May 15, 2011 Vol. 6, Num. 4

Kalimba Magic NEWS In This Issue Message from Mark: My Job Before Kalimba Magic What's the Buzz at Kalimba Magic Kalimba Magic Travel Log Spring 2011 Kalimba in Addiction Recovery Sound Journaling with the Sansula Kalimba in Music Therapy: a Collection of Resources Joy of Music Presentation & Jam, Mesa, AZ, June 24 Children's Workshop at MIM in Phoenix, AZ, July 23 Mbira Cycle: Synchronicity at Folk Fest & Contest Kalimba Community News

Kalimba Magic Travel Log
Spring 2011

• Tucson: The Festival of Books
• Wisconsin: The 2011 GLR AMTA Conference
• Massachusetts: Friends, a Workshop and a Concert
• Massachusetts: The 2011 NER AMTA Conference

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The Festival of Books in Tucson

March 12-13, 2011

Kalimba Magic got to be a vendor right here in Tucson at the Festival of Books on March 12-13. That was a lot of fun, and a lot of people came out to talk and play kalimbas. Another very cool thing happened. Next to me was a graphic artist named Linda Hale. I was impressed by the great variety of vibrant, almost electric, photographic prints of the Southwest that she had to sell. I encourage you to have a look at her work; I'm hoping to have some slightly electrified photographs of kalimbas in the future!

Wisconsin

Great Lakes Regional AMTA Conference, March 24-27, 2011

I love working with the GLR MTs. I had about 30 people take my 2 hour class that introduced five different types of kalimbas to the therapists, and the GLR folks put their hearts into it and made beautiful music as a group. Here are my GLR presentation notes.

The high point of the GLR 2011 trip for me was getting to meet Kathryn Rambo. She and I wrote a book together last year, but we had not actually met in person before! While I don't want to spill the beans, I will say she is working on some great things for the Sansula. To get a sense of her work, I invite you to read Kathryn Rambo's newsletter article on sound journaling.

Massachusetts

Friends, a Workshop and a Concert
March 28-April 2, 2011

In Massachusetts I got to hang out with Jim Salem, the man who showed me my very first Hugh Tracey kalimba at 141 Western Ave in Cambridge almost 25 years to the day earlier. Jim likes playing improvisational music, teaching African drumming, and creating and controlling tiny electronic devices that glow in the dark and change in color or brightness in some strange and interesting way - like the project to put 100,000 LEDs on the Harvard Bridge.

Jim arranged for me to do a Kalimba Workshop at Luminosity Studios. It was a fantastic experience, and I was very pleased to receive this feedback from a participant:

For a two hour workshop, I was completely activated. I really loved being able to play with other people and sounding good! I am such a novice, the sound of everyone playing together was so completely captivating - I was enraptured and magical! It was a totally magical experience - I could have been part of that experience all night and every night - it is so hard to decribe because it is such a special instrument. —Marcy

At the workshop, I met two more kalimba players of note: James Moss from Connecticut and Scott Edwards from Cape Cod. James Moss has been playing and building kalimbas ever since the 1970s and is a most positive human being. Scott is an up-and-coming player of the chromatic kalimba - the east cost Berklee-educated mirror image of Aaron Chavez recently graduated from Cal Arts. James Moss and Scott Edwards will likely be featured in Kalimba Magic interviews in the coming months and years. Their mastery served as an inspirational guide to less accomplished and novice players in the workshop, and we all blended our contributions and responded to each others' playing in a most musically cooperative way.

While in the Boston area, I got to stop in and work with Eric Freeman. Eric is a most interesting fellow in that he does a lot of different things at a very high level of creativity. He is a wonderful and fun recording engineer/music producer, is a great percussionist, kalimba player, instructor, environmentalist - and he builds bass kalimbas. Everything he approaches has his fun and easy spin. We'll feature a lively discussion we had as an interview next month.

I played at a sparsely-attended concert with Mary Shapiro and Patricia Morrison, but we had a great time. Actually, we warmed up for this performance near Central Square, Cambridge, 25 years later and five blocks from the spot where I first heard a Hugh Tracey kalimba, and three blocks from the store where I bought my first Hugh Tracey kalimba. That felt cosmic! !

A wonderful moment of synchronicity occurred when James Moss appeared with a middle-eastern-tuned kalimba, which tuning he and I had independently adopted for the kalimba. He joined the performance, with me accompanying him on middle-eastern-sounding mandola.

Last Stop in Massachusetts

New England Regional AMTA Conference, March 31-April 2, 2011

We had 12 people do the five hour kalimba training at the New England Regional MT conference, and here are the NER presentation notes. One of those to attend was Scott Edwards, who found out that Kalimba Magic was coming to his home town on Cape Cod.

While vending at the conference, I met Donna Newman-Bluestein, the inventor and maker of the Octaband Therapeutic Movement Aid. Donna told me her story - she is a dance therapist, and she invented the Octaband (in 8 and 16 leg models) to provide a prop for activities with people suffering from dementia. I shared with her the story of a friend's father who is suffering from Alzheimers: he is totally nonverbal and doesn't seem to recognize friends or family any more, but when a dance therapist took his hands with the 50s swing music playing, he smiled, lit up, and danced with her. Yes, there is something fundamental about music, dancing, movement.

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An amazing few weeks!