[ Silence ] [ Music ] >> A family of musical instruments
found in many cultures, heard in many ages, known by many names. A family of musical instruments
originating in Africa hundreds of years ago and found it today here in Tucson, Arizona. [ Music ] >> I'm Mark Holdaway [phonetic]. I'm the kalimba guy. The kalimba is my-- has become my life. I used to work as a radio astronomer at the national radio astronomy
Observatory here in town, but they closed. I was visiting some friends on spring
break while I was a graduate school and one of them had bought this exact
model of kalimba, the Hugh Tracy Alto. And we were passing it around playing it
and this stranger hears us from the street and he walks in and he says
hey, you guys have a kalimba. Can I play it? And we give it to him and he starts
making the most amazing music. [ Music ] >> The kalimba is a member of
a whole family of instruments with origins in many regions of Africa. Instruments in the family include the mbira,
the karimba, and likembe, among others. >> Hugh Tracy was born in 1903. He was born into a big family
and they sent him off to Zimbabwe and he worked on his brother's tobacco farm. He was overseeing black men
working in the fields. He discovered that they played
these amazing instruments. [ Music ] He and some of the people that he first met
on the tobacco farm would go across borders and just around Africa looking
for the traditional music. [music] Kalimba was a generic name, and
I use kalimba as a generic for all these. [music] Karimba music or
[inaudible] music, it's all cyclical. You set up a chord progression and
define the melody within that progression and it ends then you go back
and do it again and again. [ Music ] What fraction of these needs sanding, Jordan? >> The kalimba and its music have become
a central part of Mark Holdaway's life. In fact, he sound way to share his passion
for the charisma by distributing instruments from five manufacturers too eager kalimba
players and students around the world. >> They'll send in orders on the Internet. We match the kalimba with a
book that will work with it and put that in a box and
send it in the U.S. mail. But it represents all the magical
things you can do with the kalimba. >> Many of the instruments
Mark Holdaway plays and sells through kalimba magic are contemporary versions
of more traditional even ancient instruments. [ Music ] >> One-- slow it down a little bit. This instrument is called [inaudible] which
is the great mbira or mbira of the ancestors. Traditionally this is used by
the Shona people in Zimbabwe. But it spread across the world now. [ Music ] >> Dawn Corso [phonetic] is an
ethno-musicologist at the University of Arizona's Fred Fox School of Music. Her work with mbira focuses on the
cultural aspects of the instrument and the long-standing oral tradition
of teaching how the mbira is played. >> Back to there. That's right. It's an oral tradition that
really is passed from person to person from master teacher to student. So if you think of your left only-- when you learn through an oral tradition if
you take it out of your body it's not yours. And so you really must-- you must
absorb it mentally and in your body. That's good. You got it, you got it, you got it. Traditionally the use is a mbira ceremony. And the idea is that ancestors can help you. You can ask for help. You know, if you're having a difficult time
if you have a problem that you need to solve, but the way in which to bring the
ancestors forth is through the ceremony in which people gather together
and music is made. >> The wood of the instrument
represents the earth. The tines on the instrument represent all the
living things on the Earth, the grass, the cats, the dogs, the people, and when they
act they vibrate and make sound. But when they act they don't act alone. Also the voices of the ancestors chime in. Either to say, yes that's the
right thing, or no, don't do that. [ Music ] >> A family of musical instruments. Found in many cultures, heard in
many ages, known by many names. [ Music ] The kalimba and its musical relatives
play a notable number of cultural and musical bowls not only
in many African nations, but also here today in contemporary
Tucson, Arizona. [ Music ]
