The most common name for the single-string fiddle of the savanna area of West Africa. The term goge (or goje) is used by the Hausa and Yoruba peoples of Nigeria and by the Songhai, Djerma, Mauri and Hausa of Niger, while the Mamprusi-Dagomba peoples of northern Ghana use gonje and the Yoruba-speaking Nago of Benin godie. The instrument consists of a half-calabash resonator on to which is nailed a monitor-lizard skin. This soundtable has a circular hole on one side. The wooden neck, inserted through the resonator parallel to the soundtable, protrudes a few centimetres at the lower end so that the horsehair string can be looped round it. After passing across a V- or Y-shaped wooden bridge, the string is fastened to the neck at the upper end with a leather strap. The bow is usually a curved piece of iron with a horsehair string. In performance the instrument is placed in the player’s lap so that its body rests against his waist in an almost horizontal position, and the soundtable is tilted so that his right hand, holding the bow perpendicular to the string, moves up and down, while the left hand, holding the neck, stops the string on one side (for illustration see Songhai music).
Elsewhere the corresponding instrument varies in name and construction. In Senegal and the Gambia the Wolof riti or duriti, Tukulor gnagnour and Fula nyaanyooru have a hemispherical wooden resonator, made from the silk-cotton tree, with one or two holes in the back but none in the lizard-skin soundtable. The diarka of Timbuktu uses snakeskin. The Ahaggar Tuareg imzad or amzad may use goatskin which is laced round the soundbox, while the Tuareg of Air fix the skin with acacia spines. The kiiki of the Teda of northern Chad has a resonator which may be of wood, a half-calabash, or an enamel bowl; the wooden neck terminates inside it, the string being tied to the base through a hole in the soundboard. The duduga of the Bisa of Burkina Faso has a gourd resonator, while the Songhai-Djerma goge has a long metal jingle with small iron rings round the edges inserted into the handle. Instruments vary in size, those of the Tuareg being the largest with a resonator diameter of 20 to 50 cm, the Songhai of 24 to 28 cm and the Wolof and Tukulor 18 cm.
Tuareg performance is unique in that the players are predominantly women, whose ability is highly respected and whose playing is regarded as a mark of elegance, especially in their accompaniment of men’s love songs. Among the Fula of the Gambia, the Fulani elsewhere and the Hausa communities of Niger and Nigeria, the instrument is associated with professionals who combine displays of technical virtuosity with praise singing. Among the Songhai and Mauri of Niger, at Timbuktu in Mali and among the non-Islamic groups of northern Nigeria, the goge is used with two calabash percussion vessels in spirit possession cults, the best known of which is bori. Contemporary developments among the Hausa of Nigeria include the use of electronic amplification for virtuoso performance. The goge is undoubtedly related to the single-string fiddles of the Arab world, such as the Rabāb of the Middle Eastern Bedouin. The Ethiopian masēnqo and the Malagasy heravoa are also clearly related instruments.
and other resources
P.G. Harris: ‘Notes on Drums and Musical Instruments Seen in Sokoto Province, Nigeria’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, lxii (1932), 105–25
H.G. Farmer: ‘Early References to Music in Western Sūdān’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1939), 569–79
H. Lhoté: Les Touareg du Hoggar (Paris, 1955)
M. Bovis and M. Gast: Touareg Ahaggar (Paris, 1959)
Music of Kanem, BM30 L2309 (1963) [incl. notes by M. Brandily]
V. Pâques: L’arbre cosmique dans la pensée populaire et dans la vie quotidienne du nord-ouest africain (Paris, 1964)
K. Krieger: ‘Musikinstrumente der Hausa’, Baessler-Archiv, new ser., xvi (1968), 373–430
D.W. Ames and A.V. King: Glossary of Hausa Music and its Social Contexts (Evanston, IL, 1971)
B. Surugue: Contribution à l’étude de la musique sacrée zarma-songhay (Niamey, 1972)
M. Brandily: Instruments de musique et musiciens instrumentalistes chez les Teda du Tibesti (Tchad) (Tervuren, 1974)
Alhaji Garba Leo and his Goge Music, Folkways FW8860 (1976) [incl. notes by R.F. Grass]
Musiques du plateau, Nigéria, Ocora OCR82 (1984)
K.A. GOURLAY/ROGER BLENCH