Kalimba
Shona people from Zimbabwe have a long musical legacy that includes the use of a family of instruments known as mbira (or its modern version, the kalimba).
They are played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at a minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger. They consist of a wooden board (sometimes fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines.
The Kalimba or Mbira belongs to the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments and is referred to by musicologists as a lamellaphone. Many different types of mbira may be found in Eastern and Southern Africa. These instruments are frequently accompanied with hosho, a type of percussion instrument. It is a common sight to see this significant instrument being performed at weddings, funerals, and other types of social occasions. In the year 2020, the “Art of Crafting and Playing Mbira/Sansi, the Finger-Plucking Traditional Musical Instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe” was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This list is comprised of the world’s most important examples of intangible cultural heritage.
Hugh Tracey, an ethnomusicologist, commercially produced and sold a modern rendition of the instrument known as the kalimba in the late 1950s. This contributed to the popularity of instruments that were comparable to the kalimba outside of Africa.
The design that was created by Tracey was inspired by the mbira nyunga nyunga, and she gave it the name “Kalimba” in honor of an old member of the mbira family of instruments. The kalimba can be thought of as a westernized and simplified younger version of the mbira.
It was partly because to the success of singers like Earth, Wind and Fire’s Maurice White and Thomas Mapfumo that it gained popularity in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s, Mapfumo was particularly influential in this regard.
On stage, these performers played the mbira in addition to modern rock instruments including electric guitar and bass, drum kit, and horns. Their arrangements consisted of a great number of songs that were taken straight from the standard mbira repertoire. Ephat Mujuru, who was one of the pioneer teachers of mbira dzavadzimu in the United States, Dumisani Maraire, who brought marimba and karimba music to the American Pacific Northwest, and the writings and recordings of Zimbabwean musicians made by Paul Berliner are also important contributors to the development of mbira music outside of Africa. Since the 1970s, when she was a pupil of Dumisani Maraire, Claire Jones has been playing and teaching the mbira for more than four decades. In addition to that, she is the Festival Coordinator for Zimfest, which is a Zimbabwean Music Festival that takes place every year in North America and features a large number of performances, workshops, and other events centered around the mbira.
Both Joseph H. Howard and Babatunde Olatunji have made the argument that the mbira and other metal lamellaphones are inherently African and can only be discovered in regions that are inhabited by people of African descent or who are descended from Africans.
In the early 1900s, it was stated that people in the Okpuje and Nsukka areas of the south-eastern region of Nigeria utilized instruments that were quite similar to these.
Check out some of the easiest to play Kalimba tabs for popular songs such as Kiss The Rain, Streets of London, and You are my sunshine, and for kids, Incy wincy Spider. That’s of course, after you have tuned your instrument.
His vast experience in the field allows him to provide the best advice and guides around a variety of musical instruments here as co-founder of NT Instruments
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