Kalimbas/Lyre Harps

Kalimbas, mbiras and lyre harps from Groove Masters Percussion, MEINL and NINO.

A kalimba is a set of tuned metal tines mounted over a wooden soundboard, plucked with the thumbs. The sound is soft, round and bell-like, and it sustains. What makes it unusual as an instrument is that all the tines are tuned to one scale and laid out alternating outward from the centre, so almost anything a beginner plays sounds deliberate. Someone can pick one up and produce music in the first minute, with no lesson.

That is why kalimbas turn up in wellness rooms, care settings and sound baths as often as in music classrooms, and why they are one of the better instruments to hand to an adult who says they are not musical.

GMP kalimbas run from a small coconut mbira through seventeen and twenty-one key models in koa, mahogany, walnut, acacia and maple, and poplar, with flat board and hollow box bodies. A hollow body is louder and warmer, a flat board is quieter and more focused. Several carry carved designs and a palm rest.

Lyre harps are the plucked relative, played with the fingers rather than the thumbs. KaLyre models come with seventeen and thirty-one strings in beech and cherrywood, and the Light on Earth lyre harps in seven and nineteen string versions.

MEINL and NINO supply smaller wooden kalimbas suited to classroom use.