Balafon enthusiasts, teachers, and students will find a great deal of useful information in this book, which offers very technical and academic information, as well as accessible tunes which one can learn to play on the bala. Mandinka Balafon offers in depth research on the history, construction, and use of the West African balafon. Lynne Jessup provides a variety of accounts of the origin of the bala, including interviews with the jeli griots of The Gambia. Seventeen transcribed balafon songs are notated with modified box notation and two accompanying CDs, with the history and use of each song. Detailed information is given on the construction and tuning of the Mandinka balafon, with plenty of supportive photos and drawings.
About the Author:
Lynne Jessup, multicultural music consultant and author of The Mandinka Balafon: An Introduction with Notation for Teaching, earned a masters degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington, and taught for many years in the Seattle public schools. She lived in the Gambia, West Africa while working as an ethnomusicologist for the Gambian government. She now lives in Rota, in the Mariana Islands, and travels frequently to Asia.
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