xylophone: Equatorial Guinea musical instrument
The xylophone which is derived from the Greek words ξύλον —xylon which means “wood” and φωνή —phone which means “sound or voice” is a musi...
https://worldhitz4u.blogspot.com/2013/12/xylophone-equatorial-guinea-musical.html
The xylophone which is derived from
the Greek words ξύλον—xylon which means “wood” and φωνή—phone which means “sound or voice” is a musical instrument that belongs
to the percussion family and is made of wooden bars that can be struck by
mallets. Each of the bars is regarded to be an idiophone tuned to a pitch of
musical scale, be it pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of the African and
Asia musical instrument, diatonic in many western children musical instrument
of chromatic for orchestral use. The term xylophone may be generally used to
replace any instrument of that kind such as the marimba and balafon. It is
mistakenly used to refer to the similar instruments of lithophone and
metallophone. It is used in many countries such as Romania, Russia, Bulgaria,
Macedonia and Serbia.
source: library.thinkquest.org
The todays
western xylophone has bars of rosewood, paduk or various artificial material
that are made of chemical such as fiberglass or plastic which allows a louder
sound. Some of these instruments can be of small range as 2½ octaves but
concert xylophones are specifically 3½ or 4 octaves. The xylophone is a musical
instrument whose part is written in different keys from the notes that is
produced when it is being played: its parts are written one octave below the
sounding note and the instrument can be played with a very hard rubber or
acrylic mallets. Lighter tones can be created on the instrument when the player
uses wooden-headed mallets that are made from the rosewood, ebony, or birch
wood.
The
musical instrument has difficult to understand and ancient origin. It
originated in Southeast Asia and came in to Africa in 500 AD according to
Nettl, when a group of Malayo-Polynesian speaking people migrated to Africa and
the similarity between the African xylophone and the Javanese and Balinese
gamelan orchestras were his evidence.
The
earliest evidence of the true xylophone is from the 9th century in
the Southeast Asia while according to Vienna Symphonic Library,asimilarity wood
instrument built for hanging is believed to have existed in 2000 BC in what is
now known as part of China.
The term
marimba is also used to apply to many traditional folk musical instruments such
as the West African balafon. Early forms were carved of bars atop hard-skinned
fruit. The wood will be roasted first around a fire before the key is being
shaped to get the desired timbre. The resonator is tuned through careful choice
of resonator to a key and adjustment of the diameter of the mouth of the
resonator with the use of wasp wax and adjustment of the height of the key
above the resonator. A skilled producer can make startling amplification.
The first
use of the term is recent when it came into Europe in the 1860s. The orchestral
xylophone of Europe was first used in 1874 in Camille Saint-Saëns, although the
musical instrument has already been made popular by Michael Josef Gusikov whose
instrument was five-row xylophone that was made of 28 crude wooden bars which
are arranged in semitones in the form of a trapezoid and resting on stalks of
straw support to keep it from falling. There were no resonator and so the
instrument was played with spoon-shaped sticks.
Gusikov played in garden concerts, variety shows and as a novelty at the
symphony concert according to Curt Sachs.
The
musical instrument was used by early jazz bands and its sound was bright and
lively and they worked well the syncopated music of the 1920s and the 1930s. In the U.S, there exists Zimbabwean
marimba bands in particularly high focus in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and
New Mexico, but bands exist from the East Coast all through California and to
Hawaii and also Alaska.The important incident for this community is ZimFest
which is the annual Zimbabwean Music Festival. The bands are made of
instruments from high sopranos through to lower soprano, tenor, baritone, and
bass. The resonators are often produced with holes covered by thin cellophane
get the defining feature buzzing sound. As of 2006, the repertoires of U.S.
bands tends to have a great overlap, due to the common source of the Zimbabwean
musician Dumisani
Maraire who was the
main person that first carried Zimbabwean music to the West and to the
University of Washington in 1968.