Balla's father performed across West Africa and taught each of his sons the basics of the balafon, but Balla took to it in a way that none of his eight older brothers had. When he was 12 ...

Singer and virtuoso kora player Wassa Kouyaté will be accompanied by Balla Kouyaté, a virtuoso player of the balafon (West African xylophone). “Oral tradition holds that when the emperor Sundiata ...

The balafon (in Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire) and kolintang (in Indonesia) refer to a set of wooden xylophones of different lengths. The Indonesian and West African instruments share ...

A West African banjo-like akonting instrument on ... we had longstanding music traditions on the thumb piano, on the balafon [a gourd-resonating xylophone], the various wooden key instruments ...

Things were very different from Africa to Europe. Did you immediately try to put a band together or were you doing other things? Well, when I first came, I was more into playing balafon around.

Koité and company — kora player Lamine Cissokho and balafon artist Aly Keïta — are presenting ... and the entire organology of West Africa.” Koité is part of an elite list of important Malian ...