8-Note Spiral Kalimba Turned into a Student Karimba

What Exactly is This Kalimba?

The 10-Note Spiral box kalimba has super sweet tines that are wider than typical kalimba tines, and have a nice feel to place.  The 10-Note Spiral Box kalimba may be retuned to an 8-Note Student Karimba in C. If you would like the kalimba with unstamped tines, that is an option too. However, as this traditional African tuning is a bit out of the ordinary, you may want to get yours with the note names and numbers stamped on the tines.

An Ancient African Heritage

When Portugese priest Father Dos Santos encountered the kalimba in southern Africa in 1586, it very well could have been this tuning. That is what ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey believes.

In 1954, Andrew’s father Hugh Tracey created the convention followed by almost all modern kalimbas – using the notes of the western diatonic (“do re mi fa so la ti do”) scale, and ascend the scale by alternating sides.

But this 8-note karimba is not made that way. It is arranged in a way that Andrew Tracey believes people have been playing for over 1000 years.

Get the 8-Note Box Student Karimba today!

Learn more about the Student Karimba. Andrew Tracey also calls it the “kalimba core”, because these notes are at the center of the African Tuned Karimba as well as the mbira dzavadzimu and other traditional instruments his father Hug Tracey archived in southern Africa. He also asserts that it is the “original mbira”, based on circumstantial evidence (such as the account by Father Dos Santos). I call it the Student Karimba because, as it reproduces 8/9 of the low notes of the 17-Notee African Tuned Karimba,  it is a perfect learning instrument for the full karimba: