Lamellophone (also spelled "Lamellaphone") describes any of a family of musical instruments. The name comes from the Latin root "lamella" for "plate", and the Greek root "phone" for "sound". The name derives from the way the sound is produced: the instrument has a series of thin plates, or "tongues", each of which is fixed at one end and has the other end free. When the musician depresses the free end of a plate with a finger, and then allows the finger to slip off, the released plate vibrates. A tongue may be plucked either from the top or from the bottom. A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a longitudinal wave. ...

In the original Hornbostel-Sachs classification of musical instruments, lamellophones are classified as a category of plucked idiophones. While this is appropriate for the various forms of Jew's Harp and the European mechanical music box, it has been argued that the African "thumb-pianos" (mbiras) are not idiophones but constitute a class of their own. The reason for this is that their tongues can be shifted and the instruments can be tuned that way. So the pitch of a tongue does not depend on its intrinsic length but on the adjustable length of the free swinging part. Hornbostel-Sachs (or Sachs-Hornbostel) is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Musik in 1914. ... An idiophone is any musical instrument which creates sound primarily by way of the instrument itself vibrating, without the use of strings or membranes. ... Jews harp, from an American Civil War camp near Winchester, Virginia A modern jews harp The Jews harp, jaw harp, or mouth harp is thought to be one of the oldest musical instruments in the world; a musician apparently playing it can be seen in a Chinese... A musical box (or music box) is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder so as to strike the tuned teeth of a steel comb. ... Mbira Dzavadzimu in deze (top), Mbira Nyunga Nyunga (bottom), Hosho (bottom left). ...

A large number of lamellophones originate in Africa, where they are known under different names including mbira, sanza, kisanji, likembe, kalimba, and kongoma. They play an important role in southeast African Music. They were reported as early as the 16th century, but there is no doubt they have a much longer history. The Caribbean marimbula is also of this family. A world map showing the continent of Africa. ... Mbira Dzavadzimu in deze (top), Mbira Nyunga Nyunga (bottom), Hosho (bottom left). ... In East African music the mbira (also lkembe) is a gourd- resonated thumb piano, a musical instrument consisting of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached fitted into a resonator. ... Mbira Dzavadzimu in deze (top), Mbira Nyunga Nyunga (bottom), Hosho (bottom left). ... Kalimba can refer to: Kalimba is a folk musical instrument of Caribbean Islands. ... Africa is a large and diverse continent, consisting of dozens of countries, hundreds of languages and thousands of races, tribes and ethnic groups. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... Marimbula Marímbula (not to be confused with marimba), pronounced as mah-REAM-boo-lah, is a folk musical instrument of Caribbean Islands. ...

The tongues may be arranged in the manner of a piano and may be made small enough to play with individual fingers, hence the colloquial name "thumb piano." (Although some instruments, like the Mbira, have an additional rows of tongues, in which case not just the thumbs are used for plucking.) A short grand piano, with the top up. ...

Some conjecture that African lamellophones were derived from xylophones and marimbas. However, similar instruments have been found elsewhere; for example, the indigenous peoples of Siberia play wooden and metallic lamellophones with a single tongue. The xylophone (from the Greek meaning wooden sound) is a musical instrument in the percussion family which probably originated in Indonesia (Nettl 1956, p. ... The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. ... Indigenous peoples are: Peoples living in an area prior to colonization by a state Peoples living in an area within a nation-state, prior to the formation of a nation-state, but who do not identify with the dominant nation. ... Siberian Federal District (darker red) and the broadest definition of Siberia (red) arctic northeast Siberia Udachnaya pipe Siberia (Russian: , Sibir; Tatar: ) is a vast region of Russia constituting almost all of Northern Asia and comprising a large part of the Euro-Asian Steppe. ...

Lamellophones may be made with or without resonators. A resonator is a device or part that vibrates (or oscillates) with waves. ...

References

• Gerhard Kubik: "Lamellophone", in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (ed. Stanley Sadie). Macmillan Publishers, London, 1981