Nixiwakas Songlines

Mango Heart-Seed Maracas

Dried mango seeds and red-stained handles on a wooden bench

Handmade in Costa Rica

Mango
Heart-Seed
Maracas

Each maraca is born from a fallen mango, its seed shaped by hand into a heart. Made slowly, made with love, so that love is what it carries into every ceremony it enters.

From the mango to the maraca

Every maraca begins on the ground beneath a tree, with a fallen mango.

Fallen mangoes are gathered from beneath the chosen tree and soaked for three days.

Fallen mangoes gathered from the ground
Mango seeds drying

Each seed then dries for a full week, until the shell hardens and darkens.

A hardwood handle, carved and smoothed by hand.

Handles at various stages of shaping alongside seeds and a caliper
Two hands holding the two cut seed halves showing the heart shape

The seed is opened with a Japanese handsaw, so the two halves come together as a heart.

Small stones go inside. Their number and size give each maraca its voice.

Maracas with elastic bands resting on a railing with green foliage

It is ready when the hand can no longer feel where one material ends and the other begins.

Close-up of the Nixiwaka hand-crafted brand stamp on the handle

Stamped by hand, made slowly, made with love.

Find on Etsy Contact directly

Each one is unique.

Handmade in Costa Rica, shipped worldwide in its own hinged box.

Nixiwaka brand stamp on the handle Maraca in its shipping box A row of unfinished maracas fanned out on the bench