Pair of bala players

Bala performance is an exceptional activity in Dogon society said to have accompanied the funeral of a hogon (a political and religious leader). Playing the percussive bala is the responsibility of griots, individuals charged with giving voice to oral traditions and poetry, praise-singing, and acting as community spokespersons. In the Sunjata, the celebrated epic devoted to the Mali Empire’s fourteenth-century founding, the instrument features as the wondrous, magical, preciously guarded possession of the blacksmith-sorcerer king of Suso. The Moroccan author Ibn Battuta recounts that during his 1352 CE visit to the court of Malian emperor Suleyman, he witnessed a performance of bala music accompanied by a chorus of one hundred women.