Marimba

A name carried across an ocean

The word marimba comes from Bantu languages of southern and central Africa, and instruments built from tuned wooden bars over resonators are found across that region. Museum curators generally hold that enslaved Africans brought the technology to the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where Maya and other communities adopted it. Some researchers have argued for earlier or independent development in the Americas. The surviving evidence is incomplete, so the route of arrival is better described as probable than proven.

The nineteenth century is better documented. In the 1890s, builders in Guatemala and Chiapas, in southern Mexico, created longer double-row chromatic keyboards that let several players share one instrument in any key. Wooden resonators replaced gourds, and the marimba moved from a strap at the player’s body to a permanent stand. Early in the twentieth century, American makers produced orchestral prototypes, reportedly modeled on Latin American examples, and the concert marimba took shape.

Wood, hollow tubes and a borrowed buzz

A marimba’s bars are cut from dense hardwood, most often rosewood in concert instruments, and laid out like a piano keyboard: natural notes in a front row, sharps and flats in a raised row behind. Makers tune each bar by carving away wood from its underside, leaving an arch. The bars rest on cords or pegs at their nodes, the points that barely move, so the wood can vibrate freely. Some makers now use synthetic composites in place of rosewood.

Beneath every bar hangs a resonator. In traditional Central American instruments it is a dried gourd, sometimes fitted with a small hole covered by a thin membrane of pig intestine fixed with beeswax, which adds a buzz. On the concert marimba it is a metal tube, open at the top and closed at the bottom, cut to the pitch of its bar. On one five-octave instrument documented by a college collection, tube depth runs from roughly one inch to thirty.

How a struck bar becomes a note

When a mallet hits a bar, the wood flexes and vibrates, and its pitch depends on length, thickness and the depth of the carved arch. The carving also shapes the overtones, the faint higher notes that ride above the main pitch. On a well-tuned marimba bar the strongest overtone typically sits two octaves above the fundamental, which gives the instrument a clear, round, slightly hollow tone rather than the brightness of a Xylophone.

The tube below the bar resonates at the same frequency, reinforcing the fundamental and lengthening its life. Even so, a marimba note fades quickly, although the low notes ring longest. Players compensate with rolls, rapid alternating strokes that blur into a steady tone. Where a buzzing membrane is present, the roll takes on a bright, rattling edge.

Five octaves, several voices

Ranges vary more than on most keyboard instruments. A widely used concert size covers about four and a third octaves, and a full five-octave model, the one often called an orchestral marimba, runs from C2 up to C7 across sixty-one bars. Smaller instruments with three or four octaves were long the norm. Music is written on treble and bass staves and sounds at the notated pitch, with no transposition.

Timbre shifts across that span. The lowest bars are deep and woody, slow to speak and slow to fade. The middle register is the warmest and most singing, while the top thins into a dry, pointed ping with little sustain. Mallet choice changes everything: heads wound with soft yarn or cord yield a mellow attack, and harder cores add definition to fast passages and the extremes of the range.

Two hands, four mallets

Modern solo playing usually holds two mallets in each hand, which allows full chords and independent melodic lines. Players speak of two broad families of grip. In the traditional or cross grip, the mallets in each hand cross like the arms of an X. In independent grips, each mallet moves separately, which suits wide intervals and intricate counterpoint. Choosing between them is a matter of repertoire, hand size and teacher, not of correctness.

Traditional practice differs. Museum documentation of the Nicaraguan marimba de arco describes a single-row instrument played with beaters made from plant stems, two held in the right hand and one in the left, so melody and bass sound together. On a double marimba in Guatemala, two or more players may stand side by side, dividing treble and bass parts, and the ensemble skill lies as much in coordination as in technique.

Many marimbas, one family name

The Nicaraguan marimba de arco keeps a form strikingly close to its African relatives: a single row of twenty-two keys, each with a cylindrical resonator and a buzzing membrane, all fixed to a wooden frame by an elastic cord. Gourd-resonator marimbas made in Guatemala preserve a related design. Both stand in contrast to the chromatic instruments that spread through Latin America in the twentieth century.

Those larger instruments include the large Guatemalan and Mexican double marimbas, with their wooden resonators and stands, and the concert marimba used in conservatories. Catalogs sometimes list the concert model under alternative names such as xylorimba or marimba-xylophone. Naming is not uniform across regions, so the same word can point to quite different objects.

From saint’s day dances to the recital hall

In Nicaragua the marimba accompanies saint’s day celebrations and a dance known as baile de marimba, which many regard as a symbol of national identity. In Chiapas and Oaxaca, marimba bands usually combine one or more marimbas with a double bass and drums for popular dance music. In Guatemala, the marimba is heard at family gatherings and civic occasions alike.

Outside Latin America, the marimba took a different path. It entered percussion ensembles and, through its solo literature, conservatory teaching, where its long tradition of four-mallet writing drew composers to the instrument. Orchestral appearances are real but less common than its prominence in recital would suggest, and it sits comfortably beside Vibraphone and Timpani in a percussion section.

Keeping wood in tune

Wood responds to its surroundings. Sharp swings in humidity or temperature can move a bar’s pitch slightly and, over time, stress the wood itself, so instruments are generally kept away from radiators, open windows and direct sunlight. Covers protect the bars from dust and spills, and moisture is wiped away promptly. Specialists recommend leaving bar tuning and any carving to trained makers.

Mallets matter as much as the instrument. Heads that are too hard for the bar material can dent or crack it, so players match mallet hardness to the register and the repertoire. Resonator tubes and frames are lifted, not dragged, when the instrument moves. Traditional gourd and membrane resonators call for special attention to damp and to insects, and their makers often repair them by hand.

Small facts worth knowing

• The buzzing sound of traditional marimbas has its own name in Nicaragua, charleo, and comes from a membrane of pig intestine stretched over a tiny hole in each resonator and sealed with beeswax.
• On a documented five-octave instrument the rosewood bars run from about 7 inches long at the top to about 22 inches at the bottom.
• A five-octave concert marimba has sixty-one bars, and its lowest note, C2, sounds two octaves below middle C.
• According to the Musical Instrument Museum, instruments from the Guatemalan builder Rosendo D. Barrios helped introduce the marimba to the United States in 1908.

Terms used in this entry

charleo

The buzzing effect produced by a membrane covering a small hole in a traditional resonator.

chromatic

Including all twelve notes of the octave, sharps and flats as well as naturals.

diatonic

Limited to the notes of a single seven-note scale, without sharps or flats outside it.

idiophone

An instrument whose own body vibrates to make sound, without strings or a stretched skin.

node

A point on a vibrating bar that barely moves, where the bar can be supported without damping it.

overtone

A higher, fainter pitch sounding along with the main note and shaping its color.

resonator

A gourd or tube placed beneath a bar that vibrates in sympathy and strengthens its note.

roll

Fast alternating strokes that join into a sustained-sounding tone.

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References

1. Musical Instrument Museum (MIM). New Acquisitions and Exhibit Showcase the Versatile Marimba. mim.org/new-acquisitions-and-exhibit-showcase-the-versatile-marimba
2. Grinnell College Libraries. orchestral marimba · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/2396
3. Grinnell College Libraries. marimba de arco · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/3446
4. Berklee College of Music. Marimba Band. pulse.berklee.edu/?id=4&lesson=30&print_book=410&print_page=3844

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.