The Music Trees

A Gibson Classical Guitar and the God of Tonewood

Mahogany Tree

My 1964 Gibson Classical C1 guitar has been my companion since the year it was made. It has stayed with me through the turmoil of adolescence, a lightning-strike house fire in which little else survived, car crashes and other mishaps, multiple home moves and questionable adventures across America. All that, and its Honduran Mahogany back, sides and neck, its Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard and North American Spruce top still sing true.

Tonewood is the name stringed instrument makers give to wood that sings. And, according to expert luthier Rob Sharer, “Mahogany is the cornerstone tonewood of the fretted instrument world.” The scientific name for Honduran Mahogany is Swietenia macrophylla, after 18th Century Dutch botanist Gerard van Swieten, who was also famous for battling Moravian vampire superstitions on behalf Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. An early multitasker.

The Rosewood and Spruce deserve a loving look, but I’ve been holding the mahogany of my guitar against my body for almost 60 years. I owe it to the wood to search out something of its origins. The name “mahogany” has escaped efforts to pin down its etymology with certainty. Is it a secret kept from European colonizers by indigenous people who shared its native habitats? Maybe mahogany is the God of Tonewood and its real name cannot be spoken.

Mahogany is not too picky about its soil. It’s even resistant to salt-spray. It can grow to heights of 150 feet and diameters of 10-12 feet. In some cases, the first limbs appear 60-80 feet up its long trunk. It’s tulip-shaped fruit is called “sky-fruit” because it grows toward the heavens.

The mahogany of my guitar, model C1, serial number 196 256, was purchased by the Gibson Guitar Corporation of Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was built by union luthiers, among the few union hands working for America’s musical instrument manufacturers. A company spokesperson confirmed to me that the mahogany came from Honduras. The guitar was purchased wholesale by Evans Music City in Houston, where I found it and brought it home. It wasn’t pricey, in fact mahogany was known a “a poor man’s choice” until its tonal qualities were fully appreciated.

My 1964 Gibson Classical

It’s inspiring to imagine the sounds of my guitar first rising in deep alluvial soil in a hardwood stand not far from a riverbank, a sprout growing gracefully and slowly until it towers above the forest canopy, singing to other trees through its root system and the forest’s fungal network. I can’t avoid feelings of melancholy, though, when I think that the tree was taken from its living community for my distant purposes. Deep respect for its sacrifice is required, as is an understanding that the tonewoods of our instruments spring from Nature’s “Music Trees” and continue to sing as they always have.

There is a single tree known by musicians and guitar makers as “The Music Tree,” a giant Big-Leaf Mahogany in the Chiquibul Jungle in Belize. A guitar made from its wood now costs $30,000 or more, and there are very few of them around. Its sacrifice is heartbreaking to read. When loggers cut it down, it fell backwards into a ravine, where it remained for 18 years, covered in undergrowth, as exotic wood importers haggled with each other over ownership. Ultimately, it was chainsawed into 15-foot-long sections, dragged by tractor out of the ravine, trucked 120 miles to the Belize River, floated to an ancient, steam-powered sawmill, and cut by the mill’s 40-inch band saw.

Saul “Slash” Hudson of Guns N’ Roses, owns one of the few guitars made from the legendary tree. “When I picked it up, I was completely humbled,” he said. “It was a shock-and-awe moment. It changed everything I ever thought about acoustic guitars.”

Swietenia macrophylla, Honduran or Big-Leaf Mahogany, is almost extinct. Trade in the precious wood is now protected by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

When my parents purchased the guitar for me, I had an interest in learning classical guitar. We had next door neighbors who often played Segovia albums for me when I visited. I was especially fond of “Maleguena” by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. I learned to fake sections of the song back then, and still play them from time to time. My family had a place on the Llano River, and we’d sit outside looking for what were then infrequent satellites crossing the dark sky above us. I’d pluck my guitar, sometime playing my fakebook “Maleguena,” sometimes my fakebook “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” a popular piano piece at the time.

It wasn’t long, though, before my youthful self caved to pressure to play, or try to play, more contemporary tunes, and I soon bought steel-string acoustic guitars, largely because they seemed more popular at the time. My Gibson, though, is the guitar that earned the marks of growing up with me, including a chip near the sound hole made by my older brother when he teasingly fired a toy wooden arrow at it.

Once, I and my little brother and sister accompanied our mother on a trip to East Texas. As we drove through a frightful thunderstorm, the power suddenly went out on our station wagon. No brakes, no power steering. We went into a spin on the rain-slicked two-lane highway. I don’t know how many times we spun around, enough times to make us dizzy with fear. Somehow, we never left the road. Traffic from both directions, already slowed by the pounding rain, recognized our peril and pulled off on the shoulders. I was alone in the back seat, my guitar on my lap. As we whirled, I cried aloud, “My guitar, my guitar,” and held the instrument against me as hard as I could, as if only it was endangered. The God of Tonewood must have heard me. We listen to mahogany sing, is it a surprise that it listens to us?