One note, forever. The melody is made by the mouth, picking harmonics out of it one at a time.
One note, forever. The melody is made by the mouth, picking harmonics out of it one at a time.
The player plucks the trigger at the end of a thin steel tongue, which twangs back and forth through the narrow slot of the frame held against the teeth.
Each pass of the tongue through the slot chops the airflow, so the drone is a dense, buzzy series of harmonics of one fixed note.
The mouth is the body, and the instrument. Shaping it with the tongue, cheeks and throat moves a single resonance up and down the harmonic series, so one harmonic at a time sings out above the drone, as in overtone singing. On the plates below, each key picks a harmonic, not a pitch.
The oldest known jaw harps, made of bone about 4,000 years ago, were found at the Neolithic city of Shimao in Shaanxi, China. The English name first appears as "Jue harpes" in a customs book of 1481. It goes by many names: khomus in Yakutia, where it is a national symbol, drymba in Ukraine, morsing in South India, guimbarde in France.
| Oldest finds | ~4,000 years, Shimao |
|---|---|
| Length | usually 5–10 cm |
| Notes | one drone, many harmonics |
| Filter | the mouth |
“The name "Jew's harp" refers to Jewish people.”
No evidence. The two usual explanations, from "jaws" or from French "jeu" (play), are both unproven.
