Musicians Growing Their Instruments This Spring

When Arthur Stephens plots out his garden this spring, vegetables and flowers won’t be a priority. He’ll be planting seeds to sprout rainsticks, flutes, horns, thumb pianos, bass drums, xylophones, and rattles.

Beginnings of the Gourd Orchestra

Arthur discovered packets of gourd seeds in his father’s tool shed in 1995 and decided to give them a try. He was astounded to watch fifty-foot leafy vines creep their way to the roof of his second story home by the end of that summer. But when he harvested his first enormous bushel basket gourd, he was hooked.

At the time, Arthur also enjoyed playing guitar, but unbeknownst to him, his two hobbies were about to collide. “I started noticing a lot of the African and Asian music I listened to had instruments made with gourds,” he remembers. “I went to local libraries and made a few visits to museums in Washington and New York to collect information. Now there are close to a hundred books out on gourds. At the time, there was maybe three. Mostly, I had to figure out how to make the instruments on my own.”

Arthur says years passed and gourds piled up while he fervently studied pictures of musical instruments in books and replicas in museums. “We probably have about 35 instruments now,” he remarks, “but we started off with fairly simple ones. Some of our first instruments were friction drums. In a book I found about Turkish folk-art, they mentioned this one friction drum that was used by rural farmers to make a grunting sound and scare wild pigs from their crops. So I made two friction drums and we created a song on our first CD called Wild Pigs.”

The Gourd Orchestra’s Debut

Once Arthur had constructed a stash of gourd instruments, he invited several friends to try them out. The group of gourd players soon adopted the title Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra.

Just like a typical orchestra, woodwinds, horns, strings, and percussion are all represented. “One instrument we make from a long handled dipper gourd,” Arthur comments, “is like a horn. I cut off the bell end and put a little beeswax on the mouthpiece. The short handled dippers make good shakers. We have many types of shakers–some with beads on the inside, some with beads strung on the outside. There’s one instrument we make called the balafon.

It’s like a xylophone with wooden bars on top and gourds underneath to resonate the sound. I like to use larger gourds like bushel baskets for drums and water drums. We have a gourd guitar, gourd lutes, gourd harps, gourd flutes, and talking drums. We got this giant gourd in Ohio. It probably weighed 120 pounds. Our drummer, Pippin, created a really big bass drum with that.”

In their words, “The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra plays its own brand of Paleolithic lounge music mixing past with present, rhythm with melody, and chaos with order.” And gourds factor into the orchestra’s unique look as well as their individual sound. “We all have our own hats,” says Arthur. “Any gourds I grow that don’t make it as musical instruments, we’ll make hats out of them.”

The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra has put out four CDs and will be playing for the Smithsonian’s garden Fest June 13th. “We get a lot of inquiries from botanical garden and horticultural societies,” explains Arthur. “They’re intrigued to hear there’s a band that plays with instruments crafted from gourds.” Aside from performing and selling CDs, RIGO would like to branch out and offer workshops for schools or garden clubs who’d like to learn more about making gourd instruments.

In related articles, musicians can check out how to make gourd instruments featured in the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra, Arthur’s fascinating facts pertaining to gourds in music history, a review of the gourd orchestra’s CDs, as well as Arthur Stephan’s tips for planting, growing, harvesting and drying gourds.