Originally published in Sing Out! Magazine - Volume 26/Number6/1978

Transcribed and archived by Shane Speal, Dec 2015. 

Shane's notes:  These plans are for a traditional Middle Eastern "spike fiddle," also known as a Rebab.  It is very similar to the Asian "Erhu" fiddle as well.  The use of a coconut shell is what really struck me in the design, as it is more commonplace than dried gourds.  Also in the text, there is a reference to a connection with African music and the blues.  I have a provided a link to the source below. 

The instrument can be played as a plucked banjo or bowed with a violin bow.  There are also many ways to modify the design (fretboard, etc.) while still keeping the coconut and rawhide body. 

Home-Made Rebec Banjoby George Lyon

A few years back, my wife and I, working in an alternative elementary school, helped to devise a unit of study on African culture. Our part in the unit was to help the kids to make some African-like musical instruments, giving them a bit of instruction in their
use, and relating them to African musical culture generally. Other parents and teachers worked with other aspects of African culture - textiles, history, etc. Some of the students made thumb pianos, some made coconut shell bongos, one ambitious boy made a ceramic dombak drum, but I was most excited by two-stringed banjos several of us made, using coconut shells and dowels.

Although the unit was reasonably successful, I expect that by now most of the instruments we built are, at best, lost in closets around town; but mine isn't. I still play mine, in public even! Construction is simple, of course - though coconut shells are very hard and brittle and do have a tendency to shatter under a brace and bit drill.
Gourds 'would probably be better, especially since they offer more variety of size and may be easier to work, but gourds are not readily available in Canada.

Parts needed:

• Coconut - eyes poked out, meat scraped out and sawed in half.
• Piece of rawhide, big enough to cover top of coconut and halfway down the sides
• 1/2" dowel, 18" long
• High B and E strings from a pack of acoustic guitar strings
• Eye hook
• Hand whittled tuning pegs or banjo/guitar tuners

Building Instructions:

1. Select the largest coconut you can find. Poke out the eyes, pour out the juice and saw it in half.
2. After you've eaten the meat, drill a hole in it to fit your dowel.
3. Use a foot and a half or so length of dowel - shove it into the hole and glue it.
4. Cover the top with a piece of wet rawhide - tie it down with either string or rawhide lacing - either way , when the rawhide dries, it should be very tight.
5. Tuners:  I put tuning pegs on mine. I whittled them from smaller diameter dowels, but cheap banjo friction pegs might be easier to put on and to tune.
6. Alternative tuners: Leather Tuning Rings (similar to the African kora) I have since found some illustrations of an older technique of tying the strings to the neck. This technique is found in Egyptian paintings, and it's still widely used in Africa.
7. Cigar Box Nation Editor's note: the author omitted information on creating a bridge.  A 1" section of 1/4" dowel would suffice as a floating bridge.  You could also hand-carve a nicer banjo bridge.

I suspect that the tie method would be better used with very light strings. Mine has  standard guitar first and second strings, tuned (usually) C and F.

Pipe cleaner nut:  For a couple of years, I left mine with the strings running from the bridge directly to the pegs, but eventually I got tired of reaching over the first peg to finger the second string. So, I wrapped a pipe cleaner around both strings and the neck, and that's mv nut.

Mine happens to have a rather smail shell - and I haven't given it a soundhole, except for popping out two of the eyes on the bottom. It is a rather quiet instrument, but it's loud enough for solo performance. I have a larger shell salted away for "when I
have time."

Playing Techniques:  I occasionally flat pick mine, especially to get an African or Middle Eastern flavor, but most often I either frail it, treating the second string as both melody string and thumb string (double thumbing is possible, too), or I bow it. Those
who have read Paul Oliver's Savannah Syncopaters: African Retention in the Blues will remember photographs of African griots who
appear to be frailing similar instruments.

Played with a bow, the two stringer is a real gas!  Rightfully so; instruments like this, played from Morocco to China, were probably ancestors of the fiddle. (In fact, I've often thought of calling my variety of it the "rebop," since the originals often go under the names "rebec" and "rebab.")

Most of my inspiration, however, comes from the blues. Remember the "alley fiddle" on all those Big Joe Williams and Peg Leg Howell records? Here it is!  You won't have the versatility of Stuff Smith or Butch Cage, but I've got funky versions of "Baby Please Don't Go" and "Sittin' On Top of the World" (the latter influenced by Hobart Smith), that are as bluesy as you'd ever want.

Making a bow:  I use a short, one-eighth sized fiddle bow, mainly for sentimental reasons (it was my daughter's), but you could make one, with a piece of reasonably springy wood and horsehair from any violin repair shop. Best use the synthetic stuff, I'd say; horsehair is getting expensive, and it should be left to the folks that really need it.

Humble though it may be, I consider this to be a real instrument. The "Folk Revival" may have more people picking and singing than ever before, but to a large extent, this just means $$$ in the hands of guitar and sheet music se11ers. Which may be fine,
I've got my share of store-bought axes. It's just that sawing away on my little rebop, I feel curiously in touch with humanity, in a way I never felt with my old Gibson, box of finger picks, and various instruction books.