The paper will discuss the interdisciplinary methodology of re-constructing the music practice, embodiment, and social-cultural traits of historical musical instruments through making replica-sound installations and artistic experimentation. Out of the vast collection of 159 Central African xylophones of Africa Museum (Brussels), the project focuses on two manza xylophones of the Azande people in north DR Congo, a musical heritage that has been in perceptible decline since the 1950's (i.e., Giorgetti 1951, Michiels 1986, Yip 2021). Performed in court events, the xylophones were owned by Chief Guga at Bondo, and acquired by Belgian military and ethnographer Armand Hutereau in 1912, who has also collected sound recordings of these instruments. We have scarce information about the musical practice due to limited and incomplete ethnographical documentation, and lack of interest in past scientific research and expedition; hence, the project proposes to re-construct the missing knowledge through analysing audiovisual, photography, and document archives, and through hypothesising the movement patterns, bodily posture and techniques of playing the sound recordings using the replica-sound installations. This experimental approach will reveal to us xylophone musicians embodied experience, their musicking and listening processes (Small 1998), and a deepened understanding into the social meanings and functions of the instruments.