Balani is a 2 1/2 octave balafon (or balaphon) with small calabash resonators form Guinea. We decided that this no so rare instrument was worth a sample library especially because it has those "noise generators" in good condition. Most of the time, people remove those because they don't like that noisy effect, but if you listen carefully to some traditional Balafon, you will hear them and we wanted it to be in our library.
The other interesting point about Balafons is the scale that usually is very different from the European ones. It originally plays a B major scale (20 notes) so we extended it (to 33 notes) for this library and also gave the possibility to fine tune it.
Features:
Very interesting because its the first time i read something that let me suspect that they study a bit deeper western african (and more precisely the Mandingo culture)
Bala (or Balan, related to the limit of phonetic translation) is the correct name of the instrument in root language (called Julakan, Mandikakan, Malinkekan or Bamanankan, depending the country or the related ethnia but virtually the same spoken language)
Balafon means in fact "the sound of the Balan"
Balanfola litteraly means"The man who's making the sound of the Balan"
And Unlike other instrument in negro-african culture, the Guinea Balan is heptatonic (as diatonic scales) and much easier to adapt to chromatic intervals
AFAIK, "balani" seems to be a contraction of "Baladeni" (the small Balan)
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