Play a Diddley Bow Today

Shed Diddley Bow

Music should be fun. It should be easy for anyone with almost any level of aptitude to make some form of music. Unfortunately we are taught that, in order to make music, you need to study music tablature, learn scales and chords, spend money on expensive musical instruments and practice loads. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Have you ever see any African tribes people dancing to drums? These drummers will never have studied drumming at college. They can’t read music and wouldn’t know a paradiddle if it bit them. But they know how to have a good time. Making music on simple, home made instruments like drums and rattles is what music making is all about.

There is a one stringed Brazilian instrument with African roots called a Berimbau. Its not surprising to note that the instrument looks like a bow that might be used for hunting. Now this simple instrument is the precursor to pretty much all forms of stringed instrument including guitars, harps and even pianos.

You may have heard of the Diddley Bow. This is a very simple and easily made African American one stringed folk instrument. These might typically be made by stretching a piece of wire along a length of wood. The string is tensioned with something uses as a bridge and the pitch is varied by fretting the string with a piece of bone, glass or maybe a knife or some other form of slide.

Lonnie Pitchford is one well known Diddley Bow player who would make his Diddley Bows by attaching a wire to an upright on his front porch. In fact, making Diddley Bows in this manner, by attaching a piece of wire (often fence wire or broom wire) to a house or shack, was common practice amongst the poor workers living in the Mississippi Delta region.

The blues is rooted in simple folk instruments like the diddley bo. Many of the early blues greats got their start in the 1920s and 1930s by playing Diddley Bows. One modern day exponent of this simple instrument is Seasick Steve. So why not knock together a simple Diddley Bow and become a one string virtuoso today.