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Where did all the kalimbas go?
Surging in popularity now, kalimbas arrived long ago and then all but vanished French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret depicted many scenes of Africans in Brazil, including these images with Kalimba! (From Decio Gioieli’s CD) Kalimbas had been common in many, widespread places, having come along with Africans when they were torn from their native lands by slavers. How and why kalimbas disappeared is a sad and complicated tale. Today, the kalimba is more popular than ever. People all over the world are creating original, unique kalimba designs. People everywhere are doing exactly what the people of Africa always did with the kalimba over the last millennium: adapting it to play their own musics. The
September 7, 2016
