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While touring all around the world for several years, FARAFINA from Burkina Faso has become a well known ambassador from this specially welcoming West African country. FARAFINA was founded in the early eighties. Right from the beginning they were enthusiastically welcomed by their audiences who were fascinated by so much virtuosity.
Their ability to expand their music without denying their traditional instruments has enabled them to experience new forms and meet other musicians such as Jon Hassell, the Rolling Stones, Ryuichi Sakamato, Daniel Lanois, Billy Cobham, Joji Hirota, a.o.
Their music interweaves complex and forceful rhythms and is carried by the melodic lines of balafons, flute and koras. The songs are played on traditional instruments while their lyrics deal with present issues of African realities in a critical though hopeful way.
But they stayed faithful to their own track. So while integrating new orchestral forms and melodies, and adding contemporary sounds (guitar and keyboard), the balafons, koras, flute, djembes, tama, and baras still remain the core and hearth of their music. Last but not least, the arrival of a female voice introduces a new colour to this up till now male only ensemble.
During their odyssey of nearly 20 years the group naturally faced some changes. Thus, its founder Mahama Konaté left the group in 1991. Others came and went and still others died. New and younger musicians have joined the group. All came in through the so called "Farafina School" which continues the African tradition of having the children, from their youngest ages on, attend the concerts of their elders and trying to repeat the music they hear all day long. In this way an astonishing and remarkable musical continuity is guaranteed.
Today, Farafina counts eight musicians, dancers and singers, seven male and one female. Soungalo Coulibaly, the flutist, is with the group since the beginning in the late seventies. Souleymane Sanou and Bakari Traoré joined in the eighties. Salif Koné and Adolphe Kinda come from “Farafina’s school” in Bobo Dialousso in the early nineties. Haruna Koita has joined in 1996, Fatoumata Dembelé in 1999 and Boakary Dembelé in 2001.
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