Kalimba Community
Kalumba and Kinobe
Kalumba.org is a new website/organization that seeks spiritual healing and awakening through the playing of music, in part through playing the akogo (an Ugandan Thumb Piano). Kinobe is an expert akogo player, drummer, and kora player, and he is doing one more workshop in Tucson, October 6. I was at the Sept 21 workshop, and this is well worth going to!
A New Design for a Bass Kalimba from John Roff
If you pick up a Shona mbira and start to play, you will notice that the lowest notes are very weak. In fact, you hear the first overtone more than the fundamental, which is really odd because the overtones are an-harmonic. You see, the sound board just isn't big enough to resonate at the frequency of the low notes' fundamental vibrations. However, as soon as you stick it into a large gourd deze, the traditional resonator for the mbira, the low notes come alive, because the gourd is much larger than the mbira and it can resonate at those low frequencies.
One difficulty of bass kalimbas is that they need to be really large to resonate well at the low notes. Of course, this makes them expensive to build and ship (though you should check out Josh Humphrey's inexpensive bass kalimba model in this newsletter.) Now, John Roff of Pietermaritzberg, South Africa, has come up with a great idea for making a bass kalimba that is compact, yet loud and boomy at the low notes. He made a long board, and he sits on the board on top of a chair. His house has nice wood floors, so the chair and the floor become the resonator, plenty big to resonate well at those low, low frequencies. Brilliant, John! Now, I am just waiting for AMI or some other company to starting using this idea in a commercial design for a bass kalimba. On the other hand, if they don't, John will!
N. Scott Robinson on the Amadinda
The amadinda, an equally-tempered pentatonic xylophone
traditionally
from Uganda, will be available from Kalimba Magic
next month.
N. Scott Robinson writes to inform us of a recent online article he wrote online with pics and video of amadinda and akadinda.
Gary Diggins, Sound Therapist, to Travel to Africa
Gary is a soundwork therapist who uses kalimbas with lots of other instruments. He especially loves the minor keys, and is the main reason why I offer Alto and Pentatonic kalimbas and the African-tuned karimba in G minor. Gary writes:
Thank you for the update and especially the news on the Ugandan version of what I think of as the balafon. The amadinda 'sounds' like a wonderful way to create community with players who can't make a wrong note.
By the way, I'm off to Nigeria and Rwanda in October (with a possible
trip to Uganda). I'll be facilitating expressive arts experiences with a
project called Between4Eyes. I'm hoping to pack a few kalimbas for the
trip and promise to write you a summary on my return!
—Blessings, Gary
Email Gary, or visit his web site at: www.garydiggins.com
Hey Gary, next time you go to Africa, let us know in advance!
Martin Daws Uses Kalimba in Spoken Word Performances
Martin Daws is a poet with a sweeping vision of the landscape of sound, which he creates with spoken word, vocals, percussion and kalimba:
I perform spoken word and I started with kalimba as an accompanying instrument just over a year ago. My first composition is called 'River Song'. It is posted on www.myspace.com/martindaws.
Martin is releasing a book/cd of sonic poetry, including these two tunes with kalimba: River Song, and Under the Slates. Email Martin
Different Scales, Overtones and Harmony
Since we are exploring different tunings and different scales based on non-western intervals, I thought I would make mention of an article that David Chapman turned me onto. This guy had a keyboard that could be tuned to scales not based on 12 equal steps per octave, but any number he chose. When you subdivide the octave in other ways, the harmonies become odd, but he found that the timbres of certain sounds worked in harmony in such scales better than others. The timbre of a sound, or exactly what makes a trumpet sound different from an oboe, or a kalimba from a church bell, is all about the series of overtones present in a sound. So, harmony is not just based on how the fundamentals are related to each other, but also on how the entire series of overtones of two notes compliment each other.
Message I Received from Jane Elins after She
Read
My Interview with the Arizona Daily Star
Italicized words in [brackets] have been inserted by the editor.
Message: In 1968 Santa brought my daughter a kalimba found at Creative
Playthings [the first Hugh Tracey distributors in the 1950s and 1960s],
and it became a prized treasure in her life. Now her daughter
plays it. Fast forward to 2003. I was in Victoria Falls, headed on a path
to the Zambezi River [the region where the metal-tined kalimba was
invented over 1000 years ago] for a sundown cruise when I heard a familiar sound
coming from the woods and recognized an old friend, a kalimba! The
man dressed in ceremonial attire jumped onto our boat with other
musicians and I spent most of the cruise chatting with Melusi,
even exchanging e-mail addresses. I would like to send you a
letter written in March to my closest friends; please forward
your email address to me. I was THRILLED to see your
article in the Star, which is going
to my daughter, and I'll try to forward the URL to Melusi
so that he can read it as well. Thank you for all that you're
doing with an age-old, wonderfully healing instrument.
—Jane Elins
Martha Hopkins, Author of Second Chances
Second Chances is about South Africa's potential after
apartheid.
The year was 2002. I was playing kalimba at Fort Lowell Park at a TKMA-related party with LaLa, a percussionist and fellow kalimba player. About 40 or 50 people stood around us, watching and listening. About a quarter mile away, Martha Hopkins was walking through the Rillito river wash of Tucson, Arizona, just having returned home from South Africa, where she had just finished her final trip researching her book Second Chances, a sociological and cultural exploration of post-apartheid South Africa. In fact, she had stayed in Grahamstown and interviewed Andrew Tracey and Heather Tracey.
As Martha walked through the wash only hours after disembarking her flight, she couldn't believe her ears! Kalimba music?! Kalimba music—in Tucson?! She followed her ears and quickly found her way to park and discovered many of her friends at the TKMA party, and met, for the first time, me, Mark Holdaway, and LaLa, playing the instrument that came from the country she had just returned from.
Now, many years later, having read Martha's first book on South Africa, paying special attention to the chapter on Andrew Tracey and ILAM, I have to say that it was an amazing coincidence, but not a surprising one. And to complete the circle of our first coincidence, she and I had stood in the same office, half a world away in Grahamstown, South Africa, interviewing the same man, Andrew Tracey, some 7 years apart.
The path I am on is covered with such coincidences. When Deb and I returned from South Africa two months ago, we shared our slides and video of the trip with Martha over a wonderful meal she prepared for us at her apartment, and we spoke with fondness about all of our experiences at the other end of the earth. Martha will be publishing another book on South Africa soon, and you can find out about it when it is published, right here at Kalimba Magic.
Sharon Eaton's Song
From Sharon Eaton:
The reason I even sat down with the chromatic kalimba last week is because of what you said in your newsletter, that what I learned on the 8-note would translate to other kalimbas. I sat down with each model and played around with rhythms like I had been doing on the 8-note kalimba. It is pretty cool to be able to bring in strange new sounds with the Chromatic kalimba, and that first pattern was all I needed to be inspired to create something bigger.
Click on the above image to download Sharon's new song
New Horizon
in KTabS.
To learn more about KTabS, go to our FAQ page.
Kalimba Video
By far the best thing I've seen in a while
was something sent to me by
Yancarlos.
It brought
tears to my eyes. I place it here, even above
EW&F! Note his
great use of dissonance in playing notes
only a half step apart, and also the
way he crosses
over. The horns speak for themselves.
- Maurice White with Earth, Wind and Fire on "Evil", using the Hugh Tracey Treble
- Philip Bailey with Earth, Wind and Fire on "Kalimba Story", playing a kalimba made by Lucinda Ellison
- Earth, Wind and Fire playing the instrumental Fire-Biyo: this is the studio version with album cover animation. The kalimba starts at 2:00.
- This guy came up with a nice technique to mute the Sansula tines with his fingers as he plays. Nice music too! And his cat looks just like one of mine.
- Jazz improv on Array mbira by someone I've not seen before.
- Interview with Lucinda Ellison, maker of beautiful but pricey kalimbas.
- Amazing art kalimbas from RP Collier
- Always good to see Scotty Hayward. Fortunately, we are in luck and can see him twice.
- Kevin Spears—I encourage you to watch the whole thing if you can
- Two Sansulas and a Guitar—wow!
The Kalimba in Serious Musical Compositions
Per Nørgård was one of the first academic composers to make use of the kalimba in his 1973 composition "I-Ching". I have received word that German composer Frank Zabel has just written a piece which includes the kalimba:
Zabel writes: I have indeed just finished a composition which includes a kalimba. The piece is called OBJETS SOMBRES - SONS NOIRS (dark objects/black holes - black sounds) and is written for 3 pianos, 3 harps, 3 percussion instruments and live electronics. It will be premiered in Tonhalle Düsseldorf (a famous concert hall!) in February 2009 by my Ensemble Différance.
A little closer to home, Elizabeth Guzman in Phoenix is leading a percussion ensemble performing Tusk, which requires a specially tuned 8-note kalimba. I don't know why I've never heard of this piece before, I would have thought someone would have requested a kalimba from me tuned this way by now!
Tuning and tablature for the first few measures of Tusk
Discover the world of kalimbas at http://www.kalimbamagic.com
Shop for kalimbas and accessories at the Kalimba Shop