Dagara: Gyil Music of Ghana’s Upper West Region Sublime Frequencies
First things first. The gyil is a traditional West African xylophone with dried gourd resonators hung below most or all of its hardwood keys. (A similar instrument is called a “balafon” in Francophone Africa.) It’s usually tuned pentatonically, and its full, luminous tone is haloed with a cicada-like buzz, created by vibrating membranes made from spiders’ egg cases and pasted over small holes cut in each resonator. If you saw Badenya La Freres Coulibaly at the African Festival of the Arts in 2001 or SK Kakraba at the World Music Festival in 2016, you already know what one looks like.