culture

The BALAFON (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The balafon, bala or balani is a percussion idiophone of West African instrument. It is a kind of xylophone, either, pentatonic or heptatonic. In malinké, "balafon" comes from the words bala (the instrument) and fon (sounds).

We can find balafons in many regions of Africa, all different from each other. Some are very sophisticated, others very simple; others are even gigantic.

The first balafon was born in the Sosso Kingdom, between Guinea and Mali. This balafon still exists and is named Sosso Bala.

We can point out that two types of Balafon tend to 'democratize' in West Africa:

* Bala is the balafon to large calabashes and large blades(regions of Kolokani and Bobo Dioulasso among others), bass sounds. The balafon is sometimes called djoula Bala or Bala Senufo. The Number of slides it contains and how to grant vary according to regions, but balas of 14 to 18 blades in pentatonic agreement are the most frequent.

:Balani (ni is a diminutive), is the balafon with small calabashes, narrow blades (3-4 cm), usually used in orchestras, and the higher tessitura but the generally equal to or lower than the Bala range. There are generally 21 blades. Today, the most often met accord is diatonic. Traditionally, the accord would be closer to an equiheptatonique accord, very different from the Western musical system.

It is composed of a light wooden structure tied with leather thongs, on that hard wooden blades are stored in increasing size and height (more slats are short, the sound is sharp) and pairs of small gourds are placed below forming resonance boxes. Sometimes these calabashes are pierced and the holes are covered with membrane vibrating (the doggerel system). Traditionally these membranes are webs of spiders or the wings of bats, today replaced by the cigarette paper or a thin membrane made of plastic. As gourds are increasingly large on one side, the balafon is higher on one side than the other.

To avoid a too broad instrument, the manufacturers bend them slightly in an arc, to allow to placed musicians at its Center, touching all blades without moving. A balafon is generally capable of producing 18 to 25 notes (and thus as many blades). However, some portable balafons are much less (16, 12, 8 or even 6 or 7).

An interpretation of the dance to the sound of the Balafon

The bewitching sound of the balafon is a guest at the party! The dances to the sound of the balafon are part of the festive events that punctuate life in Africa. A circle of dancers formed turning before the musicians, their steps following a cadence that accelerates as and. Games of legs and the hip are increasingly frantic rhythms, and the circle seems to move by sliding... Sometimes caught in a trance, one or the other flows to the centre in acrobatic steps and gives a personal interpretation of these traditional patterns. There are also the balanfolha (the Balafon players) in cabarets for the animation of his premises for meetings and exchanges.

ORIGIN OF BALAFON ACCORDING TO SENOUFO OF BURKINA FASO

A young boy Senufo kept corn field against the monkeys to avoid that they wreak havoc. He heard at the other end of the field the instrumental music; He went discreetly to inquire and discovered while another child like him was trying to type with two sticks in each hand on slides of wood laid before him.

The rods were fitted with large balls at each end; blades disturbed from time to time and the child then stopped to replace them before continuing to play; the blades were posed on a pit dug into the ground. This child was a genius incarnate.

After a while, when the genius discovered the boy, he invited him to play together with him. After each game, the genius won his balafon. This game continued long until the child concluded to master this instrument technique. One day, the father of the boy came by surprise in the field and found him playing music instead of monitor corn. It made him remonstrated. The boy confessed him while the musical instrument was a gift from his friend genius. The father nodded and asked his son to bring the instruments to the village. After a while, the boy decided to refine the instrument. Instead of putting the blade through a pit, he replaced the pit by a trapezoidal enclosure. He put in point attachment to attach the blades on the frame, and he then put a cord between the blades and chassis to mitigate the shock. For resonance, he invented a squash-based amplification system that he placed in a well-ordered manner: more the blade is acute, more the gourd is small. With regard to the wood used to make the blades, genius had advised him to use a special wood named Ngouene yiri, it means the tree of geniuses, to have a beautiful sound. To obtain the best sound, it had to leave the tree to grow old at first and then he dies by himself. Then, he had to remove the bark and keep the heart, which is big and dense, and is brown or yellowish color had to hack and leave to dry in the Sun. Then the blades had to be passed to fire in a kiln for drying more. Brown heart is deemed more resistant and denser while the yellowish resonates more but crumbles faster.

Story of Konomba Traore, musicologist, music teacher and multi-instrumentalist musician.

Source : www.rezoivoire.net