Local balafon player Balla Kouyaté joined WBUR's Morning Edition to talk about his family's legacy with the ancient instrument. He first picked it up as a child in his native Mali and played alongside ...

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 ...

First new artist release through Chrysalis Global, an imprint of Chrysalis Records Produced by an A-list team: Dudu Sarr, Lucy Durán + Pape Armand Boye “Three outstanding Malian and Guinean griots….

Ingrid Monson, a Harvard jazz scholar and ethnomusicologist with the lofty title of Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music, owns a collection of balafons — the West African instrument that ...