Balafons of Bobo Dioulasso

At 4am one November morning back in 2008, my night bus from the Burkinabé capital Ouagadougou turned into the bus depot of Bobo Dioulasso.  Burkina Faso’s second city and capital of the arts, famous for its musicians, mud mosque and masquerades, Bobo Dioulasso had captured my imagination.  My association with the town and a group of musicians there began when I bought an instrument online from Baragnouma, a workshop in Bobo Dioulasso specialising in the manufacture of traditional West African musical instruments.

http://baragnouma.com/fr/

I arranged to visit the workshop with director Fabrice Berre who promised to introduce me to a balafon teacher.  With thoughts of these beginnings, I took a taxi, windows down to let in the cool early morning breeze, to the quarter of town where Fabrice lived.  The driver put on a cassette of hunters music played on the donso n’goni harp, the haunting sound echoing out of the savannah and through the taxi window into the deserted city streets of Bobo Dioulasso, still sleeping before the first call to prayer.

Later that day I met my teacher Moussa Pantio Diabaté, and tiredly accompanied him to his residency at Poto Poto cabaret, an open- air bar in a courtyard to which people come to drink a traditional millet beer called Chapalo, and to listen and sometimes dance to balafon music.

I’ve now made three visits to Bobo Dioulasso, continuing my apprenticeship and performing with Moussa at Poto Poto.  My trip in spring 2013 has been made possible with support from the Arts council England and The British Council’s Artists’ international development fund, and consolidates our work together so far through the recording of an album.

Since that first visit to Bobo in 2008 I have been collecting a repertoire of pieces for balafon. 

The Senoufo pentatonic balafon is traditionally played in pairs, with one player or bala fola playing an accompaniment part known as bala den, whilst the other plays a solo part referred to as balan ba. The soloist typically plays calls which initiate changes in the music, such as the common increase in tempo known by the French échauffement meaning to get hotter.

The pieces I have been learning since 2008 vary in style and originate with different ethnic groups.  The piece Orodara Sidiki for example, is a praise song for the chief of the town of Orodara in south western Burkina Faso.

Another song Yiri ba laments the felling of a big tree, a metaphor for death of an elder, whilst the piece Denko is a praise song for mothers and honours their sacrifice.

Perhaps my favourite is Kri coyo dafra coyo.  Dedicated to the Bobo Dioula the original inhabitants of Bobo Dioulasso from whom the city takes its name, the song speaks of the river Dafra which runs through the city and of the sacred fish that live in it.