I did not live in Leyden, but it was so long ago (around 15 years ago?) that I do not even recall whether I lived in Amsterdam then already, or even still in my parental house in Nieuw Vennep: a village in the “busy” western Netherlands between Leyden and Amsterdam. I worked a period in Leyden, so it could be during a “break” at that job, during which I indeed used to walk through Leyden’s center with stores. The institute where I worked lacked an own “cantina”, dependent for that on university facilities.
One of my brothers also lived In Leyden, so it could otherwise be during a visit to him.
BALAFON FROM SENEGAL
Either way, I remember that in that store I was intrigued by a small balafon, with six bars/keys made of nice-looking brownish wood, tied with ropes in nice red, gold, and green colours, in sync with my other interests (Reggae, Rastafari). As in larger balafons, calabashes served as resonators.. for this small one two calabash gourds seemingly sufficed. I decided to buy it.
The total size was more than manageable: around 26 cm (10.2 inches) by 23 cm, and around 11 cm high.
Oddly enough I do not remember the “aftermath” of this purchase: did I come from my brother and bought that after my visit, on my way to Leyden’s train station? Did it fit well in my rucksack, I usually took along?
If during my job break.. did I keep it in my rucksack during final work hours, perhaps mentioned it to colleagues? I really can’t remember.
I do remember what I asked the man in (owning?) that shop – a seemingly middle-aged, greying Dutchman – : “where is that balafon from?”, I asked. “From Senegal”, he answered.
Strange how you, or at least I, often tend to remember “parts of events” , some “scenes” or “short conversations” instead of the whole event from beginning to end, a lot of it blurred to oblivion.
Anyway, after all those years, I still have that small balafon, as I am now living for over 20 years in Amsterdam, the Netherlands capital, a bigger city than Leyden, around 40 km Northeast of it. More spectacular, but perhaps less cozy or peaceful.
COMPOSITIONS
Though my house in Amsterdam has by now become similar to a “percussion museum”, with all the instruments I gathered over the years – more percussionists/percussion players I know have that – the balafon is more than a museum piece, as I regularly play (with) it - including sometimes brought it to jams to play live in clubs - , and used it in several of my recorded compositions, instrumental and vocal, often to add an African ‘feel”. The compositions I usually published on my YouTube channel.
This one was solely balafon-based:
On a recent song I released even “officially” for all main platforms (via TuneCore), called Truly Democratic, I used this balafon, as there was also a Djembe pattern in that song from Mali, bordering Senegal, where the balafon was from. Besides this nerdy “Mande African” connection, I also thought it fitted the overall sound and composition, moreover. It contrasted with high pitches the low-pitched djembe pattern.
Imagination running free and experimenting with sound are all very good in and for making music, but it’s good to remind ourselves that music develops within cultures, usually in communal/festive settings. The root and essence of “real” music remain more in that – communal culture -, than in the nowadays music recording, technical “blokes” who play around in a home studio, and have a computer with internet, in some Western city.
This cultural, "folk" roots is especially the case for traditional and acoustic instruments like the balafon, from traditional music in Western Africa.
Being since young an interest of mine, theoretically I knew something about Balafons – as African types of xylophones -, saw photos of it, and found out in what parts of Africa they were common.
I have a wider musical interest, including within African music, and at one point started to focus more on drum types, types of bells, and the balafon somewhat “drowned” in all this, and was sidelined..
Until.. some moments when I thought of a nice counterpoint to a drum (poly)rhythm in one of my compositions, and thought of the relatively high tones of my small balafon, creating a nice “overriding” melody.
Fun never done, in all creative freedom, but over all these years I still did not get to study more deeper the cultural heritage connected to the balafon, even if regularly recording with it.
Strange, because I over the years did study some drum types (African, Afro-Cuban), or other instruments I liked (the Udu vessel from Nigeria/Igboland, for instance).
So, time to fill these knowledge gaps about the Balafon.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
Wikipedia is almost inevitable as source, but nowadays you have also AI sources like ChapGPT or Grok, assembling information from other sources. Like a Google 2.0 or “Plus”, as it were.
Also an interesting way to test the worth of such AI sources.. predictably glorified by capitalist money sharks, but do we – as common folk – can have any lasting benefit of Artificial Intelligence?
I am weary of wider economic uses of AI, I admit, especially for “work replacement”: as “unquestioning following orders” is a wet dream of the wrong powerful people, those who like to dehumanize others for their benefit.
As a search engine I can see the value of AI, though.
WIKIPEDIA FIRST
Wikipedia – often quite reliable - gave some interesting information, also about the wider xylophone family. The term “balafon” is related to a language in the Mande-speaking areas of Western Africa, notably around Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Eastward to Burkina Faso and Northern Ivory Coast. Beyond linguistic issues, similar xylophones are found elsewhere in Africa, with some differences in use, tuning, and construction, but often (not always) also with gourd/calabash resonators, Uganda (the Amadinda instrument), Mozambique, Zambia, are relatively a bit better known for balafon/xylophone traditions, but types of xylophones/balafons are found in several countries as yet unmentioned more, like Cameroon, Malawi, and Congo.
Interesting are the similarities and slight differences between these balafons and their use across Africa, the main shared characteristics being the playing style, with interlocking patterns of often a duo of players (with own differently tuned balafons often), and often calabash gourds as resonators. The keys are made of African hardwood – obviously – but rosewood seems the preferred type of wood, due to its strength and acoustic qualities. Rosewood is in recent times for these reasons, even starting to be used for the Spanish castanets in Spain (traditionally it was chestnut), and other, also more modern European/Western instruments.
SPIDERWEB SILK
Spiderweb silk strings attached, with beewax, to the keys for a desired “buzzing” sound, preferred for most balafons in the Mande-speaking (”Guinea”) region, and other parts in West Africa (e.g. also for Cameroonian balafons/xylophones), but not in East Africa, lacking therefore much of that “buzzing” sound. According to my AI search in Ugandan xylophones banana fiber is instead sometimes used. In Zambia other “spider” products are used. Apparently, spiders as insects usually dwelled in gourds, triggering such use.
This is interesting, because it explains the sonic difference of the “bright” xylophones in East Africa (like Uganda), with the relatively more “buzzing” (spiderweb-silked) balafon sounds of Guinea or Mali.
OUTSIDE OF AFRICA
So, the continent of Africa has a rich balafon and xylophone tradition, but I also know of Asian xylophones, and Western ones. For instance, in the Netherlands, the xylophone is commonly used in basic music education at some schools, due to its seeming clarity.
Indonesian music I know often has traditionally some xylophones.
My, admittedly, small knowledge base, even more so outside of Africa, is however also a good starting point for AI searches. What I find most interesting – as a kind of “history buff” that I am – is the earliest origin of xylophones (wooden keys, tuned, played with sticks), and in what part of the world.
It turns out – as also Wikipedia describes – that the earliest xylophones were found in Southeast Asia, at least as early as 500 BC, in (indeed) Indonesia, but also mainland Southeast Asia (the Vietnam-Cambodia, and Thailand region).
Present-day xylophones in Thailand are known as “ranad” and also use calabash gourds as resonators as in Africa (with a resulting slight “nasal” sound), but without spiderweb silk, so less “buzzing”. Mostly bright sounds, therefore.
From Southeast Asia it spread to Africa via migrants, first via Madagascar, and explaining the strong presence in e.g. Mozambique. In Mozambique, the xylophones called “timbila’s” there, often played combined in orchestras, e.g. in the Chopi culture.
I further asked questions to AI about differences between African, Asian, and European xylophones, and was less surprised, as common notions about musical characteristics funnily seemed confirmed to me. Balafons in Africa were played with simultaneous polyrhythm and “interlocking” structures, often by various players at once, whereas the Indonesian or Thai xylophones fit in their more melodic cultures, though as I interestingly read: the Thai Tanad is equally used rhythmically (especially the lower notes), as, I cite from X’s AI searcher Grok: “In Thai music, the boundary between melody and rhythm is blurred, and the ranat family sits right in the middle of that overlap. They are essential for both defining the melodic line and driving the rhythmic pulse of the ensemble.”.
Another thing I did not know, although I of course used to focus more on African music, because of my love for rhythm and polyrhythm.
In Europe, the xylophone appeared much later, first in Bavaria (S Germany), in the Early 16th c., though steadily gaining a place in also orchestral music, and among classical composers like Camille Saint-Saëns, but also some pieces by e.g. Dmitri Shostakovich, Gustav Mahler, and others. Predictably, in European traditions, European music “harmony” laws applied, with a melodic and harmonic function first, and only a secondary rhythmic function.
To me, that made it not much different than guitars or piano’s, able to play the same melodies, only with a “wood-ringing” sound. Balafons intrigued me more, as I could fit it in my African-based compositions.
I was thus glad that I obtained that Senegalese, African balafon in that “exotic world stuff” store in Leyden – even if a small, six-key one: still nuff possibilities . I made good creative use of it, and so finding and acquiring it seemed "meant to be". Even if I don’t remember what I did the rest of that day or week..
I especially used it in “Mande Africa” referring compositions (such as my instrumental Bamako, named after Mali’s capital), as fitting its Senegalese origin.
Beyond that, however, I used my small balafon quite often in other African-influenced instrumentals (such as my vocal Soukous song Osilisi) I made, instrumental or not. The Congolese Soukous tends to have a driving, semi-rhythmic guitar, but I replaced that with a similar high, “bright” sound of the balafon.
I call some of my instrumentals “percussion instrumentals”, due to their main focus, but the balafon at times added some melody to such mainly rhythmic compositions of mine. I guess I also liked the “high” counterpoint to drum beats or lower bells.
I used it on some Reggae songs I made too (on Truly Democratic, for instance, as I said).
Enough about my own compositions for now, though. If interested, you can search on “Michel Conci” and Balafon (on YouTube), as for my percussion instrumentals, I tended to give instrument names in the Info text.
TOWARDS A CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I will focus on my knowledge, though, about the balafon/xylophone. I learned, now by searching through that modern “aid”(?) Artificial Intelligence, added to Google, Wikipedia, or some books I might have. Long overdue, in this year 2025, after having used my small balafons already in many of my (published!) compositions.
I did not really realize that the origins of the xylophone are in SouthEast Asia (back to BC), after that soon travelling to Africa, where it developed independently, according to own musical cultures. After all, many instruments travel: the South Spanish guitar (with Persian-Moorish antecedents), and its offshoots (e.g. the electric guitar) are best known, but also the violin, the Balgian-invented saxophone, the originally New Orleans/Jazz “drum kit” with cymbals, the Armenian-Turkish “cymbals” themselves, and in other posts on this blog I related how the Accordion and Harmonica (whether we want to, or not) originated in Germany.
This SE Asia to Africa migration is however another route than the usual “Western colonial” route, ending up influencing pop and Rock, only because Europeans or the US once could impose (or milder “bring”) their culture to e.g. to the Americas, or the whole world.
All these instruments are used in different ways in different cultures, adding the “soul” beyond mere material/technical aspects, the human creativity and natural playfulness, working out in different ways, within folk cultures.
Thus, the harmonica got used commonly in Blues, guitars rhythmically in Caribbean and African genres, according to African or African-derived norms, either “swing” based (as in Jazz or Blues, partly Reggae), or “straight rhythm”-based (as in e.g. Cuba, south Nigeria, and the Congo).
In the case of the xylophone, though, Europe had – for a welcome change – little to do with the spread from Southeast Asia to Africa: just from the people to the people, each in their own way. The xylophone has been unknown in European traditional music.
Or was it not?
TXALAPARTA
There is perhaps an exception in the Basque Txalaparta instrument, in Northern Spain, SW France. For all intents and purposes, this traditional Basque instruments is a “xylophone”. It consists of several wooden boards (often larger one, and around 6 or 8), differently tuned (though not very precise), and played with twos sticks, usually by two people.
Since some Basque traditions are very old (and some adapted influences from later), this Txalaparta-playing might well predate the arrival of the then “exotic” Xylophone in Germany, in the 16th c..
Even more interestingly, the type of playing has some commonalities with Balafon playing in Africa. “Without knowing it” a Basque musicologist assured (cultural colonial appropriation occurred often, after all, like the English “tea drinking”). Even polyrhythm and call-and –response patterns are shared between Basque Txalaparta and many African balafon traditions, and an overall rhythmic focus, perhaps unusual in wider Europe. The pentatonic scale is likewise – as in Africa – often used.
Only, traditionally no gourds are used as resonators among the Basques (traditionally ,anyway), and rhythmic structures on the Txalaparta are a bit different, less corporal and “hip-oriented”.
Musicologists relate these similarities to an older Neolithic origin, predating the arrival of later Indo-European peoples to Europe (the Basque speak an old, pre-Indo-European language), thus conserving some ancient polyrhythm aspects. Basque music, though, has quite some similarities with Celtic music (in NW Spain, Ireland, and elsewhere), also preserving older aspects, even if Celts result from mixtures with alter Indo-European migrants.
Genetically, the Basques have an ancient European origin (partly shared with some Celts), with hardly a connection to African roots. Even the Moorish period in Spain did not affect the Basques as much as other Spaniards. While also genetically, other Spaniards have overall more “Mediterranean” and “North African” DNA admixture, especially more to the South, so it’s not a “lost African tribe” in Spain, but, probably, shared human developments across the world, and similar inventions, causing the commonalities between Txalaparta and Balafon playing.
Humanity worldwide has as much similarities as differences, and the Basque Txalaparta had – broadly speaking - more or less the same functions (rhythmically) as African Balafons, and also a communal function, but a different one. In Basque culture, the Txalaparta was associated with “cider-making”, or other gatherings. A different climate zone as well, as the wood in Txalaparta tended long to be “chestnut” wood (later metal, recently also rosewood, because of international influences)..
Still.. a type of (wooden) xylophone, played for rhythmic and communal functions, is what the Basque Txalaparta shares with the African Balafons.
The mentioned “spiderweb silk” used in Africa to add a “buzz” to the sound of beaten keys is traditionally also absent from the Txalaparta, as are as said the calabash gourds. The latter is African.
Another thing I did not really know or realize. My small (Senegalese) balafon does not seem to have a strong “buzz”: it sounds bright and nasal (the calabash gourd effect), so I don’t think it has that added spiderweb silk and beewax.
I am not quite sure, and it is hard to check, without dismantling my Balafon too much.
I find it either way qua sound nice enough for compositions, adding a high-pitched, bright “ukulele”-like sound, but warmer, more African.
FINAL CONCLUSION
Now I learned more about the Balafon (I myself used in compositions), that I did not even know, and share this with readers of this post. In some artistic - or perhaps more: “cultural” or “spiritual” - sense I found this knowledge to be useful for me.
AI served me well in this case. I was surprised by the well-written summaries of AI answers to my question: in well-structured “human language” texts. This made me doubt if AI really did not involve human beings, or is there a bunch of writers/editors working behind the screen hired? Really all by machines and artificial?
It certainly added value to what I knew as search engines (like Google), and driven by our own curious questions, AI as an extended search engine could serve all humanity, rich or poor. Information gathering, extending our knowledge.
Rich capitalists, exploiters, money sharks, and even governments, want to go beyond this, I am afraid, drewling at “robot-creating” possibilities, for efficient (read: more profitable) production, creating the “robots” they always wanted, and first tried to make out of us humans. That would be less positive.
As a search engine, Artificial Intelligence, is enough, if it was up to me.
I worked in Leyden until around 2013 (for over 12 years), and went to Leyden a few times since.
Already in the later years after buying the Balafon in that store (near Leyden’;s central, wide Breestraat), I noticed the store had disappeared, noticing this unfortunately during one of my “break walks” in between my intensive “nose in books” library job at the KITLV institute I worked then. “What a pity”, I thought.
Yet, it is in this haphazard way, by chance, even in temporary stalls or stores, I bought many of my especially smaller percussion instruments, over the years.
A nice shaker with Marcus Garvey and pan-African colours on it (I also still use), I bought from a nice, dark-skinned Rastaman at a Cannabis Liberation festival in Amsterdam’s Westerpark, around 2003.
For a period, that typically Amsterdam (the “cool” side of Amsterdam, let’s say), and hippy-vibed festival was held, but stopped some years ago, as cannabis seemed liberated enough?
Other instruments I bought in other “fair trade” shops in the Netherlands, in other stalls in music/Reggae festivals (with e.g. African items) in Amsterdam, Spain, or elsewhere.
That makes my percussion collection all the more unique and personal. It’s not a common “one-big-music-shop” –thing, therefore showing more of original acoustic cultures. My balafon from Senegal is certainly part of that.
