You call yourself a musician, and you’ve never heard of the diddley bow? Well, you’re in good company. This one-string wonder has maintained a fairly low profile. Obscurity doesn’t make this instrument any less fun to play, though.
What Is a Diddley Bow?
Basically, a diddley bow consists of one string stretched tightly between two nails or screws. Musicians either pluck or strike this string to create rhythmic patterns. Because the instrument has no frets along its neck like a guitar, musicians change pitch by moving a slide—usually the neck of a glass bottle—up or down the string.
History of the Diddley Bow
The diddley bow has its roots in West Africa. These African instruments were often played by two children, one who beat the string with two sticks and another who changed the pitch by moving a slide up and down.
According to Gerhard Kubik’s book, Africa and the Blues, the idea for one-string instruments classified as monochord zithers came to North America by the African slaves. These simple instruments flourished in the South but only as a children’s toy. Boys who took to the diddley bow usually never looked back when they were able to come by six-string guitars.
Diddley bows began showing up in photographs as anthropologists and musicologists began to document cultures of the rural South during the 1930s. The first recording of a diddley bow wasn’t made until twenty years later.
Blues Music and the Diddley Bow
A handful of blues musicians have recorded with the diddley bow including Lewis Dotson, Compton Jones, Glen Faulkner, Moses Williams, Napoleon Strickland, Jessie Mae, Eddie One-String Jones, One String Sam Wilson, and Hemphill. Even more numerous are the blues greats who got their start on a diddley bow.
Lonnie Pitchford is one blues musician featured in Alan Lomax’s 1990 documentary, American Patchwork, Songs and Stories of America: Part III the Land Where the Blues Began. Though Pitchford was incredibly skilled at acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, bass, and piano, he never stopped playing and teaching others to play the diddley bow.
Pitchford held the conviction that musicians were not only responsible for finding new forms of expression, but also for carrying on musical traditions of the generations before. In the documentary, he demonstrated the instrument by playing a wire stretched between two beams of his front porch. On his memorial, Pitchford’s family commissioned a working diddley bow, allowing visitors to share in his love of music and tradition.
In related articles you can:
- Find detailed directions on how to make a diddley bow,
- Discover techniques for learning to play the diddley bow,
- And read about other monochord zithers, or one-string musical instruments from around the world.
For a valuable resource, go to One String Willie’s web site on Diddley Bows.
Marcy Paulson - From the moment Marcy Paulson picked up a recorder in fourth grade music class, she was hooked. Since then, her passion for music has ...
