April Sky
Fumito Nunoya
"It helps people feel warm, refreshed,
interested, excited, kind, and loved."
"This [writer has been dazzled by Fumito’s playing numerous times over the past decade. It reveals a rare focus and command. His attention to detail, and the clarity and imagination of his musical ideas, is spellbinding. But what has so many times caught me off guard is the emotional power in Nunoya’s playing: his sincerity and humility—the spiritual element. You know you’re being presented with a gift." (Nancy Zeltzman) |
Nancy Zeltzman interviews Fumito NunoyaNZ: How would you describe your ideal marimba sound: your “voice” on the marimba? |
Nancy Zeltzman
"That's why we play music, because it evokes complex feelings"
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"What kind of spirit does this piece have? Does it have a light mood, a complicated mood…?” |
Marimba Bands in South Africa
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Twenty Children's Songs for Marimba
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"Where did the marimba originate?" |
A Marimba Theology
Polyphony Marimba
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"Polyphony Marimba was founded in 2010 and has grown steadily with five national tours, three albums, and an ever-expanding fan base. Our mission is to create and sustain an acoustic ensemble of nine players who want to make a life out of the roots music of southern Africa, while contributing our own creative expression to that tradition. Founder Peter Swing has taught the music of Zimbabwe for 30 years and has led several previous ensembles, while keeping an active shop building Zimbabwean style marimbas which are sold coast to coast. He and several other bandmates have made repeated visits to Zimbabwe as well as South Africa and Botswana, to study with the masters and soak up the deep ancestry that permeates the land and people there. Polyphony Marimba is the culmination and fulfillment of that experience...click here for more.
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37 Moods of the Marimba
The 37 moods and emotions in the diagram below form an interfaith spiritual alphabet that is available to people of all religions and to people without any religion.
In process theology 'spirituality' consists of forms of emotional intelligence and embodied wisdom for daily life that contribute to what John Cobb and Charles Birch call "richness of experience." Process theology offers the suggestion that the living whole of the universe, God, in present within each human being as an indwelling lure to grow into these emotions and learn from them. The purpose of growing into these emotions is not for private pleasure alone. It is that we might live in wise, loving, and creative ways with the world: with family and friends, and also with strangers and the more-than-human world: hills and rivers, trees and stars, and our friends, the other animals.
In the alphabet "T" is for teachers. When we think of teachers, we may first think of other people and then, on reflection, of the more-than-human worlds: the hills and rivers, trees and stars. But on still further reflection we rightly realize that musical instrument can be teachers, too: the marimba, for example. When played by an individual or a group, the marimba can introduce us to, and evoke, many of the moods and emotions in the alphabet, relative to the music being played. Of course other instruments, too, can do this. Each has its own flavor and color, timbre and tone.
In process theology 'spirituality' consists of forms of emotional intelligence and embodied wisdom for daily life that contribute to what John Cobb and Charles Birch call "richness of experience." Process theology offers the suggestion that the living whole of the universe, God, in present within each human being as an indwelling lure to grow into these emotions and learn from them. The purpose of growing into these emotions is not for private pleasure alone. It is that we might live in wise, loving, and creative ways with the world: with family and friends, and also with strangers and the more-than-human world: hills and rivers, trees and stars, and our friends, the other animals.
In the alphabet "T" is for teachers. When we think of teachers, we may first think of other people and then, on reflection, of the more-than-human worlds: the hills and rivers, trees and stars. But on still further reflection we rightly realize that musical instrument can be teachers, too: the marimba, for example. When played by an individual or a group, the marimba can introduce us to, and evoke, many of the moods and emotions in the alphabet, relative to the music being played. Of course other instruments, too, can do this. Each has its own flavor and color, timbre and tone.
Marimbas and Xylophones
around the World
Marimba Spiritual
COMMUNICATING THE SPIRIT OF A REQUIEM AND RESURRECTION
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'In late 1983, Minoru MIKI received the request from Ms. Keiko Abe to compose new marimba piece with three percussionists.
For him, it was rare opportunity to compose his third marimba piece. He started thinking about the piece on Christmas day in 1983, and completed it on January 13th, 1984. This was also the year that many people died in Africa from starvation. As a person who had experienced similar suffering before and after the end of World War II, Miki could not be silent. Rather he felt that he must express his condolences and anger for that situation. |
He therefore composed the first slow section as a static requiem, and the second fast section as lively resurrection. The title "Marimba Spiritual" is as expression of the total process." (http://www.massimopastore.it/Minoru_Miki_engl_-_Marimba_Spiritual_2.html)
Marimba Universe
We live and move and have our being in a universe of perpetual perishing and arising. Always we are different from who we have become; always we are becoming something new.
The universe is, says Whitehead, a creative advance into novelty. And so it is with the wider world: the atoms and molecules, the stars and planets, the solar systems and galaxies, and, on our small planet, the rocks and trees, hills and rivers, plants and animals.
We are within, not apart from, a marimba-like universe, pulsing with energy, forever on its way toward a love supreme.
Our calling is to dance our way into this love, and let it dance within us, so that we enjoy life in the moment, and help create a world that is creative, compassionate, inclusive, diverse, humane to animals, good for the earth, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. Communities that carry these qualities are the building blocks of ecological civilizations.
We hear this calling toward these civilizations in many ways, one very beautiful example of which is music, marimbas much included. As they carry the polyphony of many notes gathered together, moving through time, each evoking a mood in the spiritual alphaber, they carry a message for us: "Listen, hear, play, love, and leave no one behind."
-- Jay McDaniel
The universe is, says Whitehead, a creative advance into novelty. And so it is with the wider world: the atoms and molecules, the stars and planets, the solar systems and galaxies, and, on our small planet, the rocks and trees, hills and rivers, plants and animals.
We are within, not apart from, a marimba-like universe, pulsing with energy, forever on its way toward a love supreme.
Our calling is to dance our way into this love, and let it dance within us, so that we enjoy life in the moment, and help create a world that is creative, compassionate, inclusive, diverse, humane to animals, good for the earth, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. Communities that carry these qualities are the building blocks of ecological civilizations.
We hear this calling toward these civilizations in many ways, one very beautiful example of which is music, marimbas much included. As they carry the polyphony of many notes gathered together, moving through time, each evoking a mood in the spiritual alphaber, they carry a message for us: "Listen, hear, play, love, and leave no one behind."
-- Jay McDaniel