"Fako, your father is calling you." "Come here it's not a boys' game!" "I always told you to watch my work..." "On watching your grandfather, I learnt to make the balan." "Light the oven." "Father!" "What is this potion 3 used for?" "Ha!" "You want to know everything so soon." "You often tell me:" ""He who doesn't ask, doesn't learn."" "That's right!" "Then get me some water." "Why put wood in the oven?" "So it can lose its humidity." "No, not there..." "Let them cool here until tomorrow." "Bring that of yesterday!" "This one makes mother notes!" "Here daughter notes!" "Play the mother balan!" "The next!" "OK!" "Your question shines in your eyes..." "Then get me a young leaflet from the mango tree!" "The cobweb makes the sound vibrate in the same way." "Fako, on a new balan" "We play the song of the genies." "We ask the ladies to kindly stuff their ears to what's next." "the mob claims to have a headache" "But we saw her in the ladykiller's bed." "at day, she's always ill." "at night, the mob capers" "Let me place the tiny end." "Point of the small end with nothing smaller simply the small end." "Go ahead, slowly, slowly, it's not yet night." "The patriarch of the far away village passed away today..." "The biggest tree laid down... all the birds are scattered..." "Everywhere, the sun is overhead." "How sad!" "And what if it was a child?" "At home," "No balan for a child's funeral." "Other tribes play it..." "But the tunes are different." "What's the potion used for?" "You you still answered by being silent!" "This potion is meant for the genies." "They drink it." "In gratitude, they put the voice in the wood." "Hello mother, son, how are you?" "May I have some water." "Get some water to your older brother," "Balan..." "Its making and its shape vary with from tribe to tribe..." "A tribal chief without a balafonist is a king without a crown." "Balan..." "He can paint the whole universe in white or black..." "He is the translator of the moods of man..." "Your eyes are satisfied?" "I was just watching their hands." "Everyone hears the sounds of the balan..." "Yet its voice speaks only to the initiated." "This is how I started playing balan." "This tune, I played it at your Grand-Mom's funeral." "This blade, it's sadness..." "When it speaks, it veils the eyes of the old." "What's the origin of balan?" "Hey!" "." "Son!" "...." "You take me back to the flood!" "I had asked your grand father the same question." "which he had also asked your great grand father..." "Some say that a genie offered the Balan to a hunter in the red forest..." "Others" "That one day, a hunter surprised a genie as he was making a balan," "So he hid himself." "and spied all the tricks in the making..." "Yet some others say:" "that it's a child who one day made friends with a small genie," "and that he revealed the secret of its making..." "Finally, all that is just one flute sound:" "genies are the first makers of the balan." "It's the wood of this tree which speaks."