African Music
One of the earliest kinds of musical instrument in Africa was the rock gong, which is a big curved rock. You strike it with smaller rocks to make a loud sound, that could be heard for a long distance. Striking the gong in different places created different tones. Rock gongs could have been used for signalling as well as for music. People used rock gongs in Sudan for thousands of years. Probably they also used bone flutes and simple bows (like the bow of a bow and arrow) to produce music.
By about 3000 BC, people in Africa were using wood and leather drums that you could carry around. They continued to play wood and bone flutes, too. In Egypt, where metal was used earlier, they began to play bronze trumpets as well.
Mbira
By about 550 AD, Yared, a musician in Ethiopia, is said to have worked out a way to write down the Christian music he wrote for his church.
Around 700 AD, African musicians in the Zambezi valley invented the mbira, which relies on vibrating iron keys to produce different tones. Gradually people in other parts of Africa also began to use the mbira, and new instruments based on the mbira like the kalinda.
By the 1300s AD musicians in West Africa, in the Mande kingdom, were playing more complicated stringed instruments like the ngoni. Ibn Battuta mentions seeing a ngoni there on his travels. Ibn Battuta also saw a wooden xylophone in West Africa.
Check out these books on Amazon or in your local library to find out more about African music:
Or check out this African music article in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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