News and Announcements

Whenever I change the tuning on my kalimba in a small way, I have the sense that I am standing next to a great ocean of possibilities. I have experimented with hundreds of retunings. However, even a 13 tine kalimba will have billions of possible tunings. No matter how deep I go into alternative kalimba tunings, I will only scratch the surface of those possibilities. This blog post tries to do the math in a simple but persuasive way. By the way, those billions of tunings? Some will have redundant notes, meaning the same note twice, or more. But that is a thing in traditional African tunings. Another consideration: there

Customer Steve Says: “The other day a friend of mine asked why I had purchased so many kalimbas from Kalimba Magic. I bought several from other distributors and tried to find music to learn the kalimba. I made little progress until I found Kalimba Magic.   “I saw that Mark Holdaway had developed music training programs for many different types of kalimbas. The tablature-based music was easy to understand, downloadable as PDFs, and very inexpensive considering their great quality. The pricing of the instruments seemed reasonable so, I started to learn with a 15 key Alto Kalimba. It sounded good to me and felt very resonant in my hands. There

There has been so much rush in the direction of the 17-Note Kalimbas in recent years. There are a lot of other kalimba possibilities out there, each offering their own types of experiences. While any kalimba can be tuned to a pentatonic scale (see Maurice White’s “Evil Tuning”, which is a pentatonicaly tuned 17-Note Treble), you get something altogether different when you make a specially designed pentatonic kalimba. In this video, I feel wild and extremely powerful playing the minor pentatonic scale on this kalimba. What is the pentatonic scale?   An important thing to know: primitive cultures all around the world used the various pentatonic in their music and

You can now pre-order the Chromatic Treble Kalimbas. They have been out of stock since January 2021. The good news is that a kalimba resupply mission should be leaving from Africa in early September 2021. I should have these kalimbas in stock around September 15 2021. Pre-order Chromatic Celeste Treble Kalimba (Board Mounted) Pre-order Chromatic Treble Kalimba (Box Mounted) We currently have these chromatic kalimbas in stock: The somewhat larger Chromatic Alto Kalimba (15 front, 13 back), The board-mounted Chromatic Celeste Alto Kalimba (15 front, 13 back). The hard thing about the chromatic kalimba is that the chromatic notes are on the back side of the kalimba. The easy thing

Everything we have that will work for your 17-Note Kalimba in C Get a 17-Note Kalimba   I have recently written some great books and PDF downloads for the 17-Note Kalimba in C. These books use kalimba tablature, which is easy to read and very expressive. In addition to tablature and recordings for each song, these instructional guides offer insights into how to read the tablature, how to tune, the kalimba’s history, how to accomplish the various moves you need to make on your kalimba, and more. Everything you need to have a wonderful kalimba ride! Says one recent customer, after she purchased our instructional downloads: “Mark, I am already

A lot of people in recent years have come to the mistaken conclusion that the kalimba is a Chinese instrument. Until about 2017, the Chinese-made kalimbas were relatively rare. In fact, they are modeled after the African-made Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba. But the kalimba’s African history is much deeper than that! This TikTok video gives you the 59 second story of where the African kalimba comes from. @kalimbamagic##kalimba ##kalimbamusic ##kalimbahistory ##fyp ##africanhistory ##hughtraceykalimba ##mbira ##karimba ##mbiradzavadzimu ##mbiranyunganyunga♬ original sound – kalimbamagic

6-Painted Tine System The 6-painted tine system is our standard. Our tuning insert is set up that way. My personal 17-Note Kalimbas in C are painted that way. The books I write have 6-painted tine tablature. But not every 17-Note Kalimba is painted this way. The Treble Kalimba has Five Painted Tines The Original Hugh Tracey 17-Note Treble Kalimba, I paint the same way that Hugh Tracey painted in 1954. Why? Because it has always been painted that way. When people pick up a Hugh Tracey Treble Kalimba, and see the middle tine painted, they realize that is the 3rd of the scale. After that lowest tine is paint, as

Do you have a 17-Note Kalimba in the 5-painted tine system? We have just translated our two most popular ebooks to be compatible with the 5-painted tine kalimba. In this article, I am not going to tell you WHY there are two competing tine painting systems for the 17-Note Kalimba. I WILL tell you that until last week, all of the books and ebooks I have created for the 17-Note Kalimba in C have been in the “6-painted tine system” – ie, the red tines in the photo. In this article, and in the new ebooks, the “5-painted tine system” is represented by green tines. Introduction to the 17-Note Kalimba

Yes, that is me dressed in black holding a guitar. Even though I make my living playing kalimba, I probably spend as much time playing guitar as kalimba. And I like that photo! Hey – I started making kalimba videos on TikTok, and I’m having a lot of fun. Here are some of the types of kalimba videos I am creating: Duets with other musicians on TikTok Pop songs on Kalimba Visits to beautiful places around my world with the Kalimba Tips for your Kalimba playing Eventually, I aim to get videos of every single Kalimba type and tuning that I have in my collection Upcoming Kalimba Magic giveaways! Kalimba