Kalimba

The kalimba is an instrument in the percussion family. It is a modernized version of the African mbira. It is a sound box with metal keys attached to the top to give the different notes. It is also known as the African thumb piano.

The kalimba is a musical instrument from Africa.Several reeds or tines are plucked with the thumb orfingers, and the reed vibrations are amplified by ahollow box resonator or a sounding board. The kalimbais a member of the Lamellophone family of musical instruments. The first kalimba to be exported commercially out of Africawas the Hugh Tracey Kalimba. After years of studyingAfrican music and dozens of prototype instruments,Hugh Tracey's company African Musical Instrumentsbegan manufacturing kalimbas, a western version of the
mbira, in the late 1950s. The name kalimba is aBantu word which means "little music", and is similarto the word karimba, a type of mbira.

While kalimba initially meant the Hugh Tracey kalimba,the name kalimba is now a generic name and can describe anynon-traditional thumb piano, or can even be used generically forthe traditional lamellophones of Africa (ie, the
mbira, karimba, sansa, etc).

The African roots of the kalimba

Unlike string instruments or flutes, which were widespreadaround the world, the kalimba family of instruments is uniquelyAfrican. The kalimba appears to have been invented in Africatwice: a wood or bamboo-tined instrument appeared on the westcoast of Africa perhaps 3000 years ago, and metal-tinedlamellophones appeared in the Zambezi River valley around1000 years ago. These metal-tined instruments traveled allacross Africa and differentiated in their physical form andsocial uses as they spread. Kalimba-like instruments cameto exist from the northern reaches of South Africa to thesouthern extent of the Saharan desert, and from east coast towest coast. There were hundreds of different tunings,different note layouts, and different instrument designs.

Dr. Hugh Tracey, an Englishman who moved toAfrica, spent many years from the 1920's through the1950's traveling about in rural Africa (ie, as far away as hecould get from western musical influences such as radio,western-influenced bands, and Christian missionaries) wherehe recorded traditional music and documented the tunings andnote layouts of the different kalimbas. However, when Hugh Tracey founded the company African Musical Instrumentsand started building kalimbas in Rudespoort, South Africa,and exporting them around the world in the late 1950's andearly 1960's, the note layout and tuning were not traditional.Rather, the kalimbas were tuned diatonically in the key of G, with adjacent notes on the scale sitting on opposite sides of the kalimba.

Kalimba tunings

The treble kalimba

Most western instruments have a simple linear visual mapping from theinstrument to the pitch which is played: on a piano, the furtherleft you go, the lower you go, and higher notes are to the right.String instruments have a similar mapping: the further upthe neck you go, the higher the pitch, but this progression isrealized independently on each string. Most western stringinstruments have a similar progression from one string to the next(ie, each violin string is a perfect 5th higher than the previous one).Such consistent visual mappings from the instrument to the pitchesthe instrument plays promotes the development of intuition andaids in the learning of the instrument and even the abilityto improvise or play by ear.

It is common on African mbira and other lamellophones to have the lowestnotes in the center with higher notes to the far left and the far right -this is an ergonomic nicety, in that the thumb can pivot such that allthe tines are easy to reach. However, traditional African tunings use notesthat do not lie on the grid of the
western tempered scale, and traditional kalimba notelayouts are often idiosyncratic, sometimes with adjacent tines makingpart of a scale, but then an odd note thrown in that defies the pattern.

The Hugh Tracey kalimbasare tuned diatonically in the key of G.The arrangement of the notes on the Hugh Tracey kalimba borrows from thetypical scheme with the lowest notes in the center and the upper noteson the left and the right, but a regular note layout is used, with thenotes in the ascending scale alternating strictly right-left and going outwardstowards the two sides. With this bidirectional note layout,it seems that all intuition from linearly mapped instrumentsgoes out the window. This arrangement requires that the kalimbaplayer develop a new intuition, but that new intuition is notas hard to come by as the more idiosyncratic note layouts of thetraditional African lamellophones.

The diatonic western kalimba tuning Hugh Tracey used was practicalfor a world-wide instrument - with hundreds of African kalimba tunings, the chosenwestern standard would maximize the number of people who wouldimmediately connect with the kalimba. The beauty of this note arrangement, with notes going up the scale in a right-left-right-leftprogression, is that modal 1-3-5 or 1-3-5-7 chords are made by playingadjacent tines and are trivial to learn and play. If chords are played in the loweroctave, the same notes will appear on the opposite side of the kalimbain the upper octave, which makes it very easy to simultaneously playa melody in the upper octave and an accompanying harmony in the loweroctave. So, the arrangement of notes on the Hugh Tracey kalimba(and on virtually any kalimba you find, as this note layout schemehas been adopted by virtually everyone who copies the Hugh Traceykalimba) makes some complex musical operations very simple and easy.

Alternative tunings are possible, as the tines of most kalimbas areeasily pushed in and out to sharpen or flatten their pitch. Some alternative tunings simply change the key of the kalimba, withoutchanging the note layout scheme. Other alternative tunings move thekalimba to non-modal scales (such as Middle-Eastern scales). Each note of the kalimba can be tuned independently (unlike a guitar), so any scale, western ornon-western, is possible, and traditional African scales are stillaccessible to this modern African instrument.

The kalimba explosion

In the early 1960's, Hugh Tracey secured an initial orderof 10,000 kalimbas with Creative Playthings of Princeton NJ,a company which designed and distributed truly innovativetoys and furniture, mostly made from natural materials.And so, many people bought their firstkalimba from a toy store. People quickly realized thatthe kalimba was not a toy, but a real instrument capable ofreal music.

Soon, African Musical Instruments began making other styles ofkalimba with similar, but different note layouts. The originalkalimba was named the Treble, and a larger, lower pitched 15-notemodel called the Alto was introduced. See the ALTO tuning chart below:

Similarly, different kalimba models with the same note layoutwere also introduced over time. Most traditional Africankalimbas had the tines mounted on a flat board, rather thanon a box, though some traditional kalimbas were mounted ona piece of wood which was hollowed out to provide a resonant box.The flat board kalimbas could be placed inside or on top ofa hollow gourd, which was used as a resonator to amplify andalter the quality of the sound the kalimba produced. The newboard-mounted Hugh Tracey kalimbas were a nod to the traditionalAfrican kalimba designs. The smaller board-mounted Hugh Traceykalimbas were given the name "celleste" (as in "celleste treble").

Shortly after the Hugh Tracey kalimba started being sold around the world, artisans and craftspeople started copying the design, or adapting the design. Several high quality kalimba makers existaround the world today: Lucinda Ellison, Andrew Masters,David Bellinger, Steve Catania, Luc DeCock, R. P. Collier, andGreg Trimble. On the other hand, most kalimbas sold today areinexpensive copies make in third world countries such as Pakistan or Indonesia.

African Musical Instruments continues to producehigh quality kalimbas from their shop in South Africa. Theyhave expanded their offerings to over a dozen different kalimbamodels, ranging from an 8-note student model to a modern versionof a traditionally tuned Shona karimba. AMI also makes highquality marimbas and drums.

Kalimba acoustics

Lamellophones are instruments which have little tines or lamella which are played by plucking.Unlike string instruments or air column instrumentslike flutes, the overtones of a plucked lamella are
inharmonic (ie, the overtones and the fundamentalvibration don't harmonize), giving the kalimba a ratherodd sound. However, the inharmonic overtones are strongestin the attack and die out rather quickly, leaving an almostpure tone which is quite beautiful.

The tuning of most kalimbas, with the notes in the scaleascending on the tines from the center outward in analternating right-left fashion, results in chords being made by adjacent tines. When any tine is plucked, theadjacent tines also vibrate, and these harmonizing secondaryvibrations serve a similar role to the harmonic overtonesof a string instrument - they increase the harmonic complexityof an individual note, though in a strange yet pleasing way.

ee also

*Lamellophone
*mbira
*Array mbira
*Marímbula - Caribbean Bass thumb piano
*Music of Africa
*Hugh Tracey
*Andrew Tracey
*Earth, Wind & Fire - Features Kalimba prominently in much of their music.

Sources

*http://www.kalimbamagic.com/
*http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textk/Kalimba.htmlNote that the stated tunings for the alto and treble kalimbasat the vt website are incorrect - they have been notified multipletimes over the last two years. The tunings presented here on theWikipedia page are correct.
*http://www.asza.com/ikalim.shtml
*http://ilam.ru.ac.za/
*http://www.kalimba.co.za/
*http://www.nscottrobinson.com/mbira.php
*http://www.youtube.com/kalimbamagic
*Gerhard Kubik's Kalimba Book