As a boy in Mali, Balla Kouyaté remembers playing the balafon to motivate workers on a farm. He was so small, he had to stand on a large rock to be seen by the crowd. An opportunity like that would ...

Why settle for a recorder when you could wield a contrabass clarinet – or something you invented yourself? Meet the players drawn to the unusual In the 2022 film Alice, the titular heroine – a slave ...

L'un des instruments les plus anciens d'Afrique, le "balafon", également appelé "instrument de la forêt", s'impose comme un élément indispensable des mariages, des funérailles et des organisations ...

Salimata Diabate a failli ne pas devenir musicienne car dans son ethnie, les femmes n'ont même pas le droit de toucher un balafon. Cette balafoniste vient de l'ethnie Sambla qui a une forte culture ...

Mamadou Diabate and Percussion Mania is known for its virtuosic balafon playing and rhythm and is characterized by two balafons as lead instruments. This ensemble is the only one of its kind worldwide ...

With the continuing flood of current releases in creative improvised music, it’s sometimes easy to overlook artists who rarely receive or accept the opportunity to record. Mallet-maestro Khan Jamal is ...

Comme certains sont fous de chocolat, lui l’est de balafon. Mamadou Kolade partage son amour du balafon, depuis quelques années déjà, avec des milliers d’internautes grâce à son site Marimbalafon.

In conversation with balafon player Mamadou Diabate ahead of his performance in the city Born into a Griot family in Burkina Faso, known for their tradition of practising storytelling and music-making ...

Côte d’Ivoire’s Aly Keïta returns to South Africa for the Moshito Music Conference. Audiences are in for a treat At the 2009 annual Bushfire Music Festival in Swaziland I witnessed one of the finest ...

Aly Keïta is testament to the adage of an apple not falling far from a tree. Brought up in a family of griot musicians, the award-winning Ivorian grand master of the balafon could not resist adopting ...

First new artist release through Chrysalis Global, an imprint of Chrysalis Records Produced by an A-list team: Dudu Sarr, Lucy Durán + Pape Armand Boye “Three outstanding Malian and Guinean griots….

The tumbling, tonkling bright tones of the balafon – Mali's ancient, rustic equivalent of the xylophone – were the speciality of Keletigui Diabate. For many years he was the number one go-to man for ...