Electronic welcome to Goethe

The Goethe -Institut in Accra last week lunged into its programmes for the last quarter of the year with an enlightening performance on the versatile Marimba Lumina instrument by the visiting Austrian percussionist and composer, Lukas Ligeti.

Descibing himself as a traditional musician despite always trying to do something new and original all the time, he exhibited the extensive capabilities of the Marinba Lumina in the first of his three-part appearance.

The Marimba Lumina is an electronic instrument played with special foam covered mallets. It can identify which of four colour-coded mallets has struck a bar.

It has a built-in synthesizer and can thus function as a complete instrument, ready to plug in and play.

The LED illumination built into every bar, strip and pad makes it easy to play in the dark. The instrument was designed in SilliconValley by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla.

The first part of the programme was for Ligeti and his instrument. He worked out all sorts of sound combinations that any film music enthusiast would be crazy over.

He ocassionally dropped in some familiar sounds and the audience eagerly clapped along when thay recognised the kpanlogo beat at some point.

The second part of the show was for improvisation by Dela Botri on atenteben flute and Ligeti on the conventional trap drum set.

The grooves freely changed from jazz to highlife and at times to extremely fast tempos that only the two players could probably describe.

The evening was rounded off with a furious jam session involving Legeti, Botri, Aaron Sukura of the Local Dimension band on xylophone, Osei Korankye on seprewa and Abidjan-based Senegalese percussionist Leye Mbaye.

It was a happy meeting for Ligeti and Mbaye, not having seen each other since 1995 when they played together in Abidjan.

The genteel audience, which included Prof J.H. Nketiah, no doubt had some interesting insights into the world of electronic music and a feel of vibrant improvisation.