Video: The History of Maracas

Learn how to understand the history of the maracas and get professional tips and advice from an expert on playing traditional Mexican musical instruments in this free music lesson video.

Video Transcript

I'm going to talk to you a little about the history and construction of maracas. This is a Brazilian instrument actually comes from the word Maraca from the Tupi tribe in south western Brazil. Traditionally these were made of dried calabash, or goard, or coconut shells and filled with dried beans or seeds and pretty much put on a stick that?s what pretty much your maraca is a shaker on stick its a rattle. Baby's first instrument right here. Now most of these today are made of plastic just for there durability and inside they got plastic pellets or plastic kind of cylindrical shaped things. I?ve opened up a couple of these and its really a total mystery depending on what the manufacturer puts in it. I wouldn?t recommend trying it. Unless your that curious and want to buy another set of maracas. But I?ve got these cool plastic ones and they totally do the trick a lot of times one would be a little higher in pitch than the other either because there tuned that way or because no two coconuts were made exactly the same way. But either way, hear this one's got a little bit of a higher pitch to it just for some distinction. I?ve also got a smaller set of maracas that I?m going to demonstrate later as well. Again a higher pitch than the bigger sounding maracas or the bigger pitch sounding maracas.

The History of Maracas

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