D-Bo: Diddley Bow

[Low ink cartridge print over crayon scribble on newsprint, collage]


When building a rectangular guitar, even if it is a bass guitar it's necessary to spend some time talking about Bo Diddley. Now, I assumed his self-designed guitar was based on the cigar box guitar and his name was a riff on the Diddley Bow. We all know how assumptions tend to go, however blues musicians like to tell stories… so who knows?

Most of us are familiar with the phrase "diddly squat," so we know that "diddly" (or diddley) is slang for nothing (or a very small amount), "bo" is an intensifier, so "bo diddley" means "absolutely nothing!" That becomes interesting when talking about the diddley bow. 

The diddley bow emerged from the Southern African-American culture. It's a homemade instrument with links to African instruments and considered part of the zither family. A zither is more or less a stringed instrument without a fret/fingerboard. It is a simple instrument made with whatever is on hand. Typically made with a scrap of wood, I've read of diddley bows being made on the side of a barn. It's that defining characteristic that puts the diddley in the diddley bow.

Typical diddley bow construction: The body is an old and/or easily accessible piece of wood. The string is a piece of wire attached at both ends of the board with nails. The resonating chamber is an empty bottle which is fit snugly under one end of the wire. You would then create different pitches using a piece of metal or glass (bottle) like a slide. The string can be plucked or hit with a stick. For many of the original blues musicians this was their introduction to guitar.

The cigar box guitar is an extension of this make-it-yourself tradition, but might have 1, 2, 3 or more strings. A cigar box guitar (as you might guess) uses a cigar box as it's resonating chamber and a broom handle or scrap of wood for a fingerboard. It is also typically played with a slide. However Bo Diddley came up with his stage name and rectangular guitar, they're both linked to these traditions. "The Originator" of rock 'n' roll looked back and took a step forward.

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