Announcing the New Owner of Kalimba Magic

I am pleased to announce that the store of Kalimba Knowledge, kalimba books, and kalimba music downloads will be available into the foreseeable future: Anthony Ghimenti will be purchasing my business Kalimba Magic. He will be assisted by kalimba enthusiasts Melissa Ghimenti (his wife) and Suzy VanDerMolen (his mother-in-law).

Left to right: Anthony Ghimenti, Suzy VanDerMolen, Melissa Ghimenti, Sadie being held by Melissa, Lexie the fuzzy white dog, my wife Su Washington, and me, Mark Holdaway.

For the last 19 years, I have had the joyful opportunity of making my living around one of my favorite things in the universe: playing the kalimba.

Of course, I couldn’t just twiddle my thumbs and make a living… even though I could just twiddle my thumbs and make music. I had to actively learn about the kalimba, about the history of its cousin African instruments, the mbira and the karimba. I had to keep abreast of new developments in the kalimba world, and sometimes, I had to try to run along side these new developments.

In other words, the Kalimba Magic web site is a repository of kalimba information  and kalimba wisdom. And Anthony, with support from his family, is taking that on, making sure it keeps on going, and making sure that content is available to you and the kalimba world.

Kalimba Magic will change hands on October 14, 2024, also known as “Kalimbas Day”. I will deliver our inventory and all of our digital ebooks and other products. October 14 will be a holiday, but we’ll put out a little newsletter to commemorate the sale. In fact, we will give you some special deals for the “Kalimbas Day” Holiday to entice you to purchase a kalimba or two, and then we will do a joint shipping operation on Tuesday, October 15 and Wednesday, October 16.

After that, I will still be in touch. I will volunteer as a consultant to Anthony for his first six months, helping him do all the things that Kalimba Magic needs to do (like retuning a kalimba, or setting it up as a SaReGaMa).

I will continue to work as the “Kalimba Doctor” – if your kalimba needs retuning, reglueing, or refurbishing, you will still be able to send it to me, and I’ll send it back to you. You will deal with Anthony and Co for all other kalimba transactions.

And I expect I will continue to work at writing a few kalimba books each year. Why? Because that is what I do, and I expect I won’t quite be able to get it out of my system. Yes, it is true, I just love creating new kalimba music, and I love to share it with the world.

Speaking of which, Melissa Ghimenti also loves creating new kalimba music as well. We are currently working on a collaboration of “Two Song Duets” – duets that are created from two different songs played at the same time.

If you have any questions about the future of Kalimba Magic, please contact me.

And I welcome Anthony and family to the Kalimba World. These are good folk, and I trust them, and I am glad to be selling my business to them. I’m glad they will be there in the future for the Kalimba Community.

And in case you didn’t get the implicit punchline of all these words: the Kalimba Instructional Downloads will be available for the foreseeable future. You can download them now, and download the associated sound files as you need them.