Monday, October 18, 2010
Old Field Recordings of Original African Music

You can find about 80 of Hugh Tracey's original recordings of kalimba music from the 1950s, digitized and available on the Web. This archive consists of 20-60 clips of music played by a number of different performers on a variety of instruments. Listening to these recordings is sort of like being present with African musicians 60 years ago, when many still played kalimba, back before radio and rap permanently altered the musical terrain in Africa. As I listen to these amazing clips, I wonder how much listening to music with roots going back 1000 years lets us have some spiritual and/or emotional experience of that ancient world?

More than half of these songs can be played on the 8-note primal karimba, aka the Student Karimba.