Daria Maramluk-Hajoannou's Page

Although Hispanic heritage Month is celebrated from September 15th – October 15th, any time of year is great for making and playing these clever little instruments for your home music box or to liven up a car ride.

Maracas are one of the simplest instruments to play for young children or the beginning musician. They are essentially rattles with handles. They come in pairs.  You put one in each hand and you shake, rattle and roll!  Of course, if you’ve seen experienced…

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Just about every culture in the world uses some sort of rattle.  And the cool thing about rattles is that they can be made of practically anything from bottle caps or the toenails of goats to dried gourds, paper cups, milk containers or recycled bottles of any sort. 



For this project, you’ll need any cleaned recycled containers and some sort of filling.   You can use sand, salt, birdseed, dried peas or beans, gravel, pebbles, dried pasta, marbles or practically any small dry items. … Continue

As you travel around the world you’ll find musical instruments made from unusual items.  For instance, in Peru there is an instrument called the cajita.  That’s the Spanish word for a little box.   A traditional cajita is made from wooden donation boxes used to collect offerings of money in churches.  The box was generally worn around the neck and the top was opened and closed to receive the donations.  

 

Then, when this clever little box was transformed into an…

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Have you ever wondered what the first musical instruments might have been? Anthropologists say that they were very simple but powerful creations made with natural materials, such as a log drum from Africa, a bone flute from South America or corn kernels or pebbles placed inside a gourd and sealed to make a Native rattle.   You might even say that early people or indigenous people were the original reusers and recyclers.  But that type of creativity doesn’t need to be a part of an ancient or…

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