An afternoon with a traditional marimba player in Masaya: learn the basics, then listen to him play.
You learn one full song. Then you listen to six.
The marimba is one of Nicaragua's oldest instruments. Don Rigoberto started playing at nine and hasn't stopped. His home-workshop in Masaya has three marimbas of different sizes. The session begins with a brief explanation of the instrument — how it's tuned, why the keys are made of concrete and wood — and continues with a practical lesson learning to play a short traditional piece. After that Don Rigoberto sits and plays for half an hour just for you. It ends with coffee and a long chat about the town's music scene.
Learn to play one traditional piece
Hear a private thirty-minute recital
Conversation about the marimba's history
Don Tomás
Potter · San Juan de Oriente
"My grandfather taught me to wait for the clay. The clay teaches me the rest. Three guests is enough — more, and we lose the conversation."
How he learned
At nine years old he sat next to his grandfather watching the wheel turn. He wasn't taught with words — he was taught with silences, with hands placed over his own, with pieces that collapsed until one day they stopped collapsing. He learned to read the clay by its weight, by the sound it makes when it's ready. Forty years later, he still says he's learning.
Why he continues
It's not nostalgia, he says. It's because the clay still talks back. Every piece is a different conversation — the earth shifts with the rain, the kiln shifts with the wood, his hands shift with age. As long as there is something new to listen to, he continues. The day the clay stops speaking, he says, is the day he'll stop.
What visitors often miss
Most guests arrive thinking about the piece they'll take home. Don Tomás asks that, at least once during the afternoon, they take their hands off the clay and look around: the dust in the air, the sound of the wheel, the light shifting on the wall. The piece, he says, is just the memento. The afternoon itself is the experience.
Masaya — a place that reveals itself to those who slow down enough to listen.
Sat · Nov 8
Afternoon session
Sun · Nov 9
Morning session
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Lives in: Workshops · Performances · For curious minds