A pair of gourd rattles, usually oval; the gourds contain the dried seeds of the fruit. Imitations are made in modern materials containing rattling objects. Maracas, probably of South American Indian origin, are part of the rhythm section of Latin American bands and have been adopted by Western rhythm bands and orchestral percussion. Composers writing for maracas include Varèse (Ionisation, 1931) and Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet, 1936). Maracas have been used as ‘drumsticks’, for example in Leonard Bernstein s Jeremiah Symphony (1942).
