Arpa Sanza

 AFRICAN LAW ON THE CREATION OF THE WORLD

 There was God, and also the imagination, who was asleep in a corner of his head... One day, God said to the imagination: Ah, I'm bored! ... Then the imagination said to God: Then make yourself a saint, and so when you touch her you won't get bored, you'll see how you don't get bored. “Really?” God said. “And you ask me if it is true?” the imagination answered, for if it is you who created me you must know that it is true! Then God made a saint and began to touch her. The first sound created the light, and the light was a sun that was caught up in the sky, from where it will never descend... And God kept playing, intoxicating himself with music to a point where he no longer saw what was happening around him. And every time I played a note, a human being was born! And that's how God populated the earth, with a saint.

Fred Hidalgo wrote this legend told to Francis Bebey, one night in Nairobi, Kenya, by a night watchman.

The essential thing of the Sanza, whatever its shape, is a sound box on which they are firmly fixed by one end about five to seven tabs or sheets, of metal or of cane, which, when pinching them or lifting them, produce a musical sound, each tab producing a different note.

For Zande the face of the human figure transforms sound into voice, a voice that will allow during rites communication with the spirits of ancestors.