DIY Prehistoric Gourd Lyre - Build Your Own Nyatiti African and Babylonian Musical instrument

DIY Prehistoric Lyre, nyatiti, or endongo

Music from the upcoming prehistoric fiction audiobook "Oracle of Lost Sagas by J. Lyon Layden

A Lyre is a musical instrument that is stringed and has a role projecting from the body. There are two types of lyres: box and bowl. Like their names suggest the box lyres have a boxlike body and the bowl lyres have a round body with a curved back. The Lyres of Ur are box lyres. They were played in an upright position with the strings plucked with both hands.[8]
Because of how they were discovered it is believed that the lyres were used in burial ceremonies in accompaniment to songs. Each lyre has 11 strings to play on that would produce a buzzing noise that repeated throughout the song. The musician playing the instrument would repeat the pattern displayed on the lyre.

The Lyres of Ur or Harps of Ur are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. In 1929, archaeologists led by Leonard Woolley discovered the instruments when excavating the Royal Cemetery of Ur between from 1922 and 1934. They discovered pieces of three lyres and one harp in Ur, located in what was Ancient Mesopotamia and is contemporary Iraq. They are over 4,500 years old, from ancient Mesopotamia during the Early Dynastic III Period (2550–2450 BCE).[4] The decorations on the lyres are fine examples of the court Art of Mesopotamia of the period.
Leonard Woolley, a British archaeologist, discovered the lyres amongst the bodies of ten women in the Royal cemetery at Ur. One body was even said to be laying against the lyre with her skeletal hand placed where the strings would have been.[3] Upon this discovery, Woolley was quick to pour in a liquid plaster to recover the delicate form of the wooden frame.[6] The wood of the lyres was decayed but since some were covered in nonperishable materials, like gold and silver, they were able to be recovered. Strictly speaking, three lyres and one harp were discovered, but all are often called lyres. The instrument remains were restored and distributed between the museums that took part in the digs.

The "Golden Lyre of Ur" or "Bull's Lyre" is the finest lyre, and was given to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.[9] Its reconstructed wooden body was damaged due to flooding during the second Iraqi War; a replica of it is being played as part of a touring orchestra.The "Golden Lyre" got its name because the whole head of the bull is made of gold. The eyes are made of inlaid mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli. The beard is similar in appearance to the "Great Lyre" and the "Queen's Lyre". The body of the bull was originally wood but did not survive.

The nyatiti is a five to eight-stringed plucked lyre from Kenya. It is a classical instrument played by the Luo people of Western Kenya, specifically in the Siaya region south of Kisumu. It is about two to three feet long with a bowl-shaped, carved wood resonator covered in cow skin. Historically, strings were fashioned from cattle tendons, but modern players almost exclusively use nylon and plastic fishing line of various sizes, a move which changed the sound of the nyatiti drastically.
The nyatiti as played in Kenya usually has eight strings, but five- and seven-stringed variants exist. Though the register will vary to match a comfortable singing range of the player, a typical tuning will be, from top to bottom, B-A-G#-E-E-D-B-A, where the outside strings are the same note at the same pitch, and the middle two are an octave apart. Many modern players use individual tunings to match their particular musical style, however. The most common playing style uses the thumb and middle finger of both hands, alternating between the two to create a rhythmic and circular musical pattern.
If played in a traditional style, the performer sits on a short, shin level chair called the orindi. He or she wears a wrought iron ring called the oduong around the big toe of the right foot and the gara, a set of metal bells also on the right leg. With the gara and the oduong, the player maintains a constant beat, banging the iron ring on the bottom bar of the nyatiti.
The nyatiti is usually played alone. Some players have, in the past, been accompanied by a number of male back-up singers (chorus). Though not common, the nyatiti can accompanied by any number of traditional instruments, including a curved horn called the oporo, a single-string violin-like instrument called the orutu, and percussion. Modern day players will often integrate the instrument in with Western-style guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.
Traditionally, players wear a headdress called Kondo, which is fashioned out of goat fur. Dancers sometimes accompanied the nyatiti player and wear brightly colored skirts called Owalo. Younger players often forego the traditional dress, opting for clothes typical of present-day performances.
Some maintain that music from the nyatiti inspired what became benga music.

"bgm cafe music" on prehistoric instruments