The band is built around a historic collaboration between two internationally acclaimed West African balafon masters: Mamadou Diabate of Burkina Faso and Balla Kouyate of Mali.
They play the balafon, an ancient West African xylophone constructed with wooden keys suspended over calabash gourd resonators.The concept behind the band's name is rooted in a musical barrier they broke. In Africa, these two masters play instruments tuned to entirely different scales—one pentatonic and one diatonic. Traditionally, these distinct tuning systems have never been played together. Their groundbreaking partnership blends these two separate musical worlds to create an entirely new, harmonized sound, achieving what was previously considered "impossible".
The ensemble recently completed a week-long musician's residency in the Upper Valley hosted by Steve Ferraris and made its official public debut with an outdoor lawn concert on Sunday, July 26, 2026, in Norwich, Vermont.
