TRAVELING MARIMBA PROJECT
History
Itinerant Marimba
History Workshop
Hello, I am Benjamín Vanegas, musician and marimba builder, founder of the TLMA - MMP.
I want to tell you about this beautiful Itinerant Marimba project.
In 2004 I began to create my marimba building workshop and years later I met José Caicedo (Don Nacho), in a community on the Cayapas River, exactly in the Telembí parish of the Eloy Alfaro canton of the province of Esmeraldas. Don Nacho is my mentor, a wise old man who put in my hands and in my brain, the ancient knowledge of the construction of chonta marimbas, knowledge that was transmitted from grandparents to parents and from parents to children, wisdom of those men and women. who came from Africa.
After my meeting with Don Nacho, I began to combine mechanical engineering with the ancestral technology of my grandparents. I built a physical space, with a lot of effort I acquired woodworking machines, then I became a carpenter.
Idea
The idea of Marimba Itinerante was born in 2018 while I was part of a musical tour of the binational Río Mira project. I was sitting assembling a small marimba on the stage of a school in Winona, Minnesota. The children at school were attentively watching the entire process of assembling the marimba and burst with joy when I started playing it and our musical show had not yet begun. That joy of the children was an extra of the concert that day and I thought, this has to be repeated in many more places in the world.
In the first half of 2023, I settled in Canada, in the province of Ontario. During my stay in that country, I built a Chonta and Guadúa marimba with raw materials that I brought from Esmeraldas, I also experimented with local Canadian woods and built three marimbas with those woods.
The knowledge of my grandparents has traveled with me and will continue to travel. Before Canada we were in Quito Ecuador and in the city of Chiclayo Peru building chonta marimbas with a member of my team.
VIVA Germany Festival Invitation
Now I have received the invitation for me and my team to be at the VIVA 2024 Latin American Culture Festival this year, in the city of Dortmund, Germany, on September 5, 06 and 7 of this year.
My team and I will stage an exhibition about the construction of Chonta marimbas and traditional music from the Colombian Ecuadorian Pacific coast. It is worth saying that this cast is made up of two people from Esmeraldas Ecuador and two people from the Colombian Pacific coast, Buenaventura and Guapi, in its entirety this Itinerant Marimba Project is made up of 5 members. Our brotherhood transcends from Colombia's Chocó to Esmeraldas Ecuador, we are the same people, so we always walk together.
Help us
We need your help, our goal is to raise 12 thousand dollars to finance our plane tickets. Help us show the social function of our art in the greater Ecuadorian Colombian community and how art can heal us.
We leave you all the options of how you can donate, we will know when you make your donations and we will send you a reward.
Please fill out the two-cell form that appears by clicking on the link below or by using the QR code image, in both ways you can reach the MMP Artisan Music Laboratory Workshop account on the PAYPAL platform.
In the first cell place the word DONATION and in the second cell you enter the amount, then press the Debit or Credit Card button or the PayPal button.
Thanks a lot
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