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According to Professor Andrew Tracey, marimbas were introduced to Zimbabwe in 1960.

Zimbabwean marimba based upon Shona music has also become popular in the West, which adopted the original use of these instruments to play transcriptions of mbira dzavadzimu ( as well as nyunga nyunga and matepe ) music.

The first of these transcriptions had originally been used for music education in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean instruments are often in a diatonic C major scale, which allows them to be played with a ' western-tuned ' mbira ( G nyamaropa ), sometimes with an added F # key placed inline.