The Talking Balafon of the Sambla: Grammatical Principles and Documentary Implications

This article makes the case for linguists to take part in the study of musical surrogate languages, where linguistic form is transposed onto music. It draws on the case study of the Sambla balafon, a West African resonator xylophone. Seenku (Northwestern Mande, Samogo), the language of the Sambla people, has a highly complex tonal system, whose four contrastive levels and multiple contour tones are encoded musically in the notes of the balafon, allowing musicians to communicate without ever opening their mouths. I analyze the grammar of the surrogate language and demonstrate its use in both phonological analysis and language documentation.