Xylophone: Ghana 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 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 of picture: 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 9^th 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.