In late 2022, I did some Christmas activities at Kessels Museum Tilburg. At the museum, I have been doing balafon making one day a week for a while now, but with holiday period I also do activities with children. A nice story about the origin of...
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...
This summer, I carried out a repair of a Timbila, a sound bar instrument used by the Chopi from Mozambique.It's bars are from Padouk-wood.[vc_separator type="transparent" thickness="5"][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text]Origin[/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" thickness="5"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text]I had not heard...
I will be giving a balafon frame-making workshop at the Grobund 'Byggefest' Building Festival on the coast of Denmark not far from Aarhus. It is a small-scale festival focusing on creativity and will be held from 15 to 20 July. My dear Karin is in...
I checked her Guinean balafon for Monique Derksen. She bought it at the time through Arafan Touré . Arafan Touré lived in the Netherlands for a long time and has made beautiful arrangements, some of which are included within the WAP pages, but there is...
In this blog entry, I am going to report on a complete renovation of a balafon for Lisa, an Irish friend who has discovered a passion for the balafon. She is another friend of Debbie who I met two years ago at Tuka-Tuka and then...
I have repaired the strings and have the rope system restored of a Keita Balafon! A balafonist from Nordhorn, Germany, provided me with her balafon whose string had broken. According to my teacher Youssouf Keita, it was built by his brother Seydou Keita from the...
Jan (participant in Tuka-Tuka workshop recently) asked me if it was a good idea to renovate an old balafon, which he had received from his neighbor, into a useful instrument. We have arranged at my home; he would bring the balafon. When he arrived, he...
For one of my students in the Betuwe teaching group, I did a balafon overhaul. A support beam in the frame had broken. In addition, there were many side noises and some of the gourds were actually too long and were touching the ground and...