Shekere: Guinea-bissau musical instrument

The shekere is a musical instrument that is from West Africa and is made up of a dried gourd with beads woven into a net that is covering the gourd. All through the continent, there are similar gourd/bead or gourd/seed percussion musical instruments. Some are lilol, axatse which are seen in Ghana, djabara which is found in guinea, ushaka and chequere that is mostly called shekere in Nigeria.

source of picture: thomann.de

The Agbe is a gourd drum that has cowrie shells and it is usually strung with a white cotton thread. The Axatse is a small gourd that can be held by the neck and percussed between the hand and the leg. In Liberia, the net is made up of a long tail through which the beads are played. The shekere is produced from the vine gourds that grow on the ground. The shape of the gourd will determine the sound that the instrument will produce. A shekere is carved by drying the gourd for many months and then removing the pulp and the seed that are inside, after which it is scrubbed and then skillful bead work is added and also the color is added.

The musical instrument is used for folk music and some other folkloric tradition as well as some other popular music styles. In performance, the instrument is shaken and hit against the hands. In Cuba, the shekere is known as ague or simply guiro. The instrument is a large and hollowed gourd that is almost entirely surrounded by a network of its cords and to which many colored beads are fixed. The musical instrument is widely used in Afro-Cuba and popular music. It may be twisted, shaken or slapped to give out many types of sound effects; musically it is much more flexible than the maracas.

In Brazil, the shekere is called xequere. It comprises of the gourd cut in the middle and then wrapped in a net in which beads or small plastic balls or seeds are attached. The afoxe is a smaller musical instrument that is similar to the shekere.