Marimba Music in Guatemala

The marimba’s first written indication of existence comes from an account of a performance in Antigua Guatemala in the year 1680. Later, historian Huana Domingo Juarros mentioned and described it in his Compendium of the history of Guatemala. The instrument however may be possible much older, as an attempt at rebranding an older West African instrument, and could have been make known to the Afr0-Caribbean slaves as early as 1550. The arch marimba was possible the first, accompanied by a simple instrument with a diatonic row of wood bars played with mallets, with gourd resonators, placed on a wooden a stand. In the year 1894 rooted a major breakthrough, when Julian Paniagua Martinez and Sebastian Hurtado established the chromatic marimba, by adding to the diatonic row of sound bars, comparable to the white keys of the piano, a second row equivalent to the black keys. By the early 20^th century, wooden-box resonators had taken over the gourd resonators.

source: antiguadailyphoto

The current marimba bands include the smaller marimba for three players, a larger marimba for four players, plus a drum kit or other drumming and a chord bass. Some groups have occasionally used one or two saxophones, as well as one or two trumpets and a trombone. Much of the ancient repertoire of salon music was learned and accepted by the marimba bands, while a number of amount of new dance pieces was newly composed for the marimba by such singers and marimba players as Domingo Bethancourt from 1906 to 1982, the Ovalle brothers, the Hurtado brothers, as well as popular Mariano Valverde from 1884 to 1956, Wolzbeli Aguilar from 1887 to 1940 and Belarmino Molina from 1879 to 1950, etc. singer Paco Perez from 1917 to 1951 was catapulted to popularity with his waltz Luna de Xelaju, one of the best-known marimba pieces which is known by many Guatemalans as a type of unofficial national anthem.