New Hampshire Magazine Best of NH 2023 Editor's Choice Award for "Ambassadors of Peace" to Randy Armstrong & WorldBeat Marimba.
"Randy Armstrong is one of the leading lights of the world music genre, having practically birthed it with his band, Do’a back in the 1980s. That
band went on to recognition from the United Nations promoting the International Year of Peace in 1986. Armstrong’s new WorldBeat Marimba
project performs on handmade South African marimbas as well asTrinidad/Tobago steel pans and other exotic instruments, and it was inspired by a marimba band performance Armstrong witnessed with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his family in attendance. When even Tutu got up to dance, Armstrong commissioned a set of them from an ethnomusicologist in Cape Town. The unifying rhythm and uplifting melodies performed in them exert an influence on the mood and perhaps even the soul of listeners, drawing each one closer to the peace they possess within, the reach of the clamoring world." - New Hampshire Magazine
