Kalimba Magic NEWS

Did you hear the one about FedEx and UPS joining forces? The new company would be called "FedUp". OMG, I would be totally Fed Up if that happened. The way things are going, the U.S. Postal Service may very well be driven into the ground and we would have no option other than being Fed Up.

SaReGaMa has become the first person to hit a million views with a kalimba YouTube Video - congratulations! In so doing, he has exposed hundreds of thousands of people to the kalimba in general, and to his specific tunings on the karimba in particular. So many people were taken by his video that Kalimba Magic now offers the Hugh Tracey African-tuned Karimba recast into the SaReGaMa Lotus-tuned karimba.

There is a collection of 66 Songs we originally put together for the 12-Note kalimba. The songs were taken from many genres: African, Classical, Folk, Peace, Patriotic, Christmas, African American Spirituals, Reggae, etc. This diverse collection has now been translated to both the Hugh Tracey Treble kalimba in standard G tuning and also the Hugh Tracey Bb Treble kalimba.

This is the story of how Vlad, an engineer from Germany, discovered, well into adulthood, that he can play and invent music using a kalimba. "It was probably my cultural revelation of the year! I would like to use this occasion to thank Peter Hokema (a German kalimba manufacturer) and Mark Holdaway of Kalimba Magic for introducing me to the art of music :-)! I sort of fell for the kalimba and really enjoy exploring music within it!"

I can truly say that I have found a new type of high end kalimba that is worth every dollar: the Colorado Soundscapes Kalimbas. The tines are amazing. Each one is hand pounded, and the "overtones" are tuned. (To see why I have put overtones in parentheses, read the footnote at the bottom of this article.) The tines have the look and feel of traditional African tines, but with the solidness and sustain of a modern kalimba.

The first time I saw an mbira with an electronic pickup, a piezo-electric device hooked up to a 1/4 inch jack, I couldn't conceive how a primitive instrument from Africa could connect with an electronic amp. But I quickly saw this as a symbiosis between two worlds, the past represented by mbira and the present represented by an electronic amp, bridged by a mere guitar cable...

Eli started playing kalimba a few years back for a few reasons: his sister Sarah had started playing kalimba a year earlier, and Eli wanted to experience what she was learning; and also Eli wanted to play this instrument in Africa when he went to study in Swaziland. He adds, "I was so inspired by you, Mark! You can quote me on that."