Dec. 15, 2011 Vol. 6, Num. 6

Kalimba Magic Christmas News In This Issue How I Almost Got Punched in Fry's 12 Great Kalimba Gift Ideas Magical Music Box Storybook and CD New! Heavenly A Sansula Songbook New! JBH Four Octave Chromatic Interview with Mark Holdaway Carol of the Bells Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring Fifties Christmas Medley on the Bb Treble Sarah Plays the Left-handed Catania 6-Note

Interview
Mark Holdaway, Director of Kalimba Magic

This time, it is Mark Holdaway who is getting interviewed rather than asking the questions. Samantha Spencer interviewed me for an ethnomusicological class she is taking. I thought this might be a good opportunity to share what I'm thinking these days with the kalimba community.

How did you start making your kalimbas/marimbas?

I started making marimbas first. I was recently divorced, and I can't remember how I got this idea in my head, but I really wanted to fill my house with marimbas, and wanted me and my two sons to play music together. So, I started talking to a friend, Frank Gacon, who knows about tools, started buying cheap power tools (the stationary belt sander is the most important tool for tuning marimba bars), and started experimenting.

Kalimbas: I've played kalimbas for more than half my life, and when I started getting proficient with power tools (i.e., cutting the wood without cutting my fingers), I decided to branch out to kalimbas.

How do you make them? What is the process of making them?

Kalimbas - rather than try to build a box kalimba, I would mount a thin face wood piece on to a gourd. I like gourds, and it just seemed easier. Tines can be made of bobby pins, street sweeper brush tines you find on the street, or purchased industrial spring steel.

Tuning kalimbas is mainly about cutting and mounting the tines to be the right length to play the note you want - there is a lot of leeway there, just push the tine in or pull it out to change the pitch. One issue to consider - the spring steel can't be "stronger" than the face wood - if you have really thick, strong tines, you need to have fairly stiff, thick facewood. Thin facewood - say 1/8 inch - will not support the vibrations and the sound will be more like "THUD" than "brinnnnggggg"

Here is a series of Tips of the Day for making gourd kalimbas.

Here are Ian Clothier's Tips of the Day, many of which deal with making kalimbas.

Andrew Owen recently made this photographic guide to building board-mounted kalimbas.

And here is some info on turning spring steel into kalimba tines.

I am actively making marimbas these days. The most important part is also the part I am best on - tuning the bars. Having a background in physics helps me here. Basically the marimba bars are springs - you punch them down in the middle when you hit the wood with a mallet, but while the center of the bar goes down, the two ends of the bar actually go up! All pinched up like that, down in the middle and up on the ends, the bar wants to get back to laying flat, and the thicker the bar is in the center, the stiffer a spring it makes, and the harder it pushes to get back to equilibrium - of course, it overshoots, and then the center of the bar is bent up and the ends are down. A thicker bar will spring back and forth faster, and will make a higher frequency sound. To bring the pitch of vibration down, you sand or shave some wood off in the middle - you do this on the underside of the bar so the top is still flat and beautiful and easy to hit with the mallet. As you sand off a lot of the middle of the bar, it becomes a weaker spring, the force to return to equilibrium is lower, and the frequency of vibration is lower, and you have just made a low note.

After you get your head around that basic fundamental vibration theory, you also need to understand that there are also higher frequency modes of vibration going on at the same time, and the notes they make are called overtones. Skilled marimba builders can tune not just the fundamental vibration tone, but also the higher frequencies. There is evidence in old marimba bars that the ancients in Africa understood about this and were able to tune the overtones to harmonize in a pleasing way with the fundamental tone. Also, they understood how to tune a resonating gourd to the same frequency as the fundamental tone. The tuned gourd would be placed under its matching bar, and the volume of the bar would be increased several fold.

I should state that while marimbas were certainly made like this perhaps a thousand years ago in parts of Africa (marimbas also spread to Indonesia and South America through commodity trade and the slave trade respectively), Zimbabwe really had no culture of marimbas until the 1960s. Dumisani Maraire brought the new African marimba music to Washington state in 1970, and now 40 years later there is a rich culture of African marimba music in the US, especially on the west coast... and while it looks back to Africa for its roots, the marimba only goes back 50 years. Of course, there is more to the spirit of African music than the details of the instrument, so there are other aspcts of the modern African marimba music - the form, the variations, the call and response - that are much older than 50 years.

Do the instruments have significant meaning in them?

I do not have an African cultural background. But when I make musical instruments, I am putting my knowledge, my work, my mind, and my heart into them. I am concentrating good emotional, mental and spiritual things into a physical object. I am using that physical object as a vector of good intentions - that I might make something good enough that it will be a tool for someone to bring them joy or understanding or wonder or comfort. Will it? If I do a good job, and if the new owner is also faithful.

Are you fluent in playing both instruments?

I think I am one of the best kalimbas players - check out my videos on YouTube and maybe you'll agree.

I am learning to be great on the marimba. I'm competent, but I am spending 1-2 hours a day working on marimba.

Where are these instruments popular?

Sub-Saharan Africa - I would guess 25-50% of the ethnic groups in Sub Saharan Africa had kalimbas or marimbas. Many instruments though are dying out as the children would rather play on a cell phone than a kalimba.

In the U.S., I sell about 20% of my kalimbas to people in the state of California. California, Oregon, and Washington are probably where most of the big marimba bands are playing.

What is the culture behind these instruments?

Each group in Africa had their own uses for these instruments. Most groups don't have both kalimbas and marimbas. Many ethnic groups had neither. Log marimbas are really ancient - several thousand years old. There is a theory that kalimbas were made as portable xylophones, starting about 3000 years ago. Those kalimbas were made of bamboo.

About 1300 years ago, the iron age reached southern Africa, and the Shona people of Zimbabwe started making kalimbas with metal tines. The Shona people had their mbira dzavadzimu (a particular kind of traditional kalimba) highly integrated into their culture. When someone dies, their spirit hangs around and can influence events on earth - so it is very important to stay on good terms with the ancestral spirits. About once a year, a Shona family will hold a bira ceremony for each different ancestor that was important to the family. Mbira players and hoshu (shakers) players were paid to come and play for hours. A spiritual medium was also paid to come, get hypnotized by the music, and to get possessed by old grandpa's spirit, and everyone would talk to the spiritual medium as if they were grandpa. By staying on grandpa's good side, we are paying insurance to help our lives stay good, so the crops come through and our health stays good. As such, mbira players were considered to be pillars of the society, and bus drivers would typically let mbira players ride free.

To other ethnic groups, the kalimba had more secular uses - such as "the African walkman" - or "the device that makes walking easier" - a companion for a long walking journey.

While "kalimba" is one of many traditional names for the instrument, it also became the name for the "Hugh Tracey Kalimba" - a new instrument made starting in the 1950s with design features from several different traditional instruments.

In the 1970s, the blues performer Taj Mahal and the band Earth Wind and Fire started using the kalimba. The kalimba immediately became a symbol of black pride and ancient African culture, even though the kalimbas that were being played were the Hugh Tracey kalimbas - which were made in South Africa, by black hands, but bore the name of an Englishman... though an Englishman who truly loved African music and made his life about African music.

SO - there are both modern and ancient components to the culture of the kalimba, but they all point back to African pride, diversity, and African genius.

How long do they take to make?

I find that it is best to try to make like 5 or 6 instruments at the same time. Like I tune 5 sets of bars all at once, so I am working on all the C's one after the other. I can make 5 8-Note marimbas in about 25 hours - about 5 hours per marimba. Kalimbas? It's been too long since I've made one - seemed to take me about 4 or 5 hours. I once made gourd kalimbas with a group of 10 kids at Quaker First Day School - it took us a month of Sundays.

While I no longer make kalimbas, I do import kalimbas from African Musical Instruments (the people who make the Hugh Tracey kalimbas) and also from two specialty kalimba makers in Germany, and buy from two other makers in the US.

What is your background behind these instruments and this culture?

I am a white guy from the suburbs of Dallas Texas. I always wanted a heritage, but it seems I had none. But I have always loved music, and always knew my life would be about music.

I've been playing kalimba for 25 years - mostly non-traditional music, but more and more in the last 5 years I am playing and experiencing and understanding traditional music and traditional musical forms on the kalimba.

I will never be a black man from Africa. But I can certainly appreciate the brilliance of these instruments that have their roots in Africa. These instruments are as big a part of my life as my children and my family and my Quaker Meeting. The business, the website, the books, the body of work of my company Kalimba Magic are like my third child, and this work is so important that I need to make arrangements for it so that it continues when I am gone, just like I make provisions for my sons.

This body of work is my gift to the world, in the spirit of those who came before me and loved these instruments. I give great thanks to the ancestors who came before me creating and improving these amazing instruments. I am one of this long lineage of people whose lives have been moved and changed by these instruments, and someday people will stand on my shoulders and take their playing to the next level, and I will be one of the ancestors who came before.

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