Xalam Lute
The xalam is a plucked five-string lute of the Wolof of Senegal, with a calabash or carved wooden bowl body, a skin head, and strings grouped into two melody and three rhythm strings. Played by griots (gewel), it produces the interlocking lines that back praise-songs, genealogies, and narrative epics, and its twanging rhythms support both festive dance music and the serious recitation of lineage history. Across the Sahel the same instrument appears under other names, such as the hoddu of the Fulani and the khalam, with each people tuning and playing it in its own idiom. A griot's xalam was far