NEARLY 800 YEARS AGO, Sundiata Keita founded the largest and greatest kingdom in West African history: the Mali Empire. At its height, around 1300, it stretched for some 2,000 kilometers west to east, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sue Krogsgaard has been to Africa many times before, but she never got the chance to play a balafon until she was home in Regina. “(My husband, Richard, and I) love African music. We love the drumming ...

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 ...

The balafon, a musical instrument from West Africa, is being considered for inclusion on Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The instrument is built up from 17 to 21 wooden slats on top of two ...

SHARON, Pa. (WKBN) — African dance can be a celebration of community and culture. On Wednesday, the movements of West African dance were featured on the Penn State Shenango campus. The Balafon Dance ...

Google "djeli music," and in addition to balafon performances, you'll find renditions of ancient epics, folk songs, and ...

Early on in his new book, “Custodians of Wonder,” BBC Travel writer Eliot Stein tallies some recent effects of globalization, a process that seems to only speed up. Nine languages, he notes, are lost ...