#xylorimba

[vintage-tech]

In response to...

...the 1927 ad for the benefits of learning to play the Hawaiian guitar:

My mother pushed piano on me hard, and I sucked really hard at it for six years. But you know what instrument I wish had been forced on me?

This one, from a 1935 ad out of Popular Mechanics:

Not kidding. I’d love to be able to play marimba. I doubt I’d be the life of the party like the ads inevitably say a nascient musician would be mere hours after the first lesson, and it’s probably been since 1976 that there’s been a hit song that involved one (not counting Tears For Fears “Change” since that was done on a keyboard set to emulate marimba, though convincingly the song was lipsyched with a guy playing marimba on Puttin’ On The Hits in 1984). I think it would have been great for no one to know that I play anything, then nonchalently bust out some wild tunes (like Double D there with the pedal organ). Summer camp would have been even more amazing, though I wonder where I would have hid it for five days to break it out on Talent Show night.

[ai-generated]

No one liked it when Uncle Eric visited and started playing the xylorimba!, but at least it shut him up about what Father Coughlin had said on the radio that week.

AI-Generated

[theowl08]

"Xylorimba" - Steven Page

[paulmalon]

The Xylorimba Attracts The Women by Paul Malon Via Flickr: 1937.

[ohcassius]

#jenco #Xylorimba #a440

[lectionaryofmusic]

Xylorimba.

A hybrid keyboard instrument, with combined features of the Polynesian xylophone and African marimba, in which the resonance gourds are eliminated. Xylorimbas are used in works by some modern composers.