Khutsong creative Mahavatar invents own instrument
The Khutsong and Carletonville area have many extremely creative residents and his is certainly one of them.
An amazing creative from Khutsong, Thabo Ramaine, popularly known as Mahavatar, is
continuing to demonstrate that creativity has no limit as he recently invented a music instrument.
He calls the instrument a ‘’Piperimba’’ which is made up of pipes. The creative mentioned that the idea was inspired by the fact that he used play the ‘’Marimba’’, which is a wood notes instrument that uses the principle of producing a plank sound.
‘’I played Marimba for about a year while I was still in the Africa Cultural Center which is a performing artists academy majoring in the theatre act and dance where I got exposed to different elements of music,’’ he expresses.
He also highlighted that this was not his first instrument to craft as he has actually crafted a Marimba because of the fact that it is ancient as well as traditional and it’s the core of all Xylophones.
‘’Piperimba is an existing concept of an instrument and I call it an adaptation of Marimba,’’ he added.
Mahavatar discovered the instrument after watching other creators and because there was a plumbing service at home then a pipe fell during the process which produced a fascinating sound then he began cutting up different sizes of pipes for different sounds.
He mentioned that it was a trial and error process to finally get it right as he had to
even buy pipes because the length determines the pitch, the longer the pipe the lower the pitch creating a bass and the shorter it is it creates a higher pitch like soprano and alto. It took about three weeks in the process of creating the instrument involving research, conceptualizing, comparing materials (pipes).
He cut the pipes by himself in order to be specific and to compose the instrument he used the pipes, elbow and connector.
‘’It took me a day to assemble the entire instrument alone and it can also be
disassembled for mobility,’’ he says.
His plan for the instrument is to introduce it in the mainstream theatre platform. He mentioned that his aim is to teach African traditional crafting of instruments to basically demonstrate that Africans have also used pipes as it has always been significant
as it was used to call people to gatherings or to communicate also using drums as specific sounds could alarm the community.
“The sound became adapted during spiritual practice,’’ he added.
Mahavatar is a well-respected theatre practitioner, film maker and all round creative who has many awards and achievements under his belt and he described himself as a versatile creative being as well as an experimental artist. He is fascinated by sound as it transports him to another realm and he also added that he is a soundscaper tapping in and out of compositions.
