Sakaki Mango

MANGO AND LIMBA

The thumb piano – often introduced as « kalimba » – is an instrument which tells stories. Sometimes made with a few nails flattened with a hammer, sometimes with more than fifty thick blades, carefully polished, result of hundreds of hours of work, sacred instrument or simple hobby for the rainy days. Some shells, spider nests, beer caps or pieces of can give to each instrument the originality of its designer, a very unique sound. Each Mbira, Limba, Kalimba, Likembé or Kisanji is linked to a region or just a village, a people and its history and compose a rich and vibrant African heritage.

Native of Kagoshima, Kyushu Island in Southern Japan, Sakaki Mango found out in a library a record of Hukwe Ubi Zawose, the master of Tanzanian lamellaphones. The deep, buzzing sound of the “limbas” irresistibly aroused his curiosity. His Swahili language diploma in hand, he moved across the African continent, following his musical attractions. First in Tanzania near Hukwe Ubi Zawose who taught him the traditional playing and manufacturing techniques of the limbas, then in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Congo, where he could meet with a large variety of lamellaphones. This long musical travel has guided him from the sacred music of Tanzanian inland to Kinshasa’s urban sound.

Back to Japan, he has started forging his own musical universe with his band “Limba Train Sound System” (Katsuhiro Idomoto [drums] & Akira Hasegawa [bass])/ Its energetic melodies, tinted with sounds from Bagamoyo, Harare, Kinshasa or Lusaka, sung in a mixture of Swahili language and Kyushu Island dialect, are, as Mango’s itinerary, a powerful entanglement of musical traditions and modernisms overlapping and fitting together in a very original and creative Afro-Asian sound.