REFINED AFROPOP IN FRENETIC RHYTHMS

THE 21ST CENTURY GENIE'S INSTRUMENT.

The goal of the Kanazoé Orchestra is not only to dazzle with music; with such musicians and singers, it is probably impossible to do otherwise. They try above all to control our bodies. Dance-wise, to avoid misunderstandings.
The balafonist plays so fast that his sticks become invisible. To do this, the international line-up tries to keep the energy under control, but in vain, so they always end up with the frenetic rhythms of refined Afropop. This includes traditional music of the West African Mandinka people, Nigerian Afrobeat, rock, electronics and other influences, so they prefer to call their music balabeatz for short. And try to guess why.
The wooden balafon, resembling a xylophone, is one of the oldest West African instruments and its origin is estimated to be eight centuries old. And together with the Malian national epic about King Sunjatu Keita, it is included in the UNESCO cultural heritage list. It tells the story of the first griot and the balafon, dedicated to the people by a mysterious genie. Its regional version does not differ in its construction, but in the number of soundboards and tuning it does. And it is also used for different purposes: in Burkina Faso, griots from the Mandinka people conduct a dialogue with each other on it, and little Seydou Diabaté and his father also accompanied farmers on it when harvesting in the fields. Although this is music rhythmically very distant from his current Afropop, it is not actually different in its original command to action; Diabaté, nicknamed Kanazoé, just swapped work for dance.
In Toulouse, France, where he moved fifteen years ago, he joined forces with his compatriots for this purpose - balafon player and ngoni lute player Mamadou Dembéle and singer Losso Keïta - and with three Frenchmen jumping from jazz to rock. A unique path to embedding balafon traditions in a modern context was thus opened, and the response to the four albums released so far by the Kanazoé Orchestra confirmed its intended direction into the future of West African griot music.

Photos by Romain Serrano (list of performers), Cedrick (this web page)