The Grobund Byggefest is an annual building festival in Ebeltoft in Denmark. This year, the festival will be held from 10 – 16 July. On this page you can see what my activities with the balafon during the Byggefest entail.
At this 7-day festival, you can build all kinds of things out of wood. There are hefty amounts of wood in all shapes and sizes available. There are also tools available for you to use freely. Whether you make something functional or an art object, big or small, fixed or to take with you, it’s all possible. You can sign up for vegan meals or use the leftover kitchen, where food collected by volunteers from supermarkets (which is no longer sold there) is available. In the evening, there is music and opportunity to dance. Byggefest: A wonderful atmosphere of conviviality and helping each other!
The last two times I have been at the festival, I made a new balafon. The first time was with the help of several visitors of the festival who helped out for one or more days. In that year; 2019, we made a balafon for Grobund’s music centre and it is still there for everyone to use. The second time, I helped Maximilian (who had signed up in advance) build a balafon to his own liking. Depending on interest from participants, I will again build a balafon myself, or with/for someone else.
So it is possible to build a balafon under my guidance and with my help. This is possible with a maximum of 1 or 2 people. Then it’s necessary to have contact in advance about your wishes and the possibilities. So I can prepare myself accordingly with materials and specific tools that are not present at the festival. You can choose traditional tuning, or pentatonic (my personal favourite) or western diatonic. You can choose a balafon of 10, up to 21 sound bars. The work consists of making a frame and cutting, planing, filing and sanding the sound bars to tune them. In addition, the work consists of cutting and filing gourds to tune them. Finally, assembling the sound bars and gourds with string to the frame. Are you interested? Send me an email (paul@paulnas.nl) or an app (via 0031649752139 via Signal or Whatsapp).
I also always bring some balafons to introduce people to playing the balafon during the festival week. This year, I am hosting a workshop for all interested people during the festival on the Wednesday at 2pm. This workshop is free of charge. Later in the week, people who took part in that workshop can practise what they have learned.
General information can be found on www.byggefest.dk
See you at the Byggefest!
Blog items on Byggefest in the past years
For the third time, we hit the road for the one-week festival ‘Grobund Byggefest ’23’ in Ebeltoft in Denmark. As usual, I am offering a balafon-building workshop there where people can help me or make their own (simple) balafon. I had created an information page......
You may have thought: “I’d love to build my own balafon! What is normally done in Mali, Ivory Coast or Burkina Faso can now also be done in the Netherlands, in Tilburg.!”. Until now, this was really only possible in Africa if you stayed there......
Even before holidaying in Denmark, I had offered to host a Balafon frame-making workshop, at the Byggefest 2019 in Ebeltoft. Once we got there, it turned out to be a 6-day, small-scale construction festival, with music; at the busiest time, there were 300 visitors. During......