A short video segment from JAMESIE, KING OF SCRATCH, will be on exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum located in Phoenix, AZ. Filmmaker Andrea E. Leland, donated a güiro to the museum for an exhibit described below. The güiro (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈɡwiɾo]) is a Latin American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. The instrument is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet sound. The donated instrument was employed during performances captured on videotape and included in the film produced by Andrea Leland.
The Musical Instrument Museum will display both the instrument and a segment of the video in the permanent gallery exhibit called “String and Scratch Bands” that will be installed the first week of May in the Latin America gallery alongside a few other thematic displays highlighting music from the Lesser Antilles and The Bahamas. The scratch band (or quelbe) instruments, video and photo from St. Croix., U.S. Virgin Islands will be joined by instruments of related “string band” and quadrille ensembles from other anglophone and francophone islands. Within the same display will also be an introduction to a few Afro-Antillean drum and dance traditions important to the region’s music and cultural identity.
Click HERE for a link to the museum.