May 4, 2022

The “celeste” models are Hugh Tracey kalimbas mounted on a thin, tapered wooden block, instead of the resonant boxes that the standard Hugh Tracey kalimba models are mounted on. There are box-mounted traditional kalimbas. The one that I saw was a solid piece of wood that had been hollowed out from the end. But most traditional African kalimbas are a bunch of tines mounted on a solid piece of wood. So the celeste models are structurally more similar to traditional kalimbas than the common box kalimbas are. Essentially every Hugh Tracey kalimba comes in a box-mounted version and a celeste version. All celeste Hugh Tracey kalimbas have the same body