The berimbau (Portuguese pronunciation: [beɾĩˈbaw], borrowed from Kimbundu mbirimbau[1]) is a traditional Angolan musical bow that is commonly used in Brazil.

[3] It consists of a single-stringed bow attached to a gourd resonator and is played with a stick and a coin or stone to create different tones and rhythms.

"[7] The assimilation of this Angolan instrument is evident also in other Bantu terms used for musical bow in Brazilian Portuguese, including urucungo, and madimba lungungu.

In 1859, French journalist Charles Ribeyrolles described free practices of African slaves on a plantation in Rio de Janeiro province, linking the berimbau to the batuque: Saturday evening, after the last working task of the week, and on holidays that give idleness and rest, the blacks have an hour or two of the evening for dancing.

Here it is the capoeira, a kind of Pyrrhic dance, with daring combat evolutions, regulated by the Congo drum; there it is the batuque, with its cold or indecent postures which the urucungo, viola with thin cords, accelerates or contains; further away it is a frenzied dance where the gaze, the breasts and the hips provoke.

[12] The practice of hiding weapons inside musical instruments dates back to at least the early 19th century.

On November 16, 1832, the police inspector in Rio reported that capoeiras conceal spears and weapons in marimbas and sugarcane pieces.

[13] The berimbau consists of a wooden bow (verga – traditionally made from biribá wood, which grows in Brazil), about 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 metres) long, with a steel string (arame – often pulled from the inside of an automobile tire) tightly strung and secured from one end of the verga to the other.

A gourd (cabaça), dried, opened and hollowed-out, attached to the lower portion of the verga by a loop of tough string, acts as a resonator.

A small stone or coin (pedra or dobrão) is held between the index and thumb of the same hand that holds the berimbau.

In the other hand, one holds a stick (baqueta or vaqueta – usually wooden, very rarely made of metal) and a shaker (caxixi).

[citation needed] Parts and accessories of the berimbau: Calling the cabaça a gourd is technically a mistake.

As far as Brazilian berimbaus are concerned, the fruit used for the berimbau's resonator, while still known in Brazil as cabaça ("gourd"), it is not technically a gourd (family Cucurbitaceae); instead, it is the fruit of an unrelated species, the tree Crescentia cujete (family Bignoniaceae), known in Brazil as calabaça, cueira, cuia,[14] or cabaceira.

Of course, the strength (velocity, accent) with which one lets the baqueta hit the string is paramount to rhythm quality.