Musical Belongings VII: Bach and Balafon

Ba Banga Nyeck is a Cameroonian musician and creator of an innovative chromatic balafon model, which he showcases on international stages. Through his work, he demonstrates that the balafon—a traditional African xylophone—can engage in dialogue with classical, contemporary, jazz, and modern music, and integrate seamlessly into orchestral formations around the world.

Awarded by the UNESCO in 2012 for his project to develop a cultural industry around the balafon in Côte d’Ivoire, he has also been distinguished by the World Masters of Arts and Culture (South Korea) and supported by the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI) for the invention of his instrument. He is also the Grand Prize winner of the “Triangle du Balafon” competition in Mali.

He has performed throughout Africa, Asia, the United States, and France, notably at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and at the Philharmonie de Paris as a guest soloist with the orchestra Les Siècles conducted by François-Xavier Roth. He is also a member of the community of instrumentalists associated with the Musée de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris.

He has shared the stage with major artists such as Mory Kanté and Richard Bona, and has recorded in collaboration with Manu Dibango.

Ba Banga Nyeck is the author of Balafon chromatique ou le manifeste du balafoniste universel (Éditions Baudelaire, 2023), he is also a cultural entrepreneur, a member of the SACEM and of the Bureau Ivoirien des Droits d’Auteur (BURIDA), and the founder of the International Balafon Festival (FestiBalafons) in Abidjan as well as Folk & Fusion in Alsace.

Boni Gnahoré is one of the most outstanding artists of the African scene. He gained his artistic experience in the village of Ki-yi Mbock in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a pan-African center for artist residencies and artistic training in various disciplines, of which he is a co-founder.

From 1985 to 1997, Boni collaborated on all of the center’s major productions, contributing as an actor, percussionist, singer, songwriter, and composer. In 1989, Boni Gnahoré was asked to compose the music for the shadow puppet play “Sundjata”—a Mandingo epic—with the theater group “Amoros et Augustin” from Strasbourg; he performed as a percussionist and singer and went on tour through France, South Africa, and the United States. In 1992, he contributed to the creation of the opera “Un toureg s’est marié à une pygmée” from the village of Kiyi. He composed several pieces and took charge of the percussion and vocals under the direction of Ray Léma, the project’s musical director; tours took them to Ivory Coast, Denmark, and Japan. In 1994, Boni was hired by the Montreal-based (Canada) company “Les Deux Mondes” for a musical adaptation of the play “Les nuages de terre,” which included touring in Canada and France.

In 1997, Boni Gnahoré founded a group for children between the ages of 8 and 13 who had dropped out of school, with the aim of providing them with artistic training in percussion, singing, and dance, and thus giving them a solid educational foundation. At the end of this training programme, they staged a musical piece titled “Le Passeur.” That same year, inspired by the “Tématé” drum from western Ivory Coast, he invented a melodic percussion instrument with six heads (Le Tamanoix).

In 1998, Boni brought together all the percussionists and musicians from the group Ki-Yi to form a band, which he named “Boni Gnahoré and the Chœur Attoungblan”—the drum choir. The group released its first album (“Pédou”) in 1998. This album marked the group’s breakthrough. Boni Gnahoré and his “Chœur Attoungblan” toured the Ivory Coast, France, and Italy.

In 2000–2001, Boni and his group were invited to tour France; afterwards, they were asked to perform at “Masa In” in Ivory Coast and received a commission for a tour in Italy (Milan). In 2003, Boni was honored by the Association Française des Actions Artistiques (AFAA) as the 2003 recipient of the “Villa Médicis Hors les Murs” programme for artistic research. In 2004, he created a major music show (“Africa non stop”) and released an album of the same name. He embarked on a one-month tour of the Netherlands. In 2005, Boni settled in Alsace, France, to pursue research, professional development, and cultural exchanges that enabled him to continue his artistic activities—performing arts, concerts—and to teach as a music teacher and facilitator in schools.

In 2008, he was asked by the Compagnie Dounia in Rennes to take on the role of musical director and to participate as a percussionist and singer in the world premiere of “Afro Breizh.” With this production, “Afro Breizh,” he toured throughout Brittany and other regions of France. In 2013, Boni released his sixth album, “Kumbélé Kumbélé,” featuring 8 to 12 tracks, and went on tour in Alsace.

In 2016, Boni Gnahoré unveiled his new project to establish a center for artistic education and a music conservatory (TAMANOIX INSTITUT). In 2018, Boni founded his percussion festival, the “Festi Tamanoix,” based in Alsace (Strasbourg). In 2023, Boni Gnahoré released his seventh album, “Wabléssa,” featuring eight tracks—a production that pays tribute to the culture of his country of origin, Ivory Coast.

Discography:
1 – “Carnet” with KI-YI
2 – “Le Tourareg” (Carnet B) with KI-YI
3 – “Le Pedou”
4 – “Attegbono”
5 – “Africa Non Stop”
6 – “Kumbélé Kumbélé”
7 – “Wabléssa”

The artist Tanka Fonta, born 1966 in Buea, Cameroon, lives and works in Berlin. A multidisciplinary visual artist, composer, poet, writer, instrumentalist, and philosopher, his practice spans mural-scale painting, installation, orchestral composition, and philosophical writing. His work explores human consciousness, the psychology of perception, and the relationships between thought, language, sound, and visual form. He has presented major projects internationally, including at the Bienal de São Paulo 2025, Haus der Kulturen der Welt 2023, and Kunstverein Hannover, and has collaborated with institutions such as the Goethe-Institut. His orchestral and aural works have been commissioned and performed internationally, and his scores are held in over 700 library collections worldwide, including Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A lutenist by training, Wolfgang Katschner founded the lautten compagney BERLIN together with Hans-Werner Apel in 1984, the centrepiece of his multifaceted work as a musician, organiser and researcher in the sound worlds of “early music”.

On CDs, Wolfgang Katschner and his ensemble present themselves as border crossers; alongside world premiere recordings of operas such as “Didone abbandonata” are unusual combinations of composers: Philipp Glass and Tarquinio Merula (“Timeless”), Heinrich Schütz and Friedrich Hollaender (“War & Peace”) and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Astor Piazzolla (“Misterio”). Each of these programmes stands for the conviction that “early” music is just as modern as music written later and, once one steps out of one’s self-imposed isolation as a musician of “early” music, can be combined with modern repertoire in an extremely profitable way for musicians and audiences alike.

For some years now, Wolfgang Katschner has also been successfully appearing as a guest conductor at German opera houses. In 2012-2016 he was musical director of the Winter in Schwetzingen; after guest appearances in Bonn (Handel’s “Rinaldo” and “Giulio Cesare”) and Oldenburg (Hasse’s “Siroe”), he was responsible for several opera productions at the Nuremberg State Theatre: “Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria”, “Serse”, “La Calisto” and “Bajazet”. Most recently, Katschner conducted Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” at the Semperoper Dresden and Antonio Cestis “L’Orontea” at the Theater an der Wien.

Wolfgang Katschner is also increasingly involved in the training of young artists. He was a guest professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, at the Sing-Fest in Hong Kong, artist in residence at BarockVokal in Mainz and worked with singers at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar in 2018 and 2019.

Christian Filips is a poet, music dramaturge, director and translator. He studied philosophy, literature and musicology in Vienna and Berlin. Since 2006 he has been working as a freelance author, director and music dramaturge for the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, for the lautten compagney BERLIN and for the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, among others. As a music dramaturge, he specializes in hybrid formats combining early and contemporary music, literature, performance and action art. As a theater maker, he has developed immersive productions for urban space together with partners in Mumbai and Nairobi. As a translator, he collaborated with the Arab-German collective WIESE (Wie es ist) / مرج (for Hamburger Bahnhof, among others). Filips is currently working with poets Logan February (Nigeria) and Lionel Fogarty (Australia) on the project POESIE DEKOLONIE with Engeler Verlag. The first volume published was “Mental Voodoo: Gedichte“ by Logan February. In April 2023 he curated the festival for world literature POETICA 8 at the University of Cologne. In August 2023, he received the Erlangen Literature Prize for Poetry in Translation. Most recently, the poetry collection Im Traum die Auskunft sagt: Hier! Selected poems 1996-2022 was published by Engeler Verlag.

lautten compagney BERLIN

The lautten compagney BERLIN, conducted by Wolfgang Katschner, is one of the most renowned early music orchestras. In the 39 years since its founding in 1984, it has thrilled music lovers around the world. In fall 2019, it was awarded the OPUS Klassik as Ensemble of the Year. With concerts, opera performances, and crossover projects, it sets unique musical accents. The ensemble is one of the few independent producers of music theater projects in Germany. It is appreciated by audiences and national and international arts critics alike for its unusual and innovative programs. In addition to its performances in Berlin, lautten compagney tours Germany, Europe, and the world with approximately 100 concerts per year. Its most recent major tours outside Europe took it to ten cities in China in 2019 and to Bogotá in Colombia in the fall of 2021. At the Semperoper in Dresden, lautten compagney recently celebrated the acclaimed premiere of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” as the first guest ensemble in the theater’s recent history.

The lautten compagney cultivates musical traditions as an important part of its program spectrum with major repertoire works. Wolfgang Katschner and his ensemble are not only curious about music, but also about new ways of presenting it in concert. The lautten compagney has found its own individual platform for experimentation in the form of the :lounge, among other things. Here it demonstrates that early music and contemporary music can indeed be combined. In the :lounge, live sampling and sounds enrich the timbres of the Baroque instruments and provide space for surprising improvisations. When old works are inspired by new ideas in this way, musical boundaries disappear.

lautten compagney BERLIN

lautten compagney BERLIN – YouTube