PhD research project: Inventing New Marimba Performance from the West African Balafon Music Practice

VIEW Dissertation

The aim of this practice-based project is to search for new performance perspectives for the marimba (invented in 1910s) by inquiring into the West African music tradition--the balafon of the Bobo and Bamana tribes living in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Through a triangulation of research methodology—participant-observation (lessons with local musicians and interviews), literature (African ethnomusicology, phenomenology in music and music embodiment) and artistic practice (analyses and experiments in music)—I have gained insights on describing the artistic experience of stepping into the "unknown" balafon world. It is a discussion on how I have overcome the obstacles of learning, performing and listening to balafon music, and how these new experiences renewed and enriched my original artistic practice and ideas. Due to oral tradition, the balafon polyrhythm and melodic materials are embodied in forms of bimanual (two-hand) coordination patterns rather than symbolic representation. Music-making is largely informed by the performer's motoric sensory, and body movement is given a crucial role in music communication and sensory perception.

The second purpose of this research is, therefore, to apply these balafon practices in the Western performance. Most preceding Western composers and performers have initiated music projects to adapt the African musical materials to their creative processes, e.g. "Drumming" (Steve Reich, 1971), but barely a work grows out of an inquiry into the embodied performance practice of the non-Western genre. This yields artistic outcomes of five commissioned compositions for the marimba and a concert program "In the Heat of the Moment".

Keywords: marimba, balafon, body movement, music embodiment.

Concert program “In the Heat of the Moment”

Mal/oxin Suite | Michiel De Malsche

Transposons | Cheong Li

El Perjurio de la Nieve | Juan Albarracín

Sound Portrait V | Enric Riu

Inner Sight Etudes | Cornelia Zambila

 Mal/oxin Suite Michiel De Malsche (Belgium) shares his afro-funk and Yaki-da grooves with full energy;  Transposons Dr. Cheong Li (Hong Kong) makes a scientific metaphor to the idiomatic musical element embeds in the balafon music, which is constantly changeable in position, capable to re-creation and reverse mutation; El Perjurio de la Nieve for four hands on marimba, Juan Albarracín (Argentina) creates a retrograde journey back to the historic moment when the Africans first meeting the Western musical practices, the bombarding moment of rhythmic patterns and style; Sound Portrait V Enric Riu (Spain/Canada) uses graphical score to frame the time structure and bodily movement of the performer; Inner Sight Etudes Cornelia Zambila (Romania) investigates into the sensorial experience of the performer leaving her comfort zone (the change of marimba to balafon) by setting up a blindfolded performance.