Walter Kitundu

Walter Jesse Kitundu (born July 3, 1973) is a musical instrument builder, graphic artist, and musical composer from San Francisco, California.

Kitundu was born in Rochester, Minnesota and spent his early years in Tanzania.

He returned to Minnesota from age 8 to 25, then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in approximately 1998.

Described as a renaissance man, Kitundu is inventor of the "phonoharp", a stringed instrument incorporating a phonograph.

[1] For the song "Tèw semagn hagèré" on their 2009 album Floodplain, he created new instruments inspired by the begena, an Ethiopian 10-string lyre.

Phonoharp on exhibit at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco