Staying in Tune: Idiophones

When I was very young, I lived in Bobo, a town that came to life every evening with traditional groups. We lived close to a club where our friends, talented musicians, would play frequently. They played the musical instrument, the balan, mistakenly called the balafon.

I have chosen this particular instrument because of its trapezoidal shape and its melodious and stirring sound. I could listen to it for hours, together with my brothers.

The balafon is an African musical instrument made of bars of wood that produce notes when they are struck. The bars are arranged parallel to one another on a trapezoid frame under which gourds of various sizes are placed to create a sound amplification system (sound boxes). The French word "balafon" is actually incorrect because it refers to the activity of playing the instrument rather than the instrument itself. The word balafon comes from the Bambara language.

"Balan" refers to the instrument and "fô" means to play; balafon thus means "playing the balafon". The balafon has three parts: the wood bars that produce the notes, the trapezoid frame on which the bars are mounted and the gourds that provide the sound system. The bars are attached side by side on the frame. They cannot touch one another or the sound produced when the bars are struck would be different. This means that the space between the bars can neither be too wide nor too narrow. The bars are made from a very hard wood called "gouene-yori" in Bambara, "noinca" in Moré, "koyehoun" in Bwaba and "kpene" in the Samo language of Samogohiri (Orodara). The lacing that holds the bars together is made of deer (the toughest) or goat skin. You do not usually find two bars of the same length in either the pentatonic or heptatonic balafon. That would upset the balance of the trapezoidal shape. It is rare to find balafons with more than 21 notes but it is possible.