Resonant mallet percussion instruments, like the marimba, balafon, and timbila are believed to be some of the first pitched instruments ever invented. The term “marimba” encompasses them all, even though they each originated separately. The oldest written record of a wooden mallet percussion instrument dates back to 3,500 B.C.E., where the “ugab” is made reference to in the Judeo-Christian bible. This instrument contained bars of different lengths suspended over gourds or bamboo resonators.

The origins of the marimba are still up for debate, as South Africa, Indonesia, the Amazon, Thailand, and more regions claim to have created it. One possible location lies in South Africa. South African folklore contains a goddess named “Marimba” who made an instrument by hanging gourds below wooden bars. In the sixteenth century, the marimba was brought to South America as a result of the slave trade, where Sebastian Hurtado, a Guatemalan, took off the gourds and attached wooden resonator pipes in their places. This is the defining characteristic between South American and African marimbas, and is the model of the modern-day marimba found all over South America.

BALAFON
The traditional mallet-based, pitched percussion instrument of West Africa is the balafon. There have been virtually no changes to the instrument over time, except for size and accuracy of pitches. There is serious evidence that xylophone-based instruments originated in West Africa, with the Mande people. There is Mande oral tradition surrounding the balafon, from the time of Sunjata. According to this story, Sumanguro Kante, the Sosso blacksmith sorcerer-king defeated by Sunjata, played the first balafon (supposedly in a cave, by himself, for his own pleasure). When he was defeated by Sunjata, his bala got passed down to Bala Faseke Kouyate, his personal Jeli, who then passed it down the family line. The Sosso bala, as it is known, has remained in possession of the Kouyates, and is heavily guarded in Niagassola, Guinea. It is one of the oldest surviving instruments south of the Sahara, and is larger in all dimensions than any bala used today. Scientific methods may never get a chance to determine its actual age, however, as there are too many strict rules regarding its care and the circumstances under which it may be taken out of its hut and played.

Check out a video clip of Balafon!

TIMBILA
In Mozambique, on the southeast side of the African continent, the Chopi people play a variation on the marimba called timbila. These are made of wood, and are built to varying sizes and ranges of pitch. Chopi timbila orchestras consist of anywhere from five to thirty instruments of different sizes. The wood is made from the mwenje (sneezewort) tree, and calabash resonators are suspended below the slats. As opposed to the bala tradition, by which players perform old folk pieces, new timbila songs are written yearly, to be performed by the orchestras at social festivities. These pieces often have many (up to ten!) movements with different tempos and feels. Deforestation of the mwenje tree has led to a decrease in the output of timbilas.

Check out a video clip of Timbila!

MARIMBA
After the indigenous Mayan civilization collapsed, a new form of music arose among the Mestizo people, who were a cultural and physical offspring of the intermingling Mayans and Spanish conquistadores. In that time, Mestizo meant someone who had one European parent and one Ameridian parent. Today, Mestizos are the broad category of anyone with discernable amounts of mixed European/Ameridian ancestry. The music of the Mestizos was, naturally, a combination of Mayan ceremonial music and Spanish recreational music, mixing the Mayan stringed and blown instruments with the Spanish guitars and violins.

In Belize, modern Mestizo music is generally more mellow than in the surrounding areas. In western Belize, in San Ignacio and Benque, and further into Guatemala, the marimba, the Central American relative of the xylophone, is king. The marimba is made up of wooden bars, arranged as the notes on a piano, struck with mallets. Marimbas differ from xylophones in that they produce a lower tone, their bars are wider and thinner, and are shaped differently (the center of each bar is shaved on the bottom to be extra-thin, so that a different set of overtones can be produced to give the instrument a richer, fuller tone. Also, it is played with relatively softer mallets. However, the key to the marimba’s sound is its resonators, metal tubes of varying size that hang down below each bar. These tubes, adapted from the gourds that hang below West-Africa’s balafons and Mozambique’s timbilas, amplify the sound. Typically, in Belize and Guatemala, where the instrument is the official symbol of culture, the marimba is played by two musicians at once.

The marimba was first brought to North America by Sebastian Hurtado and his family marimba band, which toured the United States for three years, beginning in 1908. Their success allowed other Guatemalan marimba bands to tour the U.S., and it also inspired American manufacturers to start production of marimbas.

The term “marimba” has also been used to cover similar instruments, like West Africa’s balafons and Mozambique’s timbila. There are marimba bands in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ghana, Ecuador, and in some parts of Mexico.

Check out a video clip of Marimba!

Contributed by: Jake Gold