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The diddley bow is an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 string instrument
String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones....
 of Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
n origin. It is typically homemade, consisting usually of a wooden board and a single wire string stretched between two screws, and played by plucking while varying the pitch with a metal or glass slide held in the other hand.

The diddley bow is significant to blues
Blues

Blues is a music genre based on the use of the blues chord progressions and the blue notes. Though several blues musical form s exist, the 12-bar blues chord progressions are the most frequently encountered....
 music in that many blues guitarists got their start playing it as children, as well as the fact that, like the slide guitar
Slide guitar

Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide is in reference to the sliding motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides, which were the necks of glass bottles....
, it is played with a slide.

A notable performer of the instrument was the Mississippi
Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Deep South of the United States. Jackson, Mississippi is the state capital and largest city. The state's name comes from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, and takes its name from the Anishinaabe language word misi-ziibi ....
 blues musician Lonnie Pitchford
Lonnie Pitchford

Lonnie Pitchford was a blues musician and musical instrument maker from Lexington, Mississippi, Mississippi. He was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and country blues traditions of the older generations....
, who used to demonstrate the instrument by stretching a wire between two nails hammered into the wood of a vertical beam making up part of the front porch of his home.






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The diddley bow is an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 string instrument
String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones....
 of Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
n origin. It is typically homemade, consisting usually of a wooden board and a single wire string stretched between two screws, and played by plucking while varying the pitch with a metal or glass slide held in the other hand.

The diddley bow is significant to blues
Blues

Blues is a music genre based on the use of the blues chord progressions and the blue notes. Though several blues musical form s exist, the 12-bar blues chord progressions are the most frequently encountered....
 music in that many blues guitarists got their start playing it as children, as well as the fact that, like the slide guitar
Slide guitar

Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide is in reference to the sliding motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides, which were the necks of glass bottles....
, it is played with a slide.

A notable performer of the instrument was the Mississippi
Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Deep South of the United States. Jackson, Mississippi is the state capital and largest city. The state's name comes from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, and takes its name from the Anishinaabe language word misi-ziibi ....
 blues musician Lonnie Pitchford
Lonnie Pitchford

Lonnie Pitchford was a blues musician and musical instrument maker from Lexington, Mississippi, Mississippi. He was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and country blues traditions of the older generations....
, who used to demonstrate the instrument by stretching a wire between two nails hammered into the wood of a vertical beam making up part of the front porch of his home. Pitchford's headstone, placed on his grave in 2000 by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund
Mt. Zion Memorial Fund

The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund is a Mississippi non-profit corporation formed in 1989 and named after the 108 year old Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Morgan City, Mississippi, Mississippi....
, is actually designed with a playable diddley bow on the side as requested by Pitchford's family. Other performers who use the instrument extensively are New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
-based jazz pianist
Jazz piano

Jazz piano is the use of an acoustic piano or electric piano as an improvising instrument in a jazz group or jazz fusion ensemble. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings....
 Cooper-Moore
Cooper-Moore

Cooper-Moore is an United States jazz piano, composer and musical instrument/designer based in New York City. He began performing church music in the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia....
, and American bluesman Seasick Steve
Seasick Steve

Steven Gene Wold, commonly known as Seasick Steve, is an American bluesman, although he prefers to be called "a song and dance man". He plays guitars , and sings, usually about his early life living rough and doing casual work....
.

Filmography

  • American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America, part 3: "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1990). Written, directed, and produced by Alan Lomax
    Alan Lomax

    Alan Lomax was an United States folklore and musicology. He was one of the great Field work collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain....
    ; developed by the Association for Cultural Equity at Columbia University
    Columbia University

    Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
     and Hunter College
    Hunter College

    Hunter College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , located on Manhattan's Upper East Side....
    . North Carolina Public TV; A Dibb Direction production for Channel Four.


Discography

  • "The Oven's On" LP 2007 by Velcro Lewis and His 100 Proof Band.
  • "The Bronze Age" CD 2009 by the Velcro Lewis Group.
  • "The Almanac of Bad Luck" LP 2009 by Tijuana Hercules.


See also

  • Musical bow
    Musical bow

    The musical bow is a simple string instrument musical instrument consisting of a string supported by a flexible string bearer, usually made out of wood....
  • Ðàn b?u
    Ðàn b?u

    The d?n b?u is a Vietnamese monochord. While the earliest written records of the Dan Bau date its origin to 1770, many scholars estimate its age to be up to one thousand years older than that....
  • Duxianqin
    Duxianqin

    The duxianqin is a Chinese plucked string instrument with only one string. It is played using harmonics, with the string's tension varied by the use of a flexible rod manipulated with the left hand....
  • Bo Diddley
    Bo Diddley

    Bo Diddley , was an original and influential American rock and roll singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He was known as "The Originator" because of his key role in the transition from blues music to rock & roll, influencing a host of legendary acts including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton....
  • Seasick Steve
    Seasick Steve

    Steven Gene Wold, commonly known as Seasick Steve, is an American bluesman, although he prefers to be called "a song and dance man". He plays guitars , and sings, usually about his early life living rough and doing casual work....
  • Cigar box guitar
    Cigar box guitar

    The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone whose resonator is a discarded cigar box. Because the instrument is homemade, there is no standard for dimensions, string types or construction techniques....