MARYSVILLE — Lively African music blasts out of the band room at Totem Middle School. A hollow, joyful rhythm bounces through the hall.
Inside, a dozen eighth-graders pound on rosewood marimbas with rubber mallets. Teacher Erik Eliason dances around the room shaking a hosho, a hollow gourd and shell instrument.
It’s marimba time — a tradition at the school for 20 years.
Playing instruments and songs native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe, the Marysville Marimba Ensemble brings together middle school students with alumni musicians now in high school and college. They practice after school on Wednesdays, teaching each other songs and creating new compositions.
Since there is no sheet music for marimba, they learn by listening to and mimicking each other.
The group has pounded out songs at festivals, coffee shops, malls and nearby colleges and grade schools. On Friday, they performed onstage at the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle.
The group is so well-loved they’ve even been asked to play at fans’ weddings and funerals.
“It’s happy music,” Eliason said, over the ring of marimbas. “It’s a good outlet. In my class we have students who wear Goth clothes or might not fit in other social circles, but here they find their niche.”
Eliason, who is primarily a choir teacher, didn’t know how to play marimba when he joined the Totem staff two years ago. He learned by watching former marimba students play with the after-school ensemble.
Following in the Shona tradition, first-time players perform alongside musicians with years of experience. Novices repeat a basic melody, while older players use improvisation to spice up the music.
Worried that without sheet music he’d forget the songs the group plays, Eliason videotaped the ensemble performing its entire repertoire last year.
He hasn’t had to rely on the tapes. Eliason, 33, has taught the eighth-grade marimba class from memory.
The dozen students in the class sit, stand and crouch behind rows of 20-year-old wood panels that resemble xylophone teeth. Pipes fitted on one end with clear cellophane wrappers extend from the marimbas toward the ground, giving the music a hollow, buzzing ring.
“It’s like a wall of sound, but it’s rich,” said eighth-grader Halden Toy, who participates in Totem’s marimba class and the after-school club. “It’s many different sounds interwoven into a thick sound — like a big harmony.”
Toy plays the largest of the group’s marimbas: the bass. To reach the keys, he stands on a chair. Students playing the schools’ smallest Orff-style marimbas sit in chairs with the instruments on their laps.
The school’s marimbas cost between $350 and $1,000 each, Eliason said. The mallets are cheaper, which is good because the students sometimes pound them so hard they break. Hay has broken two mallets and whacked himself in the head while trying to drive a mallet from behind his head to a key. He’s played so hard, the skin on the palms of his hands has chaffed off.
Yellow smiley-face stickers on the keys remind kids to have fun while they’re playing.
“I think it’s really cool,” said Gisselle Maldonado, as she stood in the hall listening to her classmates play. “The music is excited and jumpy.”
Like many of Eliason’s marimba players, she hadn’t heard of marimbas until watching a concert at school. Now she’s learning the alto and tenor marimbas in class — and staying after school to practice with the ensemble.
She moves on to high school next year, but like scores of students before her, she’s not ready to stop playing.
Every Wednesday, she plans to return to the Totem Middle School band room. She’ll find a spot behind a marimba and, keeping a 20-year tradition alive, she’ll teach the next generation.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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