SK Kakraba is master of the gyil, Ghanaian xylophone made of 14 wooden slats strung across calabash gourd resonators. The buzzy rattle emitted with each note comes from the silk walls of spider's egg sacs stretched across holes in the gourds, called paapieye in Lobi language. The characteristic buzzing timbre might sound odd to foreign ears, but this distortion is just one of the beautifying sensibilities crucial to SKs gyil music, which he learned as a child from elders in his Lobi community in the far northwest reaches of Ghana.