Visiting the Music Instrument Museum

The MIM is short for the Music Instrument Museum, and founded by Bob Ulrich. He was inspired to develop a new kind of museum that would focus on the kind of instruments played every day by people worldwide. Most musical museums featured historic, primarily Western classical music. On the MIM’s website (mim.org) it said that their goal is to deliver a musical experience that is enriching, inspiring, interesting, and fun. I will not disagree with that goal because it is truly those words that they described, but I was a bit disappointed to not see all of Suriname and its vibrant history represented in the instruments

The instruments they collected was from the Amerindians, the Maroons (African descendants) and the Hindustani (Immigrants from India). Suriname has such an enriched, diverse community of immigrants from India, Indonesia, China,Lebanon, the farmers of the Netherlands, and before other ethnic groups joined like the Brazilians, Venezuelans , Cubans, etc. I, myself, have roots from Indonesia. My ancestors are from Java.

A small video of the Suriname collection that was at the Music Instrument Museum.