The marimba (/məˈrɪmbə/ mə-RIM-bə) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets.

[3] The instrument itself is most similar and shares its name with the marimbas of modern-day Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to documentation dated October 9, 1545, the encomendero Don Pedro Gentil de Bustamante and owner of the hacienda of Santa Lucia, describes in his chronicle a marimba in a celebration of Indians; and tells us the following:.

[6][7] “…said instrument is composed of eight slats of red wood, unequal in size, which are pierced together with cord and produce joyful echoes with boards of the macaguil (macagüil) stick (…) rows of boards tied to short orchestras (sic) flanged and stretched under said instrument a hole in the ground and glued with resin on the boards snake rattles that make musical vibrate with blows of two small sticks with black wax head one for each hand… …that this music is accompanied by a drum of animal skin (…)”[8]It is believed that xylophones came to America by means of Africans who had been taken to Guatemala and Mexico, although there are also records in some Mayan pyramids found in Chiapas and Guatemala.

[10] Historian David Vela says: “We also refer to the thesis of Dr. Castañeda Paganini on the possible invention of the marimba in Guatemala, by Africans brought as slaves in the sixteenth century; it is surprising however that the marimba appears here early among communities closed to their influence, among remote mountains, and is missing in the areas actually inhabited by the colored race.” what is undoubted is that the ingenuity of the local countries transformed the instrument to the point of making it their own.

In 1892, Mexican musician Corazón de Jesús Borras Moreno [es] expanded the range of the marimba to include the chromatic scale by adding another row of sound bars, akin to black keys on the piano.

[24] In the late 20th century, modernist and contemporary composers found new ways to use marimba: notable examples include Leoš Janáček (Jenufa), Carl Orff (Antigonae), Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Hans Werner Henze (Elegy for Young Lovers), Pierre Boulez (Le marteau sans maître) and Steve Reich.

Synthetic fiberglass bars are often sold under trade names such as Kelon (for Ludwig-Musser), Klyperon (for J.C. Deagan), or Acoustalon (for Yamaha), among others.

Bars made from synthetic materials generally fall short in sound quality and generally have a longer decay in comparison to wooden bars, but they are often less expensive and yield added durability and weather resistance, making them suitable for outdoor use.

Bubinga (Guibourtia demeusei) and mahogany have also been cited as comparable to rosewood in quality for use as marimba bars.

The specific rosewood, Dalbergia stevensonii, only grows in Southern Guatemala and Belize, formerly British Honduras.

Playing on the node produces a sonically weak tone, and the technique is only used when the player or composer is looking for a muted sound from the instrument.

Adding lower notes is somewhat impractical; as the bars become bigger and the resonators become longer, the instrument must be taller and the mallets must be softer in order to produce a tone rather than just a percussive attack.

In Central America and Mexico, a hole is often carved into the bottom of each resonator and then covered with a delicate membrane taken from the intestine of a pig to add a characteristic "buzzing" or "rattling" sound known as charleo.

The holes in the bottoms of the tubes are covered with a thin layer of paper to produce the buzzing noise.

Vibrations from the bars resonate as they pass through the tubes, which amplify the tone in a manner very similar to the way in which the body of a guitar or cello would.

This result is achieved by the custom manufacturer Marimba One by widening the resonators into an oval shape, with the lowest ones reaching nearly a foot in width, and doubling the tube up inside the lowest resonators—a process known as "Haskelling", originally used in pipe organ resonators, and named for its inventor, William E. Haskell.

Resonator tuning involves adjusting "stops" in the tubes themselves to compensate for temperature and humidity conditions in the room where the instrument is stored.

On the lower notes, the bars are larger, and require a softer mallet to bring out a strong fundamental.

Six-mallet marimba grips have been used for years by Mexican and Central American marimbists, but they are generally considered non-standard in the Western classical canon.

Keiko Abe has written a number of compositions for six mallets, including a section in her concerto Prism Rhapsody.

Other marimbists/composers using this technique include Rebecca Kite (who commissioned composer Evan Hause to write Circe, a major work for six mallets, in 2001), Dean Gronemeier, Robert Paterson, and Kai Stensgaard.

Paterson states that his technique differs from others in that there is less emphasis places on block chords on the lower bank of notes (the naturals or white notes) and more emphasis on independence, one-handed rolls, and alternations between mallets 12-3 or 1–23 in the left hand (or 45-6 or 4–56 in the right hand, respectively), and so on.

[citation needed] The marimba is less used by composers than other keyboards from orchestral percussion section, although its interest increased after 1950 such as in Le marteau sans maître by Pierre Boulez.

Popular marimba solos range from beginner solos such as Yellow After the Rain and Sea Refractions by Mitchell Peters to more advanced works such as Variations on Lost Love by David Maslanka, Rhythmic Caprice by Leigh Howard Stevens and Khan Variations by Alejandro Viñao.

[35] Traditional marimba bands are especially popular in Guatemala, where they are the national symbol of culture, but are also strongly established in the Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and Oaxaca.

They are also very popular in other Central American nations such as Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, as well as among Afro-Ecuadorians and Afro-Colombians.

[37] Ruth Underwood played an electrically amplified marimba in Frank Zappa's The Mothers of Invention.

[38] The Rolling Stones' 1966 song "Under My Thumb" prominently features a marimba, played by Brian Jones.