321.331 Half-spike or tanged bowl lutes

Tanged lute, three strings, made of twisted fibre are attached to the wooden neck of this lute, which is made of a wooden resonator, covered with skin. The skin is laced to the back of the hollowed out resonator, and has a round sound hole cut in the front just below the bridge.

According to Mercedes Mackay, who collected this instrument, probably in the 1940s, the molo can have seeds and shells attached to it which rattle as it is played. The player may also tap the resonator with a metal-capped finger.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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