Mark Holdaway

Buy this set of great, innovative kalimbas for under $200. Great workmanship, great sound, different musical tendencies… but all with compatible scales. Improvising A fantastic way to use kalimbas is to improvise on them. Just make stuff up. The kalimba is like a special playing field that is tilted in the direction of success by removing all the “bad” notes. The remain notes define some space of coherent musical possibilities. Your job as an improvisor is to explore what is possible. If you look on YouTube, you will see thousands of people working on learning specific songs. I am actually one of them. But working on specific songs is to

The Star-13 Kalimba is a great blend of cool magic tricks and shear capability. Magic tricks? Try the “wah wah” technique, and the very useful note layout. Do you want to just wave your thumbs around and have cool-sounding music pop out as if by magic? CHECK! Do you want to be able to play the tines with precision and have beautiful arrangements come forth through your careful practice and work? CHECK. Heads up  – I don’t have a book for this kalimba YET, but I will have in about a month’s time. You will be able to find the book and other instructional resources for this kalimba here at

The Magadi M17 Kalimba is tuned the same way as the recent flood of Chinese kalimbas. This means it can play all the same music and read the same books and download. But this kalimba has so much more to give! First of all is the sound quality. Each individual note seems to bask in perfection. Every note is equally loud. The high notes ring clear and true, and so far, every single M17 kalimba has been seemingly perfect, on every note. The next thing to notice is the distance between the tines. It is way more spacious than your typical 17-Note kalimba, which means that it is much easier

Beautiful hymns on the kalimba – what more can I say? Heaven! To me, holidays have always been, at their core, about music. The music pervades the essence of the celebration and the ceremony. The music deepens our experience of the numinous moment. And it gives you a great gift that you can bestow on any around you when you can create such beautiful and moving music. That is why I study Christmas carols, and that is also why I learn Easter hymns. This book of Easter hymns is excellent for beginning kalimba players as well as those with more skill, because each of the 12 songs here has both

  The short answer: the D Treble Kalimba, modified from the Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba, is modeled after the Alto Kalimba, and it “reads” Alto Tablature. Get an Alto Book or Download, and it will work for this kalimba. What do you notice about the kalimba above? The richly grained kiaat wood is an exceptional example of the Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba. It has a 1/4 inch jack and a pickup. And look at the painted tines – the far left and right tines are painted, and three unpainted tines congregate at the low central tines… and one of those tines has a dot on it! Why? Whats up with

Video of “Awesome Jig”, the final song in the Olive-9 Booklet. The Olive-9 Kalimba, made by Magadi in China, was new to us earlier this month. Now, I am happy to announce that there is a 36-page booklet with sound recordings that will help you find your way with this amazing cool and economical kalimba. Most of the book is on the introductory level, but the video above is a jig I wrote for the Olive-9 that really highlights how it can dance in your hands. A truly rousing tune that gets my wife dancing! We will include this booklet with every Olive-9 we sell. If you bought the Olivie-9

I am rebuilding some Hugh Tracey Kalimbas in the layout of Mufrika Edward’s karimba. Mufrika Edward is a Zambian karimba player whose music can be found on Facebook. These rebuilt Hugh Tracey karimbas are 14-Note instruments in F#. The lower row of 8 notes is basically the same as the mbira nyunga nyunga, or the student karimba. The upper row notes are arranged differently from the nyunga, and that is where this instrument shines with delight. With this karimba, set up like Mufrika’s own hand made instruments, you can watch Mufrika’s music videos and play along, note for note. By the way, I understand that Mufrika Edward is making his