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Balla et ses Balladins and West African musical influence
- roval9
- 18 hours ago
- 2 min read
By: Rafael Ovalle
Balla et ses Balladins were a musical group deriving from the West African country of Guinea. They were a Guinean state-funded band formed in 1962 in the country's capital, Conakry. Their music fuses traditional Guinean folk music and dance, which are accompanied by trumpets, saxophones, guitars, and bass, along with traditional instruments found largely in the West African region, such as: The Djembe (traditional West African drum) and the balafon (West African gourd resonating xylophone), to name a few traditional instruments used in their songs. Although Balla et ses Balladin's music has a cheerful tone, the topics of their songs focus on Guinea's turbulent history ranging from oppression and liberation of former French colonialism, Marxist ideologies that have influenced harsh former rule, and dictatorship that the country has faced in the not so distant past. The cheerful tone and lyricism are used to acknowledge the country's dark past and bring forth optimism into Guinea's bright future, moving on from colonial rule and dictatorship.
As a Latino, I personally love this band and West African culture since music from West Africa is essentially the blueprint as to what modern-day music deriving from Latin America, such as Salsa, Bolero, Rumba, and Afro-Latino music as a whole, sounds like. Latin America as a whole has to thank West Africans for their culture and unique sounds, which were brought over, unfortunately, through the slave trade during the period of colonization and European rule in the Americas. Speaking of musical influence, Grammy award-winning rapper J Cole has sampled ‘Paulette’ by Balla et ses Balladins on his 2011 song Can't get enough off his Album Cole World: The Sideline Story.
Through oppression, colonialism, dictatorship, and overall determination for the betterment of its people, the country of Guinea has produced one of its best musical groups in the 20th century, which has helped its people not to forget the history that has shaped their country, but to also move forward from a tumultuous past and into a bright future.
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