disambiguation) * Igbo mythology * Igbo music * Igbo art * * Igbo-Ukwu, a ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. In the

Igbo language Igbo ( , ; Igbo: ''Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò'' ) is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, a meta-ethnicity from Southeastern Nigeria. The number of Igboid languages depends on how one classifies a language versus a dialect, so ...

, ''ùdù'' means 'vessel'. Actually being a water jug with an additional hole, it was played by Igbo women for ceremonial uses. Usually the udu is made of clay. The instrument is played by hand. The player produces a bass sound by quickly hitting the big hole. There are many ways that the pitches can be changed, depending on how the hand above the small upper hole is positioned. Furthermore, the whole corpus can be played by fingers. Today it is widely used by

percussionist A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

s in different music styles.

Derived instruments

Several instruments, traditional and modern, are derived from the udu. These include the ''utar'', in which the udu is elongated, flatter, and disc-like; the ''kim-kim'' which has two chambers and two holes; and the ''zarbang-udu'' which adds a skin membrane along with the open holes, developed by Persian percussionist Benham Samani. The membrane and the holes can be played with one or two hands at the same time. This is a

hand percussion Hand percussion is a percussion instrument that is held in the hand. They can be made from wood, metal or plastic, bottles stops and are usually shaken, scraped, or tapped with fingers or a stick. It includes all instruments that are not drums o ...

instrument.

References

{{Authority control African percussion instruments Igbo musical instruments Nigerian musical instruments Plosive aerophones Struck idiophones played by hand