Michael Masley

Michael Masley (born September 22, 1952 in Trenton, Michigan, United States) is known for his musical work on the Hungarian cymbalom. His unique method of playing the instrument comes from his invention of the bowhammer, a cross between a fiddle bow and a dulcimer hammer, attached to the finger with a ring. The bowhammers, one worn on each finger except thumbs, allow Masley to bow, strike, and pick the cymbalom's strings. These bowhammers, along with a pick on each thumb, allow for the creation of unique musical effects and highly complicated music.

Cymbaloms are most commonly played with two dulcimer hammers, one held in each hand. While playing with eight bowhammers and two thumb picks, Masley has been known also to use pan pipes attached to a neck bracket, as well as rhythm instruments such as shakers and rattles attached to his legs.

Since 1983, Masley has made his living as a street musician, busking and selling cassette and CD recordings on the streets of Berkeley, San Francisco, and other San Francisco Bay Area locations.

Masley describes his music as "earth-folk", "a contemporary Afro-Celtic variation of Free World and Country Eastern music.". Others have categorized his music as new-age or world music. One musician has described Masley's bowhammer style of cymbalom playing as generating "a turkish steambath of overtones".

Masley studied creative writing at Northwestern Michigan College in the early 1970s. Starting in 1973 he studied hammered dulcimer with Robert Spinner. He played traditional two-hammer dulcimer until 1979, when he developed a ten-hammer technique, presumably by attaching one hammer to each finger. In the winter of 1981, Masley was a caretaker for an isolated fishing lodge in northern Michigan, and spent some of his time there with musical experimentation. At that point he experimented with attaching horsehair to his fingers in order to bow at dulcimer strings. In 1981, he sometimes worked as a street musician in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1982, he ordered a cymbalom from William Webster in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Palo Alto, California. In 1983, he developed the bowhammer, and began working with guitarist Barry Cleveland as the duo "Thin Ice", releasing albums in 1984 and 1985. In 1985, Masley moved to Berkeley, California and began to record his solo albums.

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