How it began
Sebastián Hurtado, a marimba maker and bandleader from Quetzaltenango in the Guatemalan highlands, is credited with building the first chromatic marimba. One account dates it to 1894 in Quetzaltenango and describes an instrument made of hormigo wood. The Percussive Arts Society, citing David Vela's book on the marimba, gives 1896. On September 15, 1901, Hurtado's band played before President Manuel Cabrera in Quetzaltenango, and the government awarded Hurtado a silver medal and diploma for perfecting the chromatic marimba.
Before it existed
Marimbas had been played in Guatemala for centuries. The first account in Central America dates from 1550, and by 1680 Maya musicians were reported playing marimbas with gourd resonators. These instruments had a single row of bars tuned to a diatonic scale, without the sharps and flats of modern keyboards, which limited the music they could play.
How it works
The chromatic marimba adds a second row of wooden bars set behind the first, in the pattern of the black and white keys of a piano, so every semitone is available. Under each bar hangs a box-like wooden resonator in place of a gourd. Guatemalan makers also extended the range so that as many as five players could stand side by side at the instruments.
How it spread
With the new instrument, bands took up classical and light classical pieces alongside dance music, and a typical Guatemalan marimba band had as many as 500 pieces in its repertoire. In 1908 Hurtado's sons sailed to New Orleans for a tour planned for six months that lasted almost five years and reached theaters across the United States. The Hurtado Brothers Royal Marimba Band won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and recorded for Columbia and Victor.
What lasted
The tours introduced the marimba to audiences in the United States who had not known it. Today the bars of a marimba are typically arranged chromatically, like the keys of a piano. In 2015 the Organization of American States declared the marimba Cultural Heritage of the Americas.
