A long-necked unfretted finger-plucked lute with three or four strings. The exact origins of the ramkie are unclear, although it was known to have been played by the Khoi (Hottentots or Nama) in the Cape as early as 1730 and later by other southern African peoples (Kaye). The name is probably derived from the Portuguese rabequinha (‘little violin’). Mentzel, who was in the Cape from 1733 to 1741, wrote of it as ‘an imitated instrument which the slaves of Malabar brought with them, from whom some Hottentots copied it’ (quoted in Kirby). Derivation from the Portuguese machete or machada, which was also the prototype for the ukelele, has been suggested, though non-European influence seems evident in the body construction. No 18th-century specimens have survived, but the consensus of early reports points to a ‘kind of guitar’ about 1 metre long, the body made from a half-gourd covered with stretched sheepskin and attached to one end of a straight plank about 10–13 cm wide. The gut or wire strings were raised by a bridge on the body and by a nut near the end of the neck; tuning-pegs were inserted from behind, as on the ukelele.
Bushmen (or San) and Bantu-speaking peoples in southern Africa later adopted the instrument from the Khoi, replacing the gourd body with carved wood or a tin can. From all accounts, the ramkie was always used for repetitive chord-playing rather than melody, which was not typical of indigenous southern African practice. The construction of home-made guitars, used by boys throughout southern Africa, often shows some resemblance to the ramkie, as does the practice of repetitive chord playing. Other names found in the literature include gabowie, !gutsib, raamakie, rabékin, rabouquin, ramakie, ramakienjo, ramgyib, ramki and xguthe.
See also Khoikhoi music.
GEWM, ii (‘The Guitar in Africa’, A.L. Kaye)
O.F. Mentzel: Beschreibung des Vorgebirges der guten Hoffnung, ii (Glogau, 1787), 518
P.R. Kirby: The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa (London, 1934, 2/1965), 249ff
DAVID K. RYCROFT/ANGELA IMPEY