Mufrika Edward Style Karimba

Description

I am rebuilding some Hugh Tracey Kalimbas in the layout of Mufrika Edward’s karimba. Mufrika Edward is a Zambian karimba player whose music can be found on Facebook. These karimbas are rebuilt as 14-Note karimbas in F#, with a lower row of 8 notes and an upper row of 6 notes. You can watch Mufrika’s music videos and play along, not for note, with this Karimba.

Starting today – February 24 2021 – I am offering these “Mufrika Edward Style Karimba” for sale at Kalimba Magic. When someone purchases one of these Karimbas in Mufrika’s setup and tuning, I am keeping track of these sales, and I am paying you Mufrika a 10% royalty on each sale.

Some details: the body can be made from a Celeste Alto or a Box Alto. The lower row tines are made of 5mm Alto tines. The upper row notes are made of 4mm Treble tines. The instrument only uses 14 of the 15 slots in the bridge hardware. The logical use for the empty slot on the far right would be for another F# tine, redundant with the one on the lower left side. However, the tine immediately to the left, E# (which is also known as F) is only a half step lower, which produces resonant dissonance when you play either of the two tines… so the far right slot remains empty.

The default for this karimba will be: board mounted, no buzzers, no pickup. You can add box mounted, or buzzers. The pickup option is no longer available.

We now have a 54 page PDF ebook download with live links to the sound recordings. This download comes for free with the purchase of a Mufrika Edward Style Karimba.