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What happened so far...

(A short chronicle of the Holzhausen Marimba Band)
Content
Short Story In short:
The story of the Holzhausen Marimba Band
Chronicle In detail:
The chronicle

The Story of the Holzhausen Marimba Band

The Ramatea Brass and Marimba Band from Botswana toured England and Germany from October until December 2001. At home, the band has some 50 boys and girls aged 10 to 23 years. Because of the travelling costs as well as for school reasons only half of them were allowed to go on tour. For them it was their summer holidays plus for more weeks, which they were allowed to take off.

The band were our guests from December 7th until December 10th, 2001, i.e. Friday through Monday. Shortly after their arrival, they played at the local Christmas market and on Saturday they gave a concert in the church of Rothenuffeln. On Sunday (2nd Advent Sunday) they played in the family service in Holzhausen. Their appearance raised high hopes for the concert in the afternoon.

Ramatea Marimbaband (42 KB) Conducted by Fritz Schneider our guests played several pieces of brass and marimba music in the first part of the concert. Especially the changes from brass to marimba were very nice, as the players stood up from the mid of the brass band and went singing to the marimbas.
 

Traditioneller Tanz (35 KB) After a short break, some members of the brass band showed tradditional dances of Botswana. Then again they played some pieces on the marimbas. The audience danced in the aisle to the cheerful music. The concert ended with three encores.
 

Only few concerts on their tour had been attended by so many people as in Holzhausen. In order to cover the costs, Mr. Schneider offered to buy the marimbas and to get them after the end of their tour. An introduction would be included with the price.

Instantly we agreed to buy the instruments. The conductor of the Marimba Band, Lucas Moeng, stayed after the tour in Oberhausen for a while. Therefore, the first group of people interested in marimba playing went to Oberhausen for a marimba workshop, after which we picked up the instruments. Lucas came to Holzhausen for three more weekend workshops.

On almost every workshop Sunday, we played in the service. The band became well known and grew very fast. After a short time it was necessary to split the band into two groups as the set of marimbas consists of 6 instruments, but we had been more than 12 players. Even more, some adults were interested in playing marimba, but did not want to push the youth aside. After only three month, we started with a third group.

Since May 2002 we play in three groups. Some of our appearance will be done by just one group, on other appearances they all play.

Lucas Moeng came back to Germany in spring 2004 when he stayed in Oberhausen and Holzhausen for his semester holidays. After he had taught us many new songs, all groups played first time at one concert for the "Nacht der offenen Kirchen" ("Night of the Open Churches"). Another high light was the concert together with the djembé drums group "flying hands" from Hiddenhausen-Eilshausen.
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