What is the balafon used for?

The balafon, as well as the kora, was used to create music in praise of the kings and for ceremonies of importance.

What is a balafon made from?

The Balafon is made using various types of wood. Bene wood and bamboo are some of the most popular materials, as they are known to be highly durable and flexible. The wood is shaved down to the right key size and then dried over a slow burning fire.

What are Kumbengo and Birimintingo?

Birimintingo. The soloistic style of instrumental performance used on instruments like the kora, bala, and koni in Mande jeliya music. Kumbengo. The accompaniment style of instrumental performance used on instruments like the kora, bala, and koni in Mande jeliya music.

What countries use the balafon?

The Susu and Malinké people of Guinea are closely identified with the balafon, as are the other Manding peoples of Mali, Senegal, and the Gambia. Cameroon, Chad, and even the nations of the Congo Basin have long balafon traditions.

What kind of instrument is balafon?

percussion instrument
The balafon is a tuned West African percussion instrument. It is the ancestor of the marimba, xylophone and vibraphone, and has been known of in the Malian Empire since the 12th century.

What is used to make the resonators of a balafon?

Used to play melodic tunes, the balafon features 16 to 27 tuned wooden keys played with with two rubber or padded mallets. They keys are strung over a fixed frame and resonators made from hollowed out and dried calabashes or placed independently on any padded surface.

What is an African griot?

A griot is a West African storyteller, singer, musician, and oral historian. They train to excel as orators, lyricists and musicians. The griot keeps records of all the births, deaths, marriages through the generations of the village or family.

What type of instrument is shekere?

African percussion instrument
The shekere is a West African percussion instrument consisting of a dried gourd with a woven netting of beads covering the gourd.

What is the classification of a shekere?

Percussion instrument
Shekere

What type of instrument is mbira?

The thumb piano, or mbira – a name derived from Shona language of Zimbabwe – is uniquely African percussion instrument. In the distant past it was made entirely of wood or bamboo and could have been used for a few thousand years.

How does the mbira work?

The mbira is one of several idiophones that are plucked rather than vibrated by percussion, shaken, or scraped. In performance, the player holds the instrument in his hands and plucks the tongues with his thumbs and forefingers.

What is a balafon instrument?

The balafon ( [‘bæləfɔ̃], [bɑlɑ’fɔ̃]) is a gourd -resonated xylophone, a type of struck idiophone. It is closely associated with the neighbouring Mandé, Senoufo and Gur peoples of West Africa, particularly the Guinean branch of the Mandinka ethnic group, but is now found across West Africa from Guinea to Mali.

How many keys does a balafon have?

The balafon usually has 17–21 keys, tuned to a tetratonic, pentatonic or heptatonic scale, depending on the culture of the musician. The balafon is generally capable of producing 18 to 21 notes, though some are built to produce many fewer notes (16, 12, 8 or even 6 and 7).

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Where is balafon played in Africa?

Balafon is a Manding name, but variations exist across West Africa, including the balangi in Sierra Leone and the gyil of the Dagara, Lobi and Gurunsi from Ghana, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. Similar instruments are played in parts of Central Africa, with the ancient Kingdom of Kongo denoting the instrument as palaku.