Cheikh Ndoye: Ngoni Bass

Bassist Cheikh Ndoye shared this awesome video of his work on the African Contrabass, also known as the bass ngoni. The West-African traditional instrument is fretless with three strings. Ndoye, who was born in Senegal, did some of his own modifications to get it to fit his style.

“The traditional instruments are very hard to tune without the tuners,” he wrote. “It’s so hard to get the strings but I ended up talking to a harp company that made me these nylons with bass gauges. My other bass ngoni is a five string. I just received 2 and gave one to Richard Bona. I use custom pickups called K-pickups for acoustic instruments.”

Check out the bass ngoni on Ndoye’s playthrough of the Dave Samuels tune “Rain Forest”: