Likembe

One of the lesser pygmies had a small musical instrument in his lap, a hollowed-out box affair with small strips of metal set across a bar on top which, if I remember right, is called a "Likembe."

This instrument became interregionally known as the likembe, and it spread like wildfire among porters and employees in the Belgian colonial service throughout the French and the Belgian Congo, thus paralleling the spread of the trade […]

A new artist, Antoine Mundanda of Brazzaville, brought his likembe troupe to Ngoma in 1954, recording several songs that seemed to confirm the link between traditional likembe and modern guitar picking.

Like elsewhere in central Africa, the likembe in Angola was an instrument of the emerging working class and, as such, it was also inter-ethnic.