Varies, see Tuning Mbira (/əmˈbɪərə/ əm-BEER-ə) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe.

The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.

[2] It was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s largely due to the successes of such musicians as Maurice White of the band Earth, Wind and Fire and Thomas Mapfumo in the 1970s.

[3] These musicians included mbira on stage accompanying modern rock instruments such as electric guitar and bass, drum kit, and horns.

Other notable influencers bringing mbira music out of Africa are: Dumisani Maraire, who brought marimba and karimba music to the American Pacific Northwest; Ephat Mujuru, who was one of the pioneer teachers of mbira dzavadzimu in the United States; and the writings and recordings of Zimbabwean musicians made by Paul Berliner.

[4] Similar instruments were reported to be used in Okpuje, Nsukka area of the south eastern part of Nigeria in the early 1900s.

[8][9] In the mid 1950s mbira instruments were the basis for the development of the kalimba, a westernised version designed and marketed by the ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, leading to a great expansion of its distribution outside Africa.

The most common tuning played throughout Zimbabwe and among non-Zimbabwean mbira players worldwide is Nyamaropa, similar to the western Mixolydian mode.

[16][17][18][19][20] Names may also vary between different families; Garikayi Tirikoti has developed a "mbira orchestra" that has seven different tunings, each starting on a different interval of the same seven-note scale, where it is possible to play all instruments in a single performance.

[22][23] Common names for tunings are: In Shona music, the mbira dzavadzimu ("voice of the ancestors", or "mbira of the ancestral spirits", national instrument of Zimbabwe[25]) is a musical instrument that has been played by the Shona people of Zimbabwe for thousands of years.

The mbira dzavadzimu is frequently played at religious ceremonies and social gatherings called mapira (sing.

A typical mbira dzavadzimu consists of between 22 and 28 keys constructed from hot- or cold-forged metal affixed to a hardwood soundboard (gwariva) in three different registers—two on the left, one on the right.

Bottle caps, shells, or other objects ("machachara"[26]) are often affixed to the soundboard to create a buzzing sound when the instrument is played.

In a traditional setting, this sound is considered extremely important, as it is believed to attract ancestral spirits.

During a public performance, an mbira dzavadzimu is frequently placed in a deze (calabash resonator) to amplify its sound.

Maraire brought awareness of this instrument to the United States when he came to the University of Washington as a visiting artist from 1968 to 1972.

[30] They seem to have faded into obscurity as they didn't make it to the present day, although "modern" Kalimbas now exist in Brazil.

Composer Georg Hajdu has tuned the Hugh Tracey alto kalimba to the chromatic steps of the Bohlen–Pierce scale in a piece called Just Her – Jester – Gesture.

[35] On May 21, 2020, as part of Zimbabwe Culture Week, Google honoured the mbira with a doodle which included a button allowing users to hear and play the instrument virtually.