On Friday, Oct. 4, the “Living Traditions Series” at Duke University presented the “Masters of the Mbira” — elder musicians from Zimbabwe.

The mbira, also called the “thumb piano,” is one of Africa’s most popular instruments. It is played with both hands, using thumbs to pluck metal strips.

Cosmas Magaya, the leader of the ensemble, is an internationally recognized mbira player and teacher. He has performed with the renowned Mhuri yekwa Rwizi mbira group for over 25 years, and has toured across Europe and the U.S.

Beauler Dyoko, the “queen of mbira music,” is Zimbabwe’s first woman mbira recording artist. She is an activist for women’s rights as well as for non-violence and AIDS awareness.

Dyoko is regularly invited to perform a traditional song to open the Zimbabwe Parliament.

Paul Berliner, who has a visiting Fellowship with the John Hope Franklin Center, accompanied the masters.

Berliner, author of “The Soul of the Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe,” is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in African music, jazz and improvisational systems.

After the mbira master’s first song, they turned the bowls around to reveal an interior mbira made from wood and steel.

“We put the mbira inside the bowl to amplify the music,” said Magaya. Recent droughts in Zimbabwe have caused the calabash shells to be brittle and easily broken in travel, so many performance shells are now made of fiberglass.

An instrument can have one to three rows, or “manuals,” made of five to 21 keys.

Keys are tuned by pushing them either up to make the sound sharp, or down to make the sound flat.

The bass notes are at the bottom and the higher notes are on the top layer.

As Dyoko sings and plays, she sometimes says the word “Pamusoro,” signaling to the rest of the band to “play the higher keys.”

The mbira is highly based on improvisation, connecting African music as the root to the heralded root of modern music — jazz. There is never a second of silence when a mbira is playing because the base cord rhythm is repeated in rounds of four phases in 4/4 meter. 

The trio performed a range of joyous and somber songs. In two songs, Dyoko came to tears; one was about the AIDS crisis and another was about the heartache she suffered after running away from home to become a professional mbira player.

Mukatiende was their closing song, meaning “Wake up, let’s go.” Magaya and Dyoko left Zimbabwe on May 12 and have been touring ever since.